Meditative Art-Making Class 3

Blowing bubbles or playing with bubbles, colors and water has always been something that kids have had a lot of fun with. As adults sometimes we forget how much fun enjoy new bubble machine or blowing paint through a straw can invoke fun and creativity in children. As we know that emergent curriculum is a way of planning for children's learning that is responsive to their interests, I wanted to explore how I can incorporate their interests along with issues that children face now, build on their prior learning, and provoke new ideas and opportunities to apply art making into other spheres of their lives as well.

I wanted to make sure that I respected and motivated my students by validating on their interests and taking time to embrace and expand upon them. I believe that this sparks their intrinsic motivation and facilitates engagement which creates a conducive environment for meaningful learning.

Once again I had to teach my class at the Media Center but I got there early and prepared the space. The facilitator at the Media Center warned me that if the space got messy I would not be welcome to that space again so I made sure that I had all the cleaning supplies and butcher paper on all the tables that the kids would be sitting at because we were planning to use watercolors. After the kids had the snacks, I handed them paper for free drawing and ask them to draw and share how they're feeling and if they had tried the breathing technique in creating art or in other circumstances. Instead of drawing I saw one of my students writing and I was curious as to what she was writing and when I saw what she wrote it really melted my heart. She wrote, “mom I love you but you brush my hair too hard but I breathe and I feel calm."

Then she explained how she incorporated that breathing while her mom was brushing her hair. I encouraged her to continue with that practice even in other circumstances. Another student shared that her mom yells at her a lot but that she tried to breathe through it. Here are some off the artworks from the free drawing.

Then we practiced regular breathing and switched to a new form of breathing which is equal part breathing.  I did not want to make this breathing technique serious so I showed them the straws that I got for them and asked them, if they would like to learn how to breathe through a straw and make art with it, all of them got excited. Then we practiced how to breathe through the straw and mentally count to five on every inhale and exhale. I realized quickly that counting till five was a lot for little ones so we switched to counting to three on every inhale and exhale which worked much better in this case based on their age and attention span. Below are some pictures of me teaching them equal part breathing and students learning how to breathe with straws and counting with their fingers.

After I passed out all of the supplies I gave them a demo, but before that I showed them an example of what my daughter did with me. It was very interesting to see how much my daughter enjoyed creating her blow art piece and how she felt. It helped me understand how to facilitate this class in a way that would be conducive to the theme of meditative art-making. Even though I was focusing on Indian classical music, I asked them if they were interested in listening to meditative music from Africa and they got excited. So, we listened to West African instrumental music in which the main instrument is 21 string Gambian traditional instrument called Kora, and listening to it helped with the art-making process as it created a very relaxed environment. One of the students said, “I like to make art when I listen to music like this.” I wonder how much different types of music effect the art making process and what kind of music fosters creativity and what doesn’t. It was fascinating to see how every student took a different approach to the art-making process. I'm amazed at how fast kids are picking up the idea of slowing down. Several times in the class as we started making art a few kids randomly started saying out loud, “Hurry Burry Spoils the Curry.” It is a very funny thing to say but they are also slowly understanding the idea of slowing down. However, I saw two of them trying to blow too fast, too quickly and we just had to pause for a moment and remind ourselves that we were going to do equal part breathing and that we were going to count three inhaled breaths and three exhaled breaths. After that the class was very focused on the art making. Here are some pictures that show how engaged they were in the art making process.

When I am creating, I like to keep my surroundings clean because of many reasons but one of the main ones being aesthetic considerations. For me a clean workspace is essential to the creative process. I believe an organized classroom can contribute to a sense of order and focus, which can be conducive to the artistic expression. The reason I is because a messy space can and create a lack of focus at least for me based on my personal experience. So when I reached the location, I made sure everything was in order and as I handed out the water for the watercolors I did have concerns that the water would spill and that we could lose the space. I was amazed at how carefully even the kindergarten gets handled the water and at the end they were very proud that they made no spills and I complimented them for their virtue of responsibility that they demonstrated by keeping everything clean and organized during the art meeting process. Did the meditative breathing and centering contribute to that, did the music and the organized space contribute to that? Those are questions that I'm hoping to answer or find out as they continue with the experimentations of contemplative art making.

As the class came to an end, I wanted to make sure that the entire space was cleaned up we spoke about the words you of responsibility, and everyone was engaged in the clean-up process after that we all created a circle and everyone brought their artwork and shared how they felt and what they made. It was fascinating to see how imaginative every single student was in their art-making process. These were some of their imaginations…

 I made a rainbow.

 I made a forest with lots of trees.

 Look at mine, I felt so peaceful when I made mine.

 I made a black fish circling at the bottom of the sea.

 I made a big flower and a lot of small flowers in a garden.

 This lesson challenged me to think about allowing freedom in art-making and imagination. I understood that allowing students the freedom to explore their artistic inclination can significantly enhance their creativity. When students are given the freedom to create without excessive control, their imaginative mind thrives. All students have various backgrounds, experiences, and emotions. Giving them the freedom to imagine and go beyond the constraints of the limits of the instructions can be transformative. Coming from a culture where uniformity was demanded of you and was considered as a sign of respect to the teacher allowing creative freedom and going beyond the bounds of uniformity is challenging to me but yet I know that I need to foster that to truly engage my students in enhancing their creativity.

Amidst the busyness of school and other activities for students, can slow art-making become a refuge and safe space for students to truly engage with their creativity and become themselves? I will continue to explore this in this series of meditative art-making classes.

In this class, we continued with blowing through the straw and creating bubble art. As we started the class, I asked students to express their feelings and emotions and share stories. I saw that one of the students was sick but had created this drawing showing how she felt sick but very motivated to be in our class. She wrote, “YAY ART”. It is a huge motivation for me to see such expressions and keeps me encouraged to keep teaching.

We then took the team and new straws out and practiced 1:2 breathing. I remember one of the students being concerned about us reusing the straws from the last class period I had promised her that I would be bringing brand new use and throw straws so that she did not have to worry about spreading germs. That incident taught me to be attentive to the little details and requests of students so that they know that I'm paying attention to their needs and keeping hey germ free and hygienic classroom.

As soon as we started creating our monsters different students started giving different names to these little imaginative creatures and started creating stories around them. It was fascinating to observe how everyone's imagination was running wild in unique different directions. One of the students had an entire story related to these little monsters and wanted to sing it out for the entire class. I felt to remind the class to breathe deep and focus on their art as everybody listened to this magical story. I am glad that I was able to record the entire story and I love it so much that I listen to it often.

Class 4

As usual I reminded them to make sure that they slow down and create art because, “ hurry hurry spoils the Curry”. Then we practiced our attention grabber where I would say,

 Hurry Burry and they would say Soils the Curry. I want to keep using this attention grabber to help the students slow down and create art.

 Another student raised his hand and said he wanted to share what happened in a traffic jam in Mexico where he was stuck With his siblings and mom in the car. He said, “the car was very hot and crowded and the driver was driving really fast and I was afraid but I remembered to breathe.” My mom asked me what I was doing and I told her that I learned how to breathe in art class and that she could drive to and we all did it together.” Again it was an encouragement for me to see how my students were using what I was teaching beyond my art class.

I gave them another demonstration of how to inhale deeply in and exhale deeply out and create little watercolor bubble monsters. I wanted to make sure that they were have something to think about and remember for next class as next class was going to fall on Halloween day. I brought googly eyes to the classroom and explain how they could create their own monsters for Halloween and put googly eyes on them and even name them or create their own stories related to the monsters or stories they were creating.  

After listening to this student's story others also got inspired to share their stories and some of them started naming their little monsters and some of them created other elaborate and creative stories as well as I just stood amazed right how important it is to allow my students to have their creativity run wild as they create art.

As I finished this class I was reminded of the renowned artist Marina Abramovich’s words, who said, “ Art must be beautiful, art must be beautiful and life must be beautiful. And breadth is the way to make life beautiful.”  Her focus on beauty and the role of breath in making life beautiful suggests that every act of breathing can infuse art with a sense of vitality and have a meditative quality. I want to continue to reflect on the intentional focus on one's breath during the art-making process and how it can create more harmonious artistic expressions for students and for us as humans in general.

One of the students took a very different approach. Their art teacher happened to be around and came in and looked at every single student's artwork and encouraged them to see the uniqueness of the work that they had created that was very encouraging for me to learn how she gave particular feedback and comments to every single student in the classroom with a lot of compassion and gentleness. She made sure that this student whose artwork is on the left got recognized for his unique approach.

She said, “ I love the tree you made and the choice of colors you used in the background.”

This incident really challenged me to push my boundaries and accept that all students have different approaches as this student still incorporated blowing paint with the straw but also incorporated using the brush. I prepared myself mentally to appreciate the uniqueness in each of their artworks and the video below shows that.