October 2017 - EASTERN OREGON PARENT - 7
Free for All: Saturdays at PCA or any time at home!
By ROBERTA LAVADOUR
Each Saturday for the past
eight years, kids have gath-
ered in the painting studio
at the Pendleton Center for
the Arts to make art. The free
class, aptly named FREE for
All, starts at 9:30 a.m. and
runs 45 minutes. The only
requirement is a sense of
adventure.
Since there’s no need to
sign up ahead of time, busy
families can decide on the fly
whether to drop in, depend-
ing on who’s out of bed and
who doesn’t have a baseball
game that morning. Some
families bring visiting grand-
parents along, and some
parents use the class to rack
up major brownie points,
rounding up the little ones
so their spouse can have an
Saturday Free for All participants show off their “matching half” artwork.
hour of uninterrupted time
at home. The projects incor-
porate everything from air-dry clay
to watercolor to crepe paper, but
many involve plain old paper and
pens or markers.
• Devote a small drawer or box to art supplies. When you en-
Can’t make it to class this Sat-
counter a page in a magazine or an unusual collage material that
urday? Not to worry. There are
inspires you, pop it in the box.
plenty of ways to engage your kids
in creative play with a few simple
• Look for cheap or free art-making materials. Yard sales are great
materials from around the house.
places to find markers and crayons, and businesses sometimes
We’ve collected a few quick and
give away pens with their logo on them for free. An old cereal
easy projects that you can do right
box or an old birthday card can be disassembled and become the
at the kitchen table. If you keep a
perfect canvas for new artwork.
small stash of blank paper, scissors,
a few markers and a glue stick on
• Ask for paper instead of plastic at the grocery story. Brown paper
hand, kids can jump in to a project
bags are great for all sorts of projects, including simple drawings.
anytime.
• Don’t forget to look outside. Sticks, flowers, leaves and tiny
Trash to treasure collage
pebbles can be turned into fun and colorful artwork. You’ll have
One of the most unexpected
to experiment with attaching different materials to a backing, and
places to find beautiful paper is
they might fade and wilt, but the experience of making something
inside your monthly bills. When
fun is always time well spent.
turned inside out, the security en-
Be ready to be creative!
velopes that most large com-
panies use become a treasure
trove of lines and squiggles.
The variation will surprise
you. Carefully pull the flaps
up to disassemble the enve-
lope. Cut out shapes and glue
them into a fun composition,
then draw over the top with
a marker to bring the collage
to life.
Find your creative side
Find a picture in a cata-
logue or magazine that has
two halves. Large faces work
well, as do photos of flowers,
insects and landscapes. Care-
fully remove the page (some-
times that’s harder than it
seems) – a utility knife, used
by a grown-up, can come in
handy. Cut the picture in two,
then glue one side to a larger
sheet of paper, leaving room
for you to draw the miss-
ing half. You can try to match the
image as closely as you can or let
your imagination run wild to cre-
ate something totally new. It’s fun
to give a friend the other half, then
compare your artwork when you’re
done.
Accidental poetry
Find some words that you really
like in an old catalogue or magazine
and glue them on a page. Now find
some other words that connect the
first ones into a sentence or a little
poem. It doesn’t have to rhyme!
Now draw a picture inspired by the
words.
________
Roberta Lavadour is Executive
Director of the Pendleton Center for
the Arts at www.pendletonarts.org.