In response to our museum visit to Gary Schneider’s Yezerski Family Portrait we offered different provocations within the studio. In conjunction we read Beautiful Hands by Kathryn Otoshi. The book is full of beautiful illustrations by Bret Baumgarten, all made from different hand prints.
Could Studio Yellow children create pictures with their hands?
“I want to make a grasshopper. I don’t want to use my whole hand. Can you use your finger? I’m doing dots. It’s a dot pattern.”
“I’m going to do a train with my hands. I put one like this and one like that. That makes the carriages.”
“Like this (with his fist). I’m using this for his head and these for his legs and these for his spikes – a Gigantosaurus.”
“You might need to help me make a tree. No a ladybug. Oh, we need a pen to make those (antenna). Oh, and the legs. Now I’m gonna do a bird but I need my whole hand. What about next time we use our toes? I need to do the eyes – oh and the feet. I think I made a butterfly.”
Linden experimented by forming his hand print in the sparkly playdough.
Motivated by a movie she had seen at the ICA in Boston, Suki decided to configure our new material of snap blocks into a machine. “I’m making a machine to help climate change. It helps when people put things in the water. You have to push this button and it shoots water out so it will be clean. I use this (knob) to control it. When the battery in the machine has run out we put a new one in.”
Celebrating Jamie!
