Five, six, pick up sticks

For six weeks the girls at Juvenile Hall have been working with circles. For those who have attended most sessions I think there is an appreciation of the circle as a symbol of unity, completeness and wholeness.

Today one of the girls was thumbing through a magazine and was noticing circles in various scenes from the natural world.

Those observations worked well with our final project of this series. I asked them to find a way to depict the sun.

I showed them Bruno Munari's book, DRAWING THE SUN, and they looked at works of famous artists and school kids.

I didn't put any restrictions on the project other than the limitations of the materials I brought in. I saw completed projects of the sun behind a mountain, the energy of the sun with exciting colors coming from all directions and one cleverly made window that opened to the sun.

While the girls were working and we were chatting -- it IS a therapy group, after all -- I made a simple collage. Struck by the setting I was in, I showed how the sun might look to a prisoner.



This evening I worked on the second page of my 100-page project due in class on December 3rd. During a walk earlier in the day I had picked up a simple twig with interesting textured bark. I drew it completely in pencil, didn't like it and inked over everything and continued on. It was a complicated simple twig!