See you outside

Byline: George Szekely

With children, a walk to the bakery for the first pick of pastry is often slow–they’re busy with the early-morning “ground life” along our path. They return with incredible roadside finds to sort and display, direct from nature’s floors. Children study the landscape by playing in and with it.

At the park, I offer some plates of delicious-looking items to my students with which to whip up a great “meal.” Often accused of being “fussy eaters,” children simply care about the placement of colors and textures on a plate.

While adults look at landscapes to record from a distance, children see the ground outdoors as their art supplies and canvas. Indeed, outdoor art lessons let them know their outdoor collecting has artistic value.

PINE-NEEDLE FRAMES The floor plan of the “main dining room” where “lunch” is being served is framed by pine needles. On big, soft, leaf plates, delicate grasses are garnished with flowers. Pick up a custom-peeled twig utensil for your meal and, while “eating,” enjoy the replanted rock garden and the sand-pile bed edged in pebbles, waiting to be used for an after-meal nap. Rearranging nature-finds is children’s unique earth work.

Hula-hoops and bike tires are used as edging for school-yard gardens. Instant gardens displaying feathers, branches and transplanted yard-finds don’t require weeding. “Shovels” and “rakes” are spoons and forks. Children shop for garden stock, colored and textured drops of nature, found under trees and branches. School-ground litter, like gum foil or candy wrappers, occasionally find their way into gardens as contrasting elements. The art of young landscape designers can be promoted by school-yard “planting.”

VELCRO DRAWING On break from garage-sale duty, my daughter Ilona borrows a tub of colored yarns. In minutes, she has pulled and stretched a 32-foot portrait over the lawn. “You have to see it from the air,” she says as she flutters with her hands to demonstrate. The yarns stick like Velcro[R] to grass, contrasting vividly against the green.

On class trips, we look for the largest field, where life-sized dinosaur remains are outlined with colored surveyors’ ribbons and matching long-stemmed flags by art-class archeologists. Outdoor subjects are sketched with ribbons jump ropes, clotheslines and yarns, in scales students have never before experienced.

Grasses provide a plush carpet underlay for “ribbons” of papers we roll out over the landscape. Students float, pour, drain and guide paints on a “mile-long” course, painting landscapes over the landscape.

“Drawing inks” for concrete are water-filled watering cans and spray bottles. Starting off bright, sketches on concrete fade as the self-erasing surface offers new drawing opportunities. Masterpieces are saved by overlay drawings on plastic sheeting, tracing papers, or chalk outlines. Sometimes animated water guns are pointed to the ground for drawing. Outdoor art-class experiences often stay close to the ground, exploring the largest outdoor canvases.

ELEVATOR TO THE TREETOP Old Smurf dolls and younger fast-food figures move up a giant tree trunk. I watch the children in the park and learn that their petite people are actually taking an elevator from inside the tree “lobby.” Looking up and hugging the tree, kids describe the view from each floor. Observing children’s outdoor play is our best clue to outdoor art-making.

As if applying large bandages, we wrap trees to gather the most incredible surface rubbings. The art class discusses fallen nests as architectural wonders and returns inspired to mount tree houses designed for fast-food figures. Leaves are canvases for painting and incredible fabric for our fall fashion show. We go outside to celebrate trees by hanging beautiful things we make from branches.

HAYSTACK LIGHT Childhood memories are important to share in an art class. During Communism in Hungary, businessmen like my father were exiled to menial jobs in the countryside. Dad guarded haystacks. On school holidays, we moved out in the dark each morning to take the long buggy ride, arriving to a planet of burning yellow mounds daily reshaped by sunlight.

Unlike Monet, I remember enormous creatures formed by haystack shadows, daring me to make the sliding descent as I looked down from the top. The drama of light and shadows, and an awareness of striking weather changes, are often a part of childhood memory and inspiration for art.

While other teachers go outside on a nice day, an art class also appreciates bad-weather trips. Snow sculpting requires no clay or firing. Wind lifts our helium-powered sculptures and challenges traffic at the school-yard airport. Young umbrella painters can’t wait for the next rain to open up their canvas and test secret easels designed into the handle for hand-free drawing in the rain. Extraordinary light is needed to enhance the dramatics inside shadow stages, made from picture frames. Children recognize the unusual colors and light, the sense of adventure and creative opportunities in snow, wind and rain.

SECRET HIDING PLACES Turning up rocks to surprise the life beneath is a favorite outdoor occupation. Children are fascinated by the secret hiding places of creatures large and small, and dig to find them. Kids discover and lay claim to all kinds of interesting natural openings in bushes for a play-space or clubhouse. A super thrill is to be allowed to spend the night, camping in their found Shangri-la.

The only clue to an underground city, designed and dug by our art class was the thick concentration of leaves camouflaging something. A school-wide amnesty had to be declared, allowing students to bring in their figures for which underground dwellings, and leaf-covered homes were created.

Creative raking provides a variety of secret covers, and new land-shaping opportunities. Each fall we go out with rakes as our art tools. Expert sandcastle builders need encouragement to he creative in the dirt, using twigs, rocks, sand, and leaves as building materials. Novel fabrics are saved to pop-up new tent ideas, as we look at design innovations in this great art form. Important ideas about dwellings and shelters are explored in outdoor playing.

NO BRUSHES NECESSARY Rain leaves inkwells on the ground for children to discover. They ride through puddles and use tires to draw fantastic images on concrete. Aria makes her own paint outside from fresh berries, petals, and roots, stirring a mix with my Elmer’s glue. If you want a “taste,” painting is done with the natural stirrers picked from the ground.

Students are often surprised when I announce I forgot to bring brushes when we work outdoors. A bit of outdoor “shopping,” however, yields exciting art tools and surprising paint marks. Students enjoy it so much, they want to keep the paint-stained twigs, leaves, grasses and flowers they find as brush substitutes.

SEE YOU OUTSIDE The air is fresher just outside the school door. Students feel less pressure and a sense of independence outdoors. Art experiences outside should look and feel different than what can be done in class. The excitement of found sidewalk cracks or shadows, the flight of forms, and water play in pools or puddles are all art class resources.

Outdoor scale and surfaces, as well as the things kids pocket, preserve and collect, are all a part of children’s outdoor play and art. The best clues to outdoor art projects come from kids who invent them daily. Observing and taking notes on children’s outdoor play is an important aspect of an art-teacher’s education.

George Szekely is Senior Professor of Art Education at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky.