UNDERLYING CLAYDOODLES
CLAYdoodles is designed with the belief that creative activities in one area of life can stimulate creative solutions throughout the whole range of life experiences. It is a state of mind that is characterized by openness, non-linear thinking, thoughtfulness, patience and faith.
Not a bad set of traits to encourage in our children, or in my case, grandchildren. Watching my granddaughter work on a painting is to see her enter another world, a world she creates with her imagination and that she presents to us as a painting or poem or song or play. The works tell us “OK, now, I can’t really, like, take you there, but this is kinda what it’s like.”
Claydoodles goal is to give children an opportunity to present those imagined worlds to the real world. We will use as many traditional ethnic- based art forms as possible, for two main reasons: 1. they have been refined through the centuries to do exactly what we want to do—tell a story. 2. exploring other traditions opens up children to fact that underlying their uniqueness run threads of continuity and similarity and that the perceived differences are largely superficial.
WHAT CLAYDOODLES DOES
I have spent the last four years in Mexico, during which time I studied and worked with a number of Mexican artisanos. I was impressed by how gifted they were at their craft. As I listened they would explain the source of this or that ancient image and what it meant in their life and worldview. With that background I began to design a series of adult pottery classes around various ceramic traditions I had found, both in Mexico and other countries. These classes, in a simpler format, will form the basis of the CLAYdoodles kids projects.
