Dear You Art Project

Mail Art + Pen Friends = Dear You Art Project

characters

For many reasons, we are happy Monkeys!

2016, 5 years old, 6 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Finland, MexicoArlene TuckerComment

The happy Monkeys just got happier!  They were very excited to receive the lovely letter and artworks from K2B class in Mexico.  Every part of the process was exciting- from reading the names of our friends to talking about Elmer the Elephant!  Thank you! Kiitos! Gracias!

We first started talking about what we see when we walk out of the school.  What is the environment like outside of Your School's doorstep?  Monkeys talked about pine trees, birds, bushes, and now we have snow.  Now the grass is covered with white snow.

Then we continued with our characters and where their homes are.  We imagined if we were at our friend's home and stepped outside, what would we find.  How would it look in the daytime and what about at nighttime?  The Monkeys first used wax crayons to accentuate and outline shapes.  When they painted over with watercolor this art technique helped highlight what they were trying to show in their painting.

K2B, we have a couple of questions for you.  Do you have snow in Mexico?  What do you like to do for fun?

We hope you like our artworks and we look forward to hearing from you!

Our best,
Arlene & the Monkeys

The 5-6 year old Monkeys from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with the 5-6 year olds from Colegio Bosques de las Cumbres in Monterrey, Mexico.

 

Enjoying Layers of Love in Canada

2016, 6th Grade, Dear You Art Workshops, Finland, CanadaArlene TuckerComment

Greetings from Canada! 

They really enjoyed the artwork as they got going with it. A few students used too much paint in an attempt to cover it completely and then had the paint flake off instead of allowing them to etch it off.

Some were very hesitant about painting over their artworks. :) Others enjoyed it so much they asked to do a second artwork jn the same manner!

Kaarina

The 6th graders at Ryerson P.S. in Cambridge, ON, Canada are making and sharing art with the 6th graders from The English School in Helsinki, Finland.

SpongeBob is like the sun :)

2016, 5 years old, 6 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Mexico, United KingdomArlene TuckerComment

The children worked in pairs for this project. They really enjoyed the stickiness and the thought that the Mexican children would actually receive this art.

They love the SpongeBob films and noticed how he is a happy character and that yellow is a happy colour, like the sun. Doing him with tissue paper they thought was like his sponge body and using the transparent plastic was like under the water!!!

Best wishes,
Nina Evans

The 5 and 6 year olds in Class 1 from Sneinton C of E Primary School in Nottingham, UK are making and sharing art with the 5 and 6 year olds in Prepri C from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.

The English School in Helsinki show their love for their Canadian friends

2016, 6th Grade, Canada, Dear You Art Workshops, FinlandArlene TuckerComment

I asked the group to think about what makes them feel home.  They wrote some thoughts on the back of the work. We used a ready made black & silver scrap-card board.

Last lesson we looked through the images made in Canada. They loved the works and had lots of comments. 

We packed the Layers of Love scratch drawings, their comments, and the school posted it today.

Br,
Päivi

The 6th graders from The English School in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the 6th graders at Ryerson P.S. in Cambridge, ON, Canada.

Flying homes on their way from Finland to Canada!

2016, 4th Grade, 9 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Dear You Workshop Leader, Canada, FinlandArlene TuckerComment

Our homes are on their way to Canada!

Young artists from 4A in Viertolan Koulu, Vantaa, Finland, are a real team of independent thinkers! Each artist created their own, unique home for their character.  In some homes there were pets and flowers, a little bit like in the artists' own houses, while others were evidently created especially for Pockemons, horses and superheroes. Because of the small size of the paper, the secret houses look like postcards with a coded message. 

Some of the young artists, encouraged by their wonderful class teacher Kirsti, had prepared personal letters addressed to their new friends. This is already the second letter they have written to the artists in Ryerson Public School in Cambridge, Canada. It is very inspiring to see different ways of communication that we can use to connect with each other.

Anastasia Artemeva

The 4th graders from Viertolan Koulu in Vantaa, Finland are making and sharing art with the 4th graders from Ryerson Public School in Cambridge, Canada.

ISH shares their Layers of Love!

2016, 4 years old, 5 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Finland, MexicoArlene TuckerComment

The artists in K1 never seize to amaze me!  Each of the artist's home, which they made using scratch art technique is unique just like their character.  We started off the session by remembering who our characters are.  We dove deeper into our stories and lives of our characters and talked about what their homes were like.  What does the outside of their home look like?  What about the inside?  We used our own homes as reference.

K: The Ninjagos are playing outside in their yard on a sunny day.
DEV: Spiderman is dressing up in his house to get ready to fight the bad guys.
V: Elsa is coming inside her house to have snacks.
SH: Elsa is playing outside in the park, but all of a sudden it rains so she ran inside her house.
DEE: Elsa went outside and saw a swing and then she went on it. She saw a bean stalk and climbed up it and saw a castle and a giant.
G: Elsa is looking out the window and she saw somebody. She ran outside and played with them.
K: Elsa coming home from the market.
AI: Elsa lives in a home. She's looking at the Caste's garden.
SA: It's quiet inside the home.
MI: He lives in a den. He is hiding from the fire outside. He is safe inside.
EN: Living on the rocket, they are flying far away with the rocket. They are eating food inside.
SP: There is a tornado with spaghetti and meatballs in it.
SH: It is a car park with some tractors.
KA: Ninjago and doodle are making spaghetti.
AL: Piccachu is playing football outside the house.
SAT: The boy is playing with his toys inside the house.

As you can see everybody was open to exploring how we can use this technique to understand spaces and the revealing process of the different layers involved in life and in art practice.

We hope our friends in Mexico like it!

With love,
Arlene and the artists of K1

The 4-5 year olds in K1 at International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the 4-5 year olds in K2B class from San Patricio Colegio in Monterrey, Mexico.

From Inside to Outside, the layers are exposed

2016, 6 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Dear You Workshop Leader, Finland, MexicoArlene TuckerComment

The artistic boys at Espoon kuvataidekoulu (Espoo's Visual Arts School) had fun creating the inside and outside of their character's home using scratch art technique.

When everybody came into the studio, on the tables were their characters they had sculpted out of clay and then painted.  They were so happily surprised to see how their figures changed when fired in the oven!  These were the characters they invented for the first project, Lights, Camera, Action! and have been continued into the following project, Layers of Love.

After some discussion about their characters we moved on to where they live.  Everybody had a unique response.  We first created what their home looks like on the inside.  The colors they chose also help convey the feeling of the place.  The artists were a bit wary of painting over the oil pastel drawings, but once they understood how scratch art technique worked, they got very involved with drawing the outside of their home.

Each one is unique and tells their own story!  We hope our friends in Mexico like these artworks!

With love,
Arlene

The 6 year old artists from Espoon kuvataidekoulu in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with Prepri A, the group of 6 year old artists from San Patricio Colegio in Monterrey, Mexico.

The Layers of Love from Berlin!

2016, 4 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Dear You Workshop Leader, Germany, Mexico, Pre-SchoolArlene TuckerComment

I am happy to send you some pictures of our scratch project and the amazing stories of our creative artists. Our kids were delighted to see the new colorful images coming out as they scratched using very different tools: plastic forks and knives and other sharp objects. Some of them depicted inside of the place where the character lived, others displayed the outside.

Here are some of our stories:
Basti: This is a house with a chimney and smoke comes out of the chimney, down there is grass and the sun is up in the sky. Here I have a door and two windows. And here is my bed. 

Raphael: This is a house. Out of the chimney comes a thick smoke. It has a door and windows. Near the house explodes an askumet. In the front of the house are large cobblestones.

Leyla: It's a man with a house, a letter box and a tent. The house is full of ghosts. The doors and windows are broken. In the left corner is a heart for the monster. 

Maya: It's a scratch tree. It has leaves and they have different colors. It was a cat who scratched it all about!

Linus: It's inside the place but it's not my place because my place is very far away.

Aya:  It's a house. A heart. It's my house. It's raining outside and snows sometimes.

Lyn: I was in my room and my sister was in her room. My father wanted to go to Aldi (supermarket) to shop and then there were two monsters next to the house. The monsters were nice and wanted to get married. The sun war shining and my sister looked out of the window and so did I . The girl monster had a necklace.

Tarja: This is inside the house. There is one circle inside it. There is an umbrella with a very long holder. Here is a 4, that's how old I am. 

I am sending the parcel out today, hope it arrives soon and safe. And our friends in Mexico like our pictures and stories a lot.

Best wishes,
Lusine

Lusine Boyajyan and her group of 4 year olds artists from Kita Felix and Friends in Berlin, Germany are making and sharing art with Angy Castillo and her  Kinder A group from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.