As an employee at the Y, impact is a word we hear a lot.  Whether we are focused on what impact we can have, being praised for the impact that we have had, or feeling the impact that our members and coworkers have had on us, it is the core what makes our programming what it is.

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the Sollar Wellness Center at New England Villages.  New England Villages offers both residential and day programs for adults with intellectual disabilities, and welcomed us with open arms to observe their programs.  I sat in on a music class one day and an art class on my next visit.  Believe me when I say that I have witnessed some of the most impactful programming out there.

One of the goals of the Fine and Performing Arts department is to create an inclusive environment, and through observing these classes I know we are an enormous step closer to making that goal a reality.  I was able to help someone paint Popsicle sticks, and meet Elvis/Fred/Prince Charles, he had many names throughout the course of the class but ultimately I made a new friend. 

Seeing the staff and the arts program participants at New England Villages really opened my eyes to a community that many people in our society do not understand.  It was beautiful seeing these staff interact with their students, whether it was a joke, a moment of encouragement, and moment of support, or just a shared moment of bliss.

In the end, I got to create some art with people who felt the impact that art had on them, but more importantly, I met some people who have mastered the art of making an impact.

Slime!... or Gak!... or Flubber!... or Goop! or... one of the other millions of names I've heard for this ooey gooey material that is easy to make at home with just a couple of ingredients.  Last Friday I whipped some up for the toddlers in my "Explore the Arts" class and after some slight hesitation, they were on board with the stuff. The amazing thing about this material is that although we are calling it "slime," it actually isn't messy to play with so this is something that can be done without much worry of a mess right at your kitchen table.

Here is what you need:

• Elmer's Glue (8 oz bottle)
• Borax (a powdered soap, sometimes hard to find in grocery stores so here is a link to some you can order online.)
• Large mixing bowl
• Spoon
• Cup
• Measuring cup
• Food coloring
• Water

When I made this I followed these directions pretty loosely, adding things as I saw fit to get the consistency I wanted.

1. Empty the entire bottle of glue into the mixing bowl.  Fill the empty bottle with warm water and shake.  Pour the glue-water mixture into the mixing bowl and stir well with a spoon.
2. Add some food coloring and stir.
3. Into your cup add 1/2 cup of warm water along with a teaspoon of Borax.  Stir until slightly dissolved.
4. While stirring the glue mixture in the bowl, slowly add the water-Borax mixture in your cup.  This will begin to change the glue mixture into something a little bit more rubbery.  Once you have most of the glue mixture moving towards a rubbery state, ditch the spoon and dig in with your hands!
5. Continue mixing with your hands, adding more of the Water-Borax solution to make it more rubbery and more glue to slime it up a bit.
6. Play!
7. Cover, this stuff will dry up when left to the open air. A plastic bag will do the trick.

There are so many fun ways to play with slime with a toddler.  Just exploring with out much intervention at all will keep kids entertained for at least 10 minutes, which can be an impressive amount of time for some of our little ones.  To push this play time a little bit longer I introduced some simple baking tools, rolling pins and cookie cutters.  Another fun thing to do is to hide things inside of the slime for your child to dig out.  Anything from smooth pebbles to small plastic dinosaur toys will work for something like this.  We also played with the slime by stuffing as much of it as we could into little cups (I had some left over play-dough cups from some that had dried out) and were pleasantly surprised at the noise that came out of the cup, "It tooted!" exclaimed one of our toddlers on Friday with bright excited eyes.  And ya, it did, so we all just had to laugh and agree with him on that one.  Keep this slime covered when you are finished it and it should last you for a little while.  A plastic bag will do, but I have seen it stored inside of those plastic Easter eggs which can be added fun if you have a dinosaur hidden inside of your slime.

Enjoy and post any pictures of your slime making to our facebook page facebook.com/SSYARTS

Meghan Dinsmore’s studio is located on the 3rd floor of the E.T. Write building in Rockland, MA and is a part of the 4^thFloor Artist Association.  She has been an art teacher at Marshfield High for 9 years while continuing her studio practice and showing her artwork at a number of places, including Laura’s Center for the Arts in August 2013.  Dinsmore received both her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Boston University in Painting and Art Education and has continued her education through workshops and classes at some of the top arts colleges in New England such as Massachusetts College of Art and Design and New Hampshire Institute of Art.  

The first thing you’ll notice when you walk into Meghan Dinsmore’s studio is the huge variety of artwork.  This is in part because she shares her large space with her husband Dan Talbot and friend Shannon McDonald.  That is not the whole story on the variety though; Dinsmore’s work alone could easily be mistaken for the work of multiple artists.  She is not bound by style, which is a liberating idea, although it of course is not quite as simple as that.  I think that there is a certain stigma in the art world about not zeroing in on one style and there is evidence of this in the repeated questions Dinsmore must field relating to this topic.  “Why do you bounce around so much?”, “what is your true style?”, and “you made that too?” are familiar conversation starters for this exploratory artist.  Dinsmore is interested in form and in shattering form, a process which must be fundamentally fluid and diverse.

pen and ink drawing in a 7x12" sketchbook

Dinsmore tells me, “it is important to me that I know the rules before I break the rules.” Look at these beautiful peeks through her sketchbook.  Each done in about 45 minutes, they serve as a daily warm up.  Working as a high school art teacher, Dinsmore says “these daily drawings are great motivators for my students.  When they say they don’t have time to finish something, I can point to these drawings and tell them I only needed 45 minutes, so do they.  At the same time though, these drawings keep my on my toes with their expanding skill level.  Being their teacher, I feel like I need to stay one step ahead of them which isn't always easy with some of the talent in my school. Keeping current with my practice helps me do that.”

Some bird explorations with pen and acrylic wash on wood panel
Approximately 6x6"

Portraits in acrylic
Each approximately 3x4'

These large painted portraits are another example of Dinsmore flexing her art muscles and pushing herself to see what she could do.  After taking about 10 years off of doing “college style paintings,” mainly large scale realistic works, she was questioning whether or not she could still pull it off.  She decided to grab a few of the people closest to her and test it out.  Turns out she could still do it, and do it really well at that.  She was now assured that she “knew the rules,” and was ready to take a jump.

Brayer drawings in acrylic on paper
Each is 22x30"

This next series of pieces was done based off of memories and photos.  Here, Dinsmore is interested in capturing what a faded memory looks like. After a workshop at New Hampshire Institute of Art on passing over brushes and instead painting with brayers, she had the perfect tool for this series.  A tool that could glide paint across a surface while maintaining a hardness to prevent too much detail from creeping in.  This is, in a way, how we experience memories- fluid, changing, and the further away they are, the less clear.  This series was based off of some photos dug up in an old family treasure trove and each have charming stories to go along with them.  The painting of the shirtless man is based off of a photo of Dinsmore’s grandfather, taken while he was stationed overseas in the military during World War II.  He took the photo himself and sent it home to her grandmother with a note reading, “For my honey, to look at and sigh.” We only have this one endearing piece of the story and Dinsmore does not fill in any gaps for us visually.  She likes that, “you can put your own interpretation into these paintings, and they could be anyone’s grandfather in any place.” 

This series of brayer drawings is where I think Dinsmore’s work really pulls together.  And by “together,” I don’t mean that the brayer drawings are her “true style."  What I mean is that I can see the full circle of her process from an important and new angle: time.  You’ll notice, in the daily sketches the viewer gets a quick and clear look at what is directly in front of this artist no matter how mundane it may be.  The drawings are completed in a short amount of time and their closeness to us in time means that they are recent memories and so their depiction is vibrant.  The large scale portraits take us slightly further back in time, as Dinsmore is working from instances that are not quite as immediate as what is sitting directly in front of her.  These paintings are vivid and easily read, but pay attention to the background.  Things get blurred and distorted in the back with a more playful feeling in color and texture.  There is even a bit of work with brayers.  Then we come to the brayer drawings and are pushed further away in both time and in realistic representation.  These pieces give us a peak at what they are about while allowing us to fill in the rest of the information for ourselves.  This is how Dinsmore works intuitively. By looking at her vast body of work we are able to find these connecting threads.

I think a better question to ask this artist is not anything to do with the disconnectedness of her work.  Perhaps a more insightful questions is, "how are you going to explore these ideas next?"

Our January edition of ArtsReach went off without a hitch!  I think that we are really hitting our stride with the way program is designed and it is so great to see ArtsReach start to catch on with the kids.

We've matched the kids up into mentor/mentee pairs to promote collaboration and joint discovery.  These kids were great about this new aspect of the program and our mentors did a fabulous job of taking ownership over their important role.

This month we made artwork that responded to the work of Karie O'Donnell who is our gallery artist this month.  As a Brant Rock native, Karie creates artwork that is inspired by the sea.

 After we were finished making artwork everybody brought their piece back into the gallery space to share the decisions they made with the group.  We got into discussion about what "mixed media" means as well as what it is to create artwork as a response to another piece.  "Is it copying?" "Is it tracing it and then coloring it differently?" It can be both of those things and more!  A lot of the work made that day had a bit of a tropical feel to it, which you can't blame them for with these bitter days we've been having.  Even though their art seems as though it is from the tropics, and Karie's work is based more firmly in Marshfield, it is still the sea no matter where you find it.

Thanks for coming ArtsReach participants!! Hope to see you again next month for the February edition of ArtsReah where we will be looking at artwork made from artists from the group called SNAC.

As a staff member in the Fine and Performing Arts department at the Emilson Y, I always take pride in the programming we offer, whether I am involved in said program or not. Recently I had the amazing opportunity to participate in a Cork and Canvas event offered by our Fine Arts Coordinator, Beth Gilmore, and I was simply blown away.

Having known Beth for a number of years, and even sharing an office since the opening of Laura's Center for the Arts about a year ago, I knew that Beth was both an accomplished artists and a thoughtful, articulate educator. Having seen her working with the campers, students and community members that participate in our classes and events I thought I knew what it would be like to be on the other side. My expectations were far exceeded.

If you are unfamiliar with our Cork and Canvas events, the basic idea is wine and painting.  The instructor walks the class through recreating an original painting step by step. I do not have any painting ability and I certainly didn't leave with a museum worthy work, but let me tell you, my mother wants in hanging in her living room! 

During our first break to allow the paint to dry!

One of the most amazing things was walking around and seeing the way the other people in the class interpreted the same instruction. There was no pressure to be right, and when that pressure was eliminated it made it easy to sit back, enjoy a glass of wine, and have a blast.  Beth's cheesy jokes and effortlessly casual demeanor made it feel like everyone in the room had known each other for years, providing the perfect environment to allow our muses to mingle.

The finished product

It was amazing to be on the other side of a class, especially with someone who I have spent so much time working and growing with.  We even had a chance to snap a great picture.

It MAY be good enough for a museum...What do you think?

I am always so inspired by the way artist and teacher Kate Sanborn talks about art making.  It's always about  togetherness and process, things that keep any artist on point and separated from the fear that often looms about the end results.  We were talking today about her plans for an upcoming Family Art Night that will be running here at Laura's Center for the Arts where she hopes to get families working together and focused on the process.

Kate calls these little guys "Sculptural Caricatures."  Each family member is in charge of creating another family member's wire caricature. Family members must also play to their strengths, maybe assigning one person to be in charge of the cutting (because perhaps that is a challenge for another), while putting another in charge of bending the wire (because perhaps they find out they really love that part.)  No matter what age or abilities that are in the group, they will create a game plan to figure out who is best at what and what needs to be done so that they can all be working as equals.  Working as equals! I love that.  I love that kids are given as much weight in this situation to make decisions about how things should be as adults and it isn't because we are humoring them.  It is because their opinion is equally as valid.

If you want to come make some art with Kate, gather up your family or your chosen family of the night and come by LCA this Thursday night (January 16th) from 6-7. You can register online or by calling the Y at 781-829-8585 ($35 Y Member Family, $53 Non-Y Member Family; Program Code: 50AEVIS09).

When I was in college I studied music.  About a month into my senior year, the tech director for Dever Stage (an on campus theatre) approached me to see if I would be interested in doing an internship with him.  I took a minute to think about it;  I was a music major with a concentration in performance.  Why would I want to do a technical theatre internship?

I said yes anyways.  It was 12 credits to spend time with friends in a theatre I basically lived in, the internship just meant I had to be there and that I got keys.  Keys that meant responsibility and responsibility that meant adulthood.  So with adulthood looming just two semesters away I figured I better get started.

I learned something hugely valuable with that internship.  It wasn't about music, or theatre, or even how to use the recording equipment (which I did learn, even though it terrified me).  What I learned was that you can't make yourself versatile enough.

It isn't enough to have our students be involved with the acting on stage in our productions.  If that is where they are comfortable that is fine, but so many of our students are like me: they don't even know that they would love being involved in a myriad of other aspects of the production too.  Our students have the great opportunity to paint, create, and learn from a team of professionals that include teachers, directors, musicians, artists, and performers.

Today we had a chance to work with the actors involved in our upcoming production of Annie Jr. on how to paint a stage- something that to me has become commonplace and simple task, but after the first child "boxed them self in" with paint I realized just how much they had to be taught! Along with those kids on the stage, we also had a team in the house working on costumes and set design.  They learned about how we organize our costumes on racks and how we select who wears what.  They even helped to design the back drops for our windows with Beth!  She worked with them on how to design the "window scenes" that will changed depending on the setting.

 

 All in all it was an awesome set build and a fun day.  We only left with a few socks painted black and a lot of smiles.

Last Friday night we hosted our monthly Cork&Canvas event, and what a spread we had! We always provide the beverages, but this group really went all out and brought a bunch of snacks to make themselves right at home, which we love so much.  As you can see from that picture of our beautiful table, we were making a painting of a steaming hot mug of a beverage of your choice.  Some had tea, others espresso, and I believe there were a couple Irish Coffees in there too.

It's always such a blast running these events, the evening has such a fun and relaxing pace.  We turn up some music and let everybody get settled and hang out a little as they start to get their supplies prepped.

Once everybody is ready to get going, I start letting people know the logistics of how things are going to roll and then we jump in!

This was a fun painting to watch come along around the classroom.  Different mug colors and swirl patterns were happening all over the place.

Barbara and I talked about the pros and cons of doing black outlines along the red pattern of the table cloth.  She was really feeling the line work and went for it, which I was so glad to see.  A unique touch on this painting for sure.

I love the way the blue in Michele's table cloth pulls in the white in different places.  And don't forget to check out that fancy signature tree of her's in the bottom corner! 

Aside from an excellent display of paintings from a mother/daughter duo, this photo is a great example of the space we were in.  Check out the art on those walls; we held the event in one of our gallery spaces which currently has the photography of Kate Hannon on display.

Here is a sneak peak at the next painting we are going to be doing here at Laura's Center for the Arts on December 13th, "Snow Dusted Park."

Thursday I had the pleasure of hosting the Live Y'ers at Larua's Center for the Arts where I gave a presentation on my personal art making.  As an art educator, I am constantly introducing my students to different contemporary artists and talking about the many different ways in which they work.  It was such a treat to have a chance to talk about the process I've personally tailored to fit my artistic goals.

Each artist creates their own method of working, through time spent in the studio, situating things this way or that, to create their work.  Two goals I have found myself working towards are to create a sense of investigation of a semi-familiar scape and to keep the freshness of the drawn line present throughout the piece.

The tables shown in these photos are an organized version of what my studio looks like.  I surround myself with little printed reference photos which primarily come from my photos taken while visiting Yellowstone National Park, a girlfriend's honeymoon photos from Hawaii, and printed images from National Geographic publications. Then, I stitch them together like a puzzle and create a new landscape.

After giving a short presentation on my work using photos from my website and an actual painting in progress that I brought along with me for the day, the Live Y'ers got to work on this puzzle process.

Some amazing pieces were made where interesting connecting lines were found to create a new land.

We later got out some oil pastels to further connect our imagery.

It was such a great feeling to, for the first time, describe my uniquely crafted art making process and watch as people connect with it so quickly and start making art that seemed so natural to the process. These women really picked up on my two main goals, so keep an eye out for painting updates on my website... you just may find some of these compositions in there!

In today's fast paced world it's a challenge to find family time.  Families find themselves running from this game to that birthday, from one class to the next, with the parents on the fringes watching and driving.  It's a beautiful thing to see a family just play.

One of the classes we are currently offering is "Oh the Drama" and I couldn't ask for a better class! We currently have two families who honestly exemplify the power of theatre, in this case the simple act of "playing pretend", to bring people together.  Throughout the fall session I have had the chance to watch this group of youngsters transform into animals, chefs, royalty, and anything else our imaginations could come up with. 

What has been so inspiring is the parents involvement; These parents actively participate in engaging their imaginations as well.  It's easy to get wrapped up in the idea that we have to act a certain way, and pretending to fight a bear that your 3 year old son is imagining looming over you, ready to attack, is rarely seen as the "right" way to be an adult, but that's just what these parents are doing.  They are letting their kids make the decisions, and following along as a character in their story! Whether we are pretending to cook a gourmet meal or protect the throne of the kingdom, this class, these kids, and these parents are a highlight of the week.

The throne created by Prince Tristan and Princess Adriana

Painting by Cork&Canvas participant, Meghan Dinsmore

Last Friday we ran our Cork&Canvas event which involves paint and wine.  It's a new painting fad that is all over the place lately because it is kind of a blast.  The whole deal is that it's a take on what Bob Ross was famous for, which is walking people through a painting regardless of the student's painting experience. We've just added music and wine.

Bob Ross, what a gemstone.

We made Sugar Skull paintings in preparation for the Mexican holiday Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead).  The imagery from these celebrations are so beautiful, I couldn't resist getting going with them this month even though the celebration traditionally takes place on November 1st.  This Sugar Skull in particular is a lot of fun to walk a class through because there is so much space for each person's personal touch.  I show everybody different examples of embellishments they can paint on, like the flowers and some of the swirly shapes, and from there people basically just pop them all over their piece wherever they think it works best. 

I have a lot of fun teaching these classes, but creating the original painting that we work from is a pretty huge highlight of the process.  For the sugar skull, I pulled pretty hard from the traditional Day of the Dead imagery, but I was also sure to take look at some of the artists who inspire me regularly. 

Artist: Quyen Dinh

I pulled the flower layout from artist Quyen Dinh of Parlor Tattoo Prints.  I'm so into her artwork and endlessly impressed at the rate in which she pushes out new pieces at such a solid high quality.  Looking at the above image, I'm realizing now how much I need to purchase that calendar for my office.

Artist: Paula Tamara Hoss

Paula Tamara Hoss has made several amazing Sugar Skull paintings that I've seen, in addition to this triptych, that really get my mind going on the endless possibilities of bling (no, squiggly red line, bling IS a word) that can be added to these skulls.

Next month we are making a painting that will make you feel all warm and cozy on the inside:

More info on how to sign up for this one here