Anarchy in the Art Room

May 1^st to 7^th was “National Youth in the Arts Week”, and as a Visual Arts teacher, I jumped on the opportunity to do a printmaking workshop with people in the community. There’s something so fantastic about printmaking! You get to use weird stuff like brayers which is a roller that spreads ink. You get to use ink which is kind of like paint, but not really. You get to use meat packing trays, and bubble wrap and chunks of wood, and corks, and burlap and different colourful papers, and so on. In printmaking, the magical, final results are endless because if you didn’t know it by now, THERE ARE NO RULES IN ART which makes for countless possibilities. Wait…let me take that back a little….there ARE rules in art, but after you’ve learned them, you really should spend a lot of time breaking them. Otherwise, you might as well buy a colour-by-numbers kit and have at ‘er.  What fun is that? And more to the point, what did you actually learn?!

 

So that is exactly what I did; I showed these keen printmaking newbies how to roll out the ink properly, how to burnish their print for even ink distribution, how to use a variety of found objects to create different textures, and most importantly, how to clean up after themselves. The rest was a huge fill in the blank of holy cow, this is fun.  And you might be reading this thinking, “Whoop-dee-doo. Printmaking is so removed from my life that even reading this article is a waste of time.” But just hold on, man, and bear with me.  Because Art isn’t just about making pretty pictures, just like reading a book isn’t just about piecing letters together to form words. There is comprehension involved, and thoughts and ideas that are developed and connected to our own personal experiences. We can then take those thoughts and apply them to other areas in our life, giving us those “aha” moments that make our life richer and more meaningful.  That, my friends, is learning and it’s awesome.

Every time you learn something new, you go through a mental flowchart. It starts with A) What the heck am I doing? Do I know how to start or do I need help via Google, or a human that has expertise in this area? (Just a personal side note, human interaction is always better than Google.) B) What is and isn’t working? What am I learning from my mistakes? Hopefully this doesn’t turn into a pity fest and a feeling of self-defeat. Instead you take this opportunity to learn what your weaknesses are and problem solve your way through them.  (Just so you know, I can’t sew worth beans, so when I am desperate, I usually use duct tape to hem my pants. Problem solved, and it works and I’m cool with that.) C) How am I going to incorporate what I’ve just learned into my life so that it has more meaning for me and wasn’t a waste of my time? By the time you’ve gone through this process, you will feel a great sense of accomplishment, even if there is struggle involved. The important part is to follow through with that process so the learning doesn’t stop.

That is what the people in the printmaking workshop did. Some of them didn’t know how to start, and were afraid that they were going to make a mistake, so they experimented on scrap pieces of paper. Some of them wanted their print to have a personal connection, so they had to do some extra digging to find papers and images that meant something to them.  Some of them were happy to just play with technique and asked where they could get these supplies so they could continue to explore printmaking on their own. The Art room was chaotic and messy and buzzing with creativity, and most importantly, genuine thought.  The printmaking rules were learned and then surpassed, as it should be, developing a fantastic crew of printmaking rebels. Yeah!!!!