What does that mean, "The Art of the Child"? Well, while I do intend to share some of the actual art composed by my child, that is not the purpose of this blog. My name is Jen and I am a mother, an actor, a writer, and wife to a popular Rock n' Roll poster artist. My very 'daily bread' is provided by art. Our lives are pretty simple, but not exactly...
traditional, and we like it that way. Our daughter is now eight years old and I'm finding so much delight in how she responds to the world around her,
especially all forms of artistic expression!
So this blog will explore just that,
Life Raising an Artistic Child. I am loving this journey and intend to share with you past, present and future planned activities with our future DaVinci. Oh yes, I chose DaVinci for a reason! She doesn't have just one natural talent. I believe we all start out with full potential. We intend to help her develop all of her interested talents to the extent she desires so she will be incredibly well rounded for her venture into the big wide world. We home school her so a lot of my posts will involve our unconventional schedule (see we are already - not traditional), and this forum allows us to provide her a whole world of opportunities in art.
I fully intend to make our explorations translatable and easy to find on the blog for anyone who would like to share in our adventures.
To keep true to my promise, I'd like to share a recent experience with you that I found particularly fascinating. This spurred me on to pay real attention to what avenues our gal might want to explore for herself more fully. As I mentioned, my husband is a renowned poster artist which lends to us often being invited to some pretty amazing places. One of the most recent events that was pretty large was the PJ20 (Pearl Jam 20th Anniversary Show) in East Troy, MI not far from Chicago. (Side Note: Great Show) My husband was asked to make available his prints at the show and before long he had a very long line in front of his booth of fans pilfering his collection for prizes to take home. Our little girl was patiently sitting to the side, waiting for one us to be available to walk her around the grounds yet again. She is a Strokes fan and was actually quite mortified at an encounter we had with Julian Casablancas in which her 'humiliating mother' complimented his day-glow sneakers. "
Mom don't SPEAK to him!" ;D (
Click here if you don't have a clue who I am talking about!) So here she resided sitting in a chair passing the time, and that is when the something beautiful happened.
Gabriella (our little one) began to do something not so extra-ordinary for her, she drew. And drew. And drew. She drew very creative and simplistic scenes of superheroes flying and dogs with cats as pals and manga-style fairies hugging. OK, so the latter was a little more complicated, but gives you an impression of the kinds of art to which she is already drawn. Gabriella noticed how everyone was asking her Daddy to doodle on their posters things that seemed as simple to her as what she was drawing. So she began to lay her art out along the wall and on the floor in front of her for people to see. In
seconds people were inquiring, "What's that little girl?" and "Ooh I like that one, did you draw it?" Then she had another pivotal moment. A fan, actually gave her $5 for one of her pictures! That was it. The ball was rolling. Before long people were paying her all kinds of amounts from $1 to $20 just for one drawing and asking her to sign them. It was remarkable! By the end of the night she proudly marched up to her Dad and told him she made $85 with her drawings. He was floored, but not totally surprised. We have an artist, but may also have a hustler...
So stick with me! I will post pretty regularly about our adventures and experimentations with art and exploration. If you have comments, or suggestions for things we might like to try - please post here. I want this to be a fun ride for all of us!
