Happiness Images With Children
I am fortunate to have friends teaching and living all over this planet due to my Montessori teaching experience. One of my amazing teacher friends works at an international school. She came up with a great idea for an art project to raise funds for the street children in Bangladesh. I was intrigued when she told me of the idea and grateful for being involved. She had her classroom and others participate as well. The classroom children were given the art exercise to visually describe what happiness meant to them. They took their paint and applied it to paper to illustrate what happiness look like.
Fortunately I get to work with these paintings as one of the participating artist volunteering my talents and time to the project. I was surprised to receive 100 paintings on paper in the mail. I was delighted to experience each one and note the differences and similarities. As I looked through them I reflected back on my childhood days and admired the simplicity and beauty of each one. In some paintings I could tell it was the process itself of painting that brought them happiness, not the end result. This thought brought me a moment of happiness as well. I love when the theories I believe in are proven true.
Well, I began by taking my scissors out and cutting images. There were plenty of families, pets, trees, flowers, rainbows, butterflies and pizza. This is one of the beginning phases of the project. The step I am going to take is to plan the background and placement of the image objects. I have my work in store for me. Here are photographic glimpses into the process. I am curious to how this large painting is going to turn out. I have until June. Stay tuned for more.
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Digging up new opportunities
Ruth Wilgress 