A Place for Ideas to Grow

A sketchbook is a perfect place to capture sparks of inspiration. The low risk atmosphere lets your imagination play freely, allowing ideas to emerge while your inner critic is lulled into a sense of security.

Later on, during that unavoidable, ever-terrifying part of your creative cycle, when you temporarily believe that you will never have any ideas, ever, pick up one of your sketchbooks and read it like the book of designs that it is.

Follow it like a direction manual and map back to your creative zone.

Your "sketchbook" could also be any sort of notebook, or could even translate to any of the infinite iterations of data capture introduced by contemporary digital media, so long as your creative self feels protected when you engage there.

How do you keep and use your sketchbook?

Big Words for a Big Idea

Gearing up for my final session at the TATLab, a teaching artist training lab that may well turn out to be a life changing experience for this teaching artist, I'm still trying to get comfortable crafting a Teaching Artist's Big Idea. How about this version:

"Engaging in the Visual Arts activates metacognition, empowering students to make integrative connections."

It's a mouthful.

Photo by Youth in Focus

Words like "activate" and "empower" easily roll off the tongue, but who says "metacognition" in an elevator speech?

"Integrative connections" are where I try to elaborate: in art and in life, connections within and between systems, across diverse disciplines, is what I want my students to find the power to enact.

What better place to foster this synergy besides an arts rich learning environment? Where tools and training are readily at hand, and a spirit of inclusiveness clears a path to creativity and collaboration?

 

Garden Art Summer Day Camp 2012!

Experience a whole new kind of Summer Art Camp! Not only will your children return home with beautiful handcrafted clay sculptures, miniature gardens, paintings and collages, they'll always remember spending three days in nature surrounded by trees, songbirds, chickens and flowers.

Our Garden Art Activities Include: Drawing, Painting with Watercolors, Sculpting with Clay, Collage, Sun-print, Wire Garden Ornament Sculpture, and Planting Miniature Gardens.

Get inspired by the colors, textures and sounds of Village Green!

Art and Gardening materials included.
Please pack a lunch and plan for the weather.
Ages 8 - 12
Wednesday - Friday, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Session 1: July 11 - 13
Session 2: July 18 - 20
$250

Where: Village Green Perennial Nursery, 10223 26th Ave SW, Seattle, WA 98146
 
Registration: Mail-in, payment by check. 

Registration Form

Drawing with a Knife

For me, the art of

cutting paper

is about saying

more with less.

It's about cutting through the surface

to expose a simple truth.

All the action is at the edge.

I'm interested in the way we get lost

in the struggle to survive, and then

find ourselves again in moments of kindness.

As human beings, we can be profoundly

transformed by this cycle.

Cut Paper by Sarah Browing on display through December 14th, 2011, at Dubsea Coffee.

 Watercolor Activity

 In the Fall Garden

Starfish

The Whole Story

The Whole Story

A unique, holistic and inclusive history and her-story class. Find your voice with writing, art, storytelling and collaboration while exploring patterns and threads of culture, communication, identity, civilization, trade, geography, basic human needs, abstract thinking, and technology.

About the Instructor
Sarah Browning delights in stories about personal transformation, positive role models, hilarious irony, and following your heart. A West Seattle home schooling parent, she has taught classes at the Village Green Perennial Nursery, Alki Community Center and Bathhouse, and the Children's Museum of Seattle. Visit her at www.sarahbrowning.com.

Class Goals
Basic: Learn, Share, Grow, Think, Participate, Ask Questions, Be a Good Listener.
Challenge: Build a Shared Vocabulary, Find Your Voice and Articulate Your Own Story, Be an Ambassador of Your Own Personal Culture, Learn About People: How We Are the Same and How We Are Different, Practice Empathizing With Someone Who Seems Really Different From You.

Lesson Plans
Sessions have a group activity and a personal activity. The instructor will introduce maps, timelines, stories, and activities with a guided but flexible structure.

Currently offered through the Family Learning Program at Southwest Community Center.

Registration Options:

Online: Go to SPARC online registration system, and enter course number where it says "Search for programs by barcode", then click the magnifying glass. Have password and credit card ready.

Click this link to request a password or new account.

By phone: Call Southwest Community Center at 206-684-7438, have credit card ready.

In person: Southwest Community Center, 2801 SW Thistle St., Seattle, 98126, or at any City of Seattle Community Center; cash, check, or credit card accepted.

Fall Fairy Minis & Garden Monsters

Enter an enchanted world of magical monsters and miniature fairy gardens! Your imagination will open possibilities, sculpting garden monsters and tiny furniture with wet clay. One week later, we'll glaze the fired sculptures and assemble a miniature garden with plants and fairy decor. Sculptures can be picked up after the glaze firing, following our second class. 

Small class size; pair up and reserve your spot today!

Who: Parent/Child  teams, ages 5+
When: Two Saturdays, 10:30 am - Noon
Session 1: September 17th & 24th
Session 2: October 15th & 22nd
How: $140 per parent/child team
Where: Village Green Perennial Nursery, 
10223 26th Ave SW, Seattle, WA 98146
Call 206-767-7735 to register, or print-and-mail registration form with check.

 

Community Gem Under Attack

You may have heard that Village Green is under threat of foreclosure, and wondered how you can help.

Of course, please sign the petition.

And treat yourself to garden shopping at Vera's oasis of a nursery (You'll probably even find your treasures at a discount!).

Finally, SIGN YOUR CHILD UP for Garden Art Summer Day Camp. YES, THERE IS STILL ROOM! Session 1 starts a week from Wednesday, and Session 2 starts August 17th.

If you are interested or have questions, please contact me or Vera right away.