The Vision Behind Young Artists' Studio

You began your career teaching children’s art classes, then went on to a long-time teaching position at the post-secondary level as well as working with adult learners. What made you want to come back to teaching children and youth?

Culture is an intergenerational project. I’ve been lucky. I had very good teachers and artists who shared their knowledge with me. When you value what has been given to you, you want to pass it on. 

What make the Young Artists' Studio different from other art programs?

I wanted to offer a program where young people in the visual arts have the opportunity for longer-term development. Culturally, we appreciate that acquiring the skills to play a sport, or a musical instrument, or to dance is more than a one-shot kind of experience and there are many programs in those fields where children can progress through distinct developmental stages. But we don’t have equivalent kinds of programs for kids in the visual arts and children and families don’t know where to go for next steps.

With cuts to arts in public schools, there aren’t the opportunities we would hope for there.

Yes, schools are under chronic budgetary and time restraints and learning in the visual arts lacks cohesion and momentum.

What pattern do you observe in visual arts learning?

Kids get off to a great start in the visual arts. In the kindergarten years, maybe even up to grade 1 or 2, in the time frame when their fine motor skills are really taking-off, children’s artwork can be very powerful, like a burst of creative expression. But it often tails off because there are very few supports for the next stage of development. 

At the end of High School or in College it can pick-up again with intensity, but not everyone will be prepared.

So, the middle years are a missed opportunity.

Yes, the middle years are incredible years for visual arts learning.  So much can be accomplished. These are the years for slow and steady development, experimentation. And it’s a time for having fun and learning without outside pressures.

What else does the Young Artists' Studio program offer?

I wanted to design a program that ensured breadth in young people’s visual arts learning. 

The art focus for many young people narrows early. I saw the effects of this at the college level all the time.  Its important to develop through a range of media, genres and subjects.

What does breadth look like?

Breadth is learning in core areas of the visual: design and composition, observation and representation, materials and process, visual narrative, and formal elements and principles.  

How does this unfold in a class?

Over the course of the three terms, our projects and exercises work through core areas, circling back and making connections. We will spend time drawing with different media, painting, printmaking, constructing, and designing and creating visual narratives.

How does the program change with each age group?

All good art teaching supports the student’s capacity to visualize, plan, and express. Visualization is imaginative work. It’s also a practical plan that requires specific skills. 

Younger children visualize quickly in part because their motor and technical skills are limited, as are their influences, and complexity of their ideas—and it’s important to respect this. They work quickly! And they are fearless which is something you want to protect. As a teacher you are working little bit, by little bit to expand the scope of their skills and ideas, and you’re encouraging their confidence, so it keeps up with each new challenge. 

As kids get older their focus matures, as do their motor and technical skills. They can work and imagine through increasingly extended artistic processes, and they will require more time. The pace will slow down. Sometimes older kids can struggle with perfectionism and that's one of the reasons why the structure of art classes is good for older kids. Classes set a reasonable timeframe to accomplish something, let go, and move on.

What was your art training like as a young person?

My parents are both artists, so I spent time in their studios watching them work. Being side-by-side with an artist in the studio is an incalculable kind of learning experience--watching them work, watching them pause to consider things, seeing the flow of their work; it’s very real. 

At the same time, I also took extracurricular art classes as a young kid all the way to the end of high school, and I had the benefit of that structure. But art wasn’t my only thing. I did it because I enjoyed it. I also did sport. I studied music at school. In fact, I didn’t do art class in high school until grade 12 or 13. 

When I went to University, I didn’t go into the art program at first, because I planned on doing French, but by the end of October in first year I found myself missing time in the studio. I took some of my paintings and drawings to one of the profs and he let me join the following week without losing the year.  

Is your goal with Young Artists’ Studio to help kids get into post-secondary programs?

Sure, it’s one goal.  Get in and also feel ready for that level of challenge. But it’s not the only goal.

Young Artists’ Studio is for kids in the middle years who enjoy learning in a hands-on way in a studio setting. It’s for those who want to try something new and for those with an abiding visual and artistic curiosity.  

Some children will work in visual ways professionally on day, others will do different things. A good children’s art program brings together future artists and future art lovers, collectors and audiences; a strong culture happens when different kinds of involvement come together.

What is the most important thing young people need to thrive in the arts?

Community. 

Young Artists’ Studio program of yearlong art classes is more than the sum of its parts. There’s camaraderie in the studio that’s only possible when kids have a chance to spend time together with a shared focus. In the studio, young people are the first ones to appreciate other’s work, to value their ideas, experiments and accomplishments. 

On a small scale, our program is a real-world art community as it exists in the process.

Art, we shouldn't forget, is made to be seen, to be shared.  As part of our programs, Hamilton Studio School organizes Young Artists exhibitions to give kids the opportunity to gather with family, friends and community and celebrate their achievements. It’s all these pieces—each fun and rewarding in its own way--that make the experience.