Jeremy Rowley
Jrowley1@uwyo.edu
A dull roar of creativity emanates from a group of children hard at work. Dressed in oversized T-shirts to keep their clothes clean, they cut and paste images from magazines as they participate in an afternoon at the museum.
“They’re in the middle of the creation process,” Heather Bender, master teacher at the UW art museum, said..
The ‘Afternoon at the Museum’ event is done to help keep children safe when they are not at school, Bender said.
“During days when the school district in town has in-service meetings, their teachers are in meetings all day long or a half-day even, we’ll do a camp for kids,” Bender said. “We have about a dozen kids right now working really hard. It’s a great way for parents to find something fun and engaging for their kids to do.”
The event is modeled after the museum’s art camps and is open to students aged six to 10 years old.
“We integrate all kinds of subjects with what they’re learning, in terms of art,” Bender said. “Right now they’re collaging things together. They’re putting words together, images together ¬– this is in response to work they’ve seen on exhibition. Everything’s predicated on the work on exhibition, so we always go look at that first.”
The participants of the Afternoon at the Museum, both while viewing the various exhibits and afterward, are encouraged to observe, question, explore, create and reflect, Bender said, as one of the children ran to give her a hug.
“There’s a lot that can be learned by doing an artist’s process that you just can’t replicate any other way,” she said.
The UW Art Museum offers numerous opportunities to be a part of this artistic process, including a family class this Saturday and a holiday celebration in December.
Mark Sanders, a member of the post-baccalaureate program in the art department, has been helping facilitate the event for over a year.
“I think it’s just their creativity that just sparks my interest,” Sanders said. “They just think of things that I would never think of to do. It’s like, ‘wow, that’s an interesting way of looking at it.’ That’s really what I love about it.”
While part of the goal is simply to help the children have fun, there is even more for the children to gain, Sanders said, while helping a child find glue for his collage.
“I’m hoping that we’ll teach them that just looking at things from different angles and seeing the world in different ways – that’s what I think really drives humanity,” he said. “Our art is really what defines us as human beings, and we really need it to exist as a human race. I hope it really stirs them into being creative and to just take those aspects of creating into different walks of life.”
