>>Hey everybody, welcome to the Creative Corner.

My name is Lauren and I'm an art teacher with Art for the Journey.

I am so excited that you're here today 'cause we have lots of cool stuff to do.

I've got a couple of traditional art supplies on my art studio table here today, but for the most part, we're gonna use some unconventional supplies.

We're gonna go on a little art and go seek mission around our homes and find some things that maybe you wouldn't expect to be great art supplies.

We're gonna make some two dimensional works of art on paper, and even make some music by the end of the day.

So come on in and let's get creative.

(upbeat music) Our first project today is a mixed media collage.

Now, a medium is something that an artist uses either a material or a process to make art.

So that can be something like paper or wood, or it can be something like painting or printmaking.

So when we say mixed media, that means that we're gonna take a bunch of different materials and processes and combine them together to make one finished work of art.

Today, we're gonna use mixed media techniques to create a collage, which means a combination of lots of different things that are glued, stuck, or somehow attached.

We're gonna grab a nice big piece of paper and go on a hunt to collect lots of interesting stuff that we can attach to it to make our collages.

So I've collected some supplies here, I'll show you what I've got.

You don't have to have the same thing, you can collect whatever it is that you find and you think is interesting.

I have a lot of magazine and catalog clipping.

I also have some smaller pictures, like an old photographs, some old postcards and greeting cards that I think are colorful and neat, and like go with maybe a theme that I'm thinking about for my collage.

I have some paint and some paint brushes to help me make an interesting backdrop for my collage.

I have some markers and I have a pair of scissors, in case I wanna trim any more of these magazine clippings or change the shape of some things before I attach them.

So I'm gonna grab my piece of paper, and let's get started.

My first layer is gonna be a background for my collage.

Now, I am a big fan of nature and being outside, and hiking, and camping and things like that.

So I've pulled out a lot of images that have to do with the outdoors, and I'm gonna use some of those to create an outdoors themed collage today.

Your collage doesn't have to have a theme, it can be all sorts of random things pulled together to make one interesting picture.

Sometimes it's cool when there's lots of contrast, rather than thinking similar, it's nice and things are really different.

I really like these clouds, honestly they're never blurry.

So these, I'm arranging the pieces of my collage without gluing them down first, I'm just setting them down so I can rearrange them and make sure I know where I wanna put them before I stick them to my paper.

Right, now that I've got my largest images laid on as sort of a background for my collage, I'm gonna switch to using some paint and fill in some of my white space or what's currently my negative space.

Mixing some light blue paint with a little bit of white to try and match some of the colors in the background of my sky pictures here.

And then I'm adding some brushstrokes with just white paint on top of that, keeping it nice and choppy, not long, full brushstrokes, but little short ones to get some texture as if there's some clouds in here, as there are some clouds in my magazine cutouts here.

I'm letting my paint just overlap and go right on top of some of my paper cutouts here, so that everything, it's really integrated like it really all belongs together.

Even though I'm taking all these different bits and pieces and putting them together in the end, I want it to look like it's all part of the same work of art.

I'm pretty happy with the way the sky is turning out.

I'm using several different shades or versions of the color blue.

(bright music) I feel like that's making for kind of a realistic sky because the sky is never all one shade of blue.

It's always got some clouds or some fog or the lightest thing in different places, it's got some texture to it, and this painting definitely has some texture to it now, which I love.

I also like that it's gonna have lots of different texture, not only the implied texture or the texture that looks like the texture of clouds or a blue sky, but the actual texture of the work of art is gonna be different.

So I'm gonna have some glossy magazine pages that are just nice, and smooth, and shiny.

And then I'll have this acrylic paint that I'm using, which is gonna dry a little more matte or not so shiny.

And that's gonna create a different feeling and a different look in my work of art and in the different places where you used different media.

Then it's time to switch over and add some trees in here.

So I'm gonna rinse my brush and switch colors.

All right, I think my background is in pretty good shape, and I'm gonna start layering on some additional elements here.

Things like old postcards or greeting cards, or even magazines, make sure you have permission to take them and transform them into art work before you start cutting them up.

Most of my collage is coming out pretty pictorial.

So it's creating a picture or an image that represents something that makes sense that you can sort of look at and figure out what it is and what's going on.

But I'm adding a couple of abstract elements.

So I've got a little dog over here, that's definitely much larger in scale than most of the things in my picture.

And then I've got some flowers over here that I've cut out and added to this space in kind of an abstract way, but not exactly realistic in the way that I've placed them, but they're going to be interesting in their abstraction.

Another word for collage is assemblage.

So basically, when you're making a collage, you are assembling or bringing together lots of different things to create an interesting composition.

Your composition can evolve as you're making your collage.

That's what makes this a really fun project is you can start with one idea in mind, and then the more you look at the pieces that you've collected and the things that you're trying to arrange, the more your ideas might change.

Okay, I think I've glued everything that I want to glue onto my collage.

The last thing I'm gonna do to add, just one more layer, is to add maybe a couple of stamps and to hand draw some things on here, just to make sure everything is really integrated and to add kind of my personal touch by drawing some things.

I think my collage is done.

I've got magazine cutouts, I've got a quote on a posted note that I wrote a long time ago, I've got a piece of an envelope that had a watercolor painting on it that I thought was really pretty.

So I've put all these things together to create a collage or an assemblage.

So I've taken lots of small pieces of things and several different media, or materials and processes, and put them all together to create one cohesive work of art that all goes together.

Whatever you decide to do with your collage, I think half the fun of it is doing the scavenger hunt part at the beginning and looking for your supplies.

For this project, we've been talking a lot about what things look and feel like.

Now, we're gonna switch gears and we're gonna talk about sound.

Here to help us out with that today is Charles Burchell.

Charles is a talented musician who does all kind of really cool things with music.

He's gonna share with us a little bit about his musical journey and how he got started experimenting with sound and rhythm, and things like that.

And then he's gonna show us a really cool activity that will help us become musicians, using stuff that we already have in our homes.

Welcome to the Creative Corner, Charles.

(metallic pattering) >>Good morning or good afternoon young learners, my name is Charles Burchell.

I'm a musician, and music producer, and cultural diplomat from New Orleans, Louisiana.

Today, we're going to explore how we can make music simply, we're using the items we have in our kitchen or around the house.

So when we think about most instruments, they're usually made out of four materials, metal, plastic, wood or glass.

Let's go explore it and see what items we can use to make music in our own homes and our locations.

I've collected a few items.

We have glasses, we have plastic, we have metal, and we have some paper.

And look, we also have a word table.

So the first thing I'm gonna do, I'm gonna take my spoon, right?

I'm gonna tap on some things, get some sounds.

(metallic pattering) So each one of these items, each one of these different types of materials makes some different sound.

So let's see something cool.

So one cool thing about glasses is that when you fill them with water, they change their note, all right?

So for comparison's sake, this is an empty glass, no water.

(metallic pattering) Little bit of water.

(metallic pattering) A lot of water.

(metallic pattering) Empty mug.

(metallic pattering) Next, right?

Acquire new equipment, just some empty cups and a little bit of water.

Now, the plastic, this makes a great drum.

(metallic pattering) Same with the book.

(metallic pattering) Now, using different sides of the surface of the spoon.

(metallic pattering) You hear a different tone.

(metallic pattering) And I can use the table.

(metallic pattering) All right, so just using these simple items we have at home, we can create an entire song.

(metallic pattering) I think that the best way to learn music is to take that experience, like just touching things, that's how I learned, 'cause I started as a drummer so everything that is hitting, it's hitting something, it's singing the sound to me, and I think that's the cycle of all the old music.

Like if you get something and make the sound, you can start playing music with it, that's kind of it.

And then you just, music to me, you're just organizing silence.

So whatever you do aims the silence around it, that's music.

It's like, oh yeah, most instruments still use the same kind of, you know, three main, you know, ingredients, main, you know, materials, metal, wood, glass, plastic, those four, maybe.

So usually everybody has access to something like that.

So then it's just about finding a different way and a different method to make music with those type of items.

And, you know, it's just as simple as getting things with, you know, you can put rice into a bottle and it becomes a shaker.

You can, you know, cut a hole into a plastic bottle and make it into a flute.

You know, so many different things you can do.

Just exploring what you have around you.

>>To make music, I feel like a lot of times we get intimidated by saying, "Oh, I don't have a drum kit, or I don't have a guitar, or I'm not a musician.

I don't have any training, I can't read music.

But if I can go into my kitchen and find a bottle and some rice, or, you know, just a wooden spoon in a pot or something, then I can make a rhythm, I can make some music, and that's really cool.

>>For me, I think when you think about like, how do we apply musical ideas in our everyday life?

I think, you know, music is this, is like a system of organization and sometimes it can seem very random and chaotic, and sometimes, of course, it's harmonious and beautiful, but when you play music, you're constantly making decisions, and delegating, and being able to solve problems in real time.

So I think that it's some, one of the most crucial skills that anybody can have is just knowing how to problem solve, knowing how to, especially in the world that I come from is just like a dead background.

So I had to improvise, 'cause a lot of people don't realize how much of their day they're improvising, you know, learning how to improvise and learning that language of being a musician definitely helps me get through life better because it's just, you're training your body to react and see opportunities.

>>What advice would you give to somebody who's interested in starting to learn to make music, but doesn't necessarily have any of the traditional resources at home.

>>You don't need instruments, you don't need any of the things to make music.

In fact, some of my favorite types of music were created from that very problem.

Like hip-hop music is created from that, the, you know, people who're the founders who made hip-hop didn't have instruments, so they had turntables.

So they started moving ground and found different ways to create a music with the technology and the tools that they had.

So I think a lot of times, limitations actually breed a lot of creativity and a lot of options.

So I would just say, you know, get anything that you can hit on, the closest thing you can get to a drum set, and just start with that, just start with learning rhythm and being able to just kind of play with that, and then you can expand from there.

For me, music is this, it's all about exploration.

So you have to have the curiosity to explore.

And from there, that exploration can take you to the point where you can develop your skills to a higher level, but the most critical component is just the ability and the desire to explore sound and with every capacity.

And that's what I hope to demonstrate with this activity that you don't need a lot of fancy equipment to begin to become a musical explorer, 'cause once you develop with them, then that's kind of the language that everything else is built on a harmony, melody, all that will be based on rhythm.

So once you are able to just start tapping on things, you're on the path to becoming a musician, if that's what you desire.

More of the sounds that you're hearing around, you explore your environment and you'll be surprised how much music you're already living with and how much music and potential to create music is around you.

>>Well, thank you so much Charles.

Thanks for sharing your awesome activity with us.

And thanks for taking some time to chat with us about music and how we can start to make it herself.

>>Thank you, thank you so much for having me.

>>While we were in the kitchen, looking for things to make music with, I picked up a few supplies for our next project.

I have some styrofoam takeout containers that I'm going to cut up and just use the flat bottom pieces of, and I also have some actual food.

We're going to experiment with some kitchen printmaking.

Printmaking is an art form that uses a specially prepared surface, usually a plate or a block to transfer an image onto paper.

There are lots of different types of printmaking using lots of different materials from heavy wooden blocks to carve, to linoleum, to metals and acids.

Most of these methods of printmaking fall into two basic categories, relief printing, and intaglio printing.

Relief printing is when an artist curves away all the parts of their printing surface that they don't want to be part of their final design.

So in the end, after all that carving, their design sticks up from the surface and only the parts that they wanted to keep, will get inked and printed onto paper.

Opposite of relief printing is intaglio printing where an artist carves away the parts of their design that they do want to keep and fills only those with ink.

However, the block or plate is prepared, the end of the printmaking process is to apply ink to the surface.

Carefully position a piece of paper against the block, and then run it through a printing press that applies firm even pressure and transfers the design from the blocks to the paper.

In keeping with today's theme, we're gonna use some unconventional art supplies to make our prints today.

So we're gonna carve into our styrofoam a little bit and make some relief prints, and we're also going to use some of our food items, which I have cut in half.

I've got a couple of different fruits and vegetables here that we're gonna use to make some interesting shapes.

So I have sliced this bell pepper, and I'm probably gonna use the bottom part because it doesn't have seeds in it, and it's got a really cool, interesting shape.

I also have an apple, which when I sliced it through the middle like this, leaves a cool star pattern inside of a circle.

I have some lemons and limes, and I also have a teeny tiny eggplant that I'm gonna see if I can carve something into.

The other supplies you'll need for this project are some paper to print on, or if you're feeling adventurous, some fabric or an old t-shirt will also work.

I also have a wide paint brush that I'm gonna use to apply some thick paint to my printing objects.

You wanna use a thicker paint like acrylic, tempera, or poster paint for this project.

Oil paints are gonna be a little bit too thick and they take a really, really long time to dry and water colors will be kind of thin and running, we want our design to be nice and clean, like a real print.

So we're gonna use something that's gonna hold its shape a little bit better.

And last but not least, I have some paper plates that I'm gonna use to put my paint on so that I can ink my printing blocks before I put them on the paper.

All right, let's get started.

I'm gonna start out with my food item prints because I don't want these fruits and vegetables to sit here for too long, so let's do those first.

I think I'm gonna do my lemon first 'cause that's one of my favorite things and I think it's gonna look really cool.

So I'm gonna use some yellow paint, a nice big puddle of paint on one of my plate.

I'm gonna lighten it up with a little bit of white, and I'm gonna use my paint brush to just mix these colors together.

Once they're nice and blended, and I have the nice light color that I want, I'm gonna use it to spread my paint evenly out over my plate, 'cause I don't want any big blobs or puddles of paint.

I want it to be nice and smooth so that when I dip my lemon in it, it applies really evenly and smoothly.

(bright music) Deep it in my yellow paint and I'm gonna give it a little wiggle just to make sure that it gets really covered.

That looks good, let's try it out.

Give it a nice firm press without squishing it too hard.

Not gonna wiggle it, once I put it on the paper, I'm gonna leave it nice and still, and just press straight down so that it doesn't get all smudgy.

All right, my lemons are looking pretty cool.

I rinse my brush out, I don't mix my colors, then I dry it off, 'cause I don't want my paint to get watery and droopy.

Then I'm gonna use the same process, I'm gonna use my nice wide paintbrush to spread my paint out nice and smooth and even over the surface of the plate.

That might've been a little bit too much paint, let me see if I can try that again with a little dip.

Oh, that's better, that's really cool.

(bright music) Being especially gentle when I press down on my bell pepper, because I think it's the most likely thing to squish.

So I'm using a nice, bright color palette here because these bright colors remind me of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Whatever colors you want, you can use all the same color or you can do a different color for each object that you're printing with.

You have one color for fruit and one color for veggies.

All right, I'm pretty happy with the different shapes that these different fruits and vegetables are making, so I think this piece of paper is done.

I'm gonna save the rest of my paper for my styrofoam prints and I'm gonna move on and try and print on my fabric now.

There are lots of different things in your kitchen that you can use to make prints.

Potatoes are really good, you can actually carve shapes into or out of a potato, and use that as a printing device or a stamp, but you wanna stay away from fruits and veggies that have too much water in them.

So things like tomatoes wouldn't work very well for something like this because they would get your paper all wet and they would squish really easily.

So far, I've been dipping this lemon in the paint before every time I put it back down on the fabric.

But the cool thing about printmaking is that you actually don't have to do that so I can ink it now and press it down, make my impression on my print.

(bright music) And then I can pick it up and without dipping it again, I can press it back down.

It's gonna be a little bit fainter and harder to see.

So it won't be quite as bold as the one that was freshly dipped in the ink, but it'll still make a print.

Now, if you are not a grownup, please ask for a grownup for help with this part.

So I am making a relief print with this eggplant because I'm cutting away the pieces that I don't want to show up when I print it and leaving, raised up, just the star of the part that I do want to show up.

(bright music) All right, it's a little wonky, but it's kind of cute.

So I'm gonna use it.

Hey, it worked.

Right, I am really happy with the way this piece of fabric turned out, my fruit and vegetable printmaking was really fun.

This was totally an experiment.

I did not go in with a plan for what this was gonna look.

I just wanted to see what kind of shapes these would make when I printed with them.

And I think they turned out pretty cool.

So go for a hunt in your kitchen and find some interesting things, get some permission to slice them up and put some paint on them and experiment and see what you come up with.

And now I'm going to use my styrofoam and do a totally different type of printings.

I've cut out the flat bottoms from my takeout containers.

Now, if you don't have any of these, you can use styrofoam plates or trays that produce or meat come on from the grocery store.

You just wanna make sure that whatever you've used, you've washed it and dried it before you use it to paint.

Styrofoam is nice and soft, so I'm gonna use the end of a very dull console to prepare my block for printing.

You could also use something else that's dull, like, for example, the back of a paintbrush or something that's a similar shape that will press down without cutting all the way through it.

Press my pencil into the styrofoam.

Just gently, you don't need a whole lot of pressure.

'Cause like I said, the styrofoam is really soft and squishy and you don't wanna poke all the way through it, you just wanna make a glue.

You wanna use even pressure the whole time.

So I'm not switching between hard force and pressure, it's soft and gentle.

I'm using kind of a medium amount of pressure the whole time.

I'm trying to make an interesting design without putting too many tiny little details in there because I don't think that tiny details will show up very well, when I print it.

I think I'm actually gonna cut the edges of this so that it's a little more round, so that I can fit it in my plate, where my paint is.

Now, for this one, since this surface is really flat and smooth, it's really important to make sure that my paint on the plate is also really flat and smooth.

So I'm gonna spend a little extra time and just make sure that it's really nice and silky and even so that my print comes out nice and deep.

I use my fingers to smooth out my printing plate in my ink or paint, and make sure that it gets coded nice and evenly.

This is a plate that I prepared that I carved with my pencil, this is the print that resulted.

Now, it's kind of hard to tell because this design is symmetrical, but whatever you print from your plate that you've prepared is gonna be reversed.

So if you're gonna write anything on your plate or if you're drawing something that has a specific right and left side, and you might wanna think about doing it backwards so that once you print it onto your paper, it'll be the right way around.

Today was all about experimenting with new and interesting materials.

So I experimented with some styrofoam printing.

I think that my design that was mostly made up of straight lines, turned out the best.

This one came out pretty nice and clean.

So I think when you're curving into styrofoam with a pencil, maybe it's best to stick with some straight lines and some simple geometric designs.

When I tried to do ladybugs and fireflies, they came out a little bit wonky, or I think it was harder for the paint to decide where it needed to stick and where it needed to not stick.

It got a little bit into the grooves.

So it got into the spot in my lady bug and things like that, but it still was really fun, innit?

I think it still came out kind of cool.

And I've got a nice pattern here and some really interesting textures from where, and this one I dipped it into the plates, you can see the texture of where the paint was pulling away from the plate.

And then on the rest of them, you can see the texture of where my brush strokes were, they brushed the paint onto the styrofoam, they brushed, you can see which direction I was painting in, which was also kind of cool.

So this is another project that's very much about the process, just as much as the product.

Thanks for experimenting with me today in the Creative Corner you guys, I had a lot of fun raiding the kitchen and listening to music, and coming up with some cool new ways to make sounds with containers, and utensils, and all sorts of stuff.

I hope you guys had just as much fun as I did.

If you got just as messy as I did, then I think we should all go wash our hands before we get paint all over ourselves.

Thanks for joining me in the Creative Corner today, and I'll see you next time.

>>Hello everyone.

Stephanie Shanks here at the Art for the Journey studio.

So before there was texting, or Instagram, or Tik Tok, there were postcards, right?

They're a great physical way of saying, "Hi, I miss you.

And I sure wish we were sharing this experience together."

So during this time of social distancing, we're inviting our community to create an art exhibit made of postcards.

That's right, we're inviting you to make art and send it to us as a postcard, and we're going to display it online and in person.

All we need is your art.

What you gotta do to participate?

Well find some paper that's kind of stiff, you can use the cardboard from a cereal box also.

Cut that to four by six, so it can be posted in the mail.

Then gotta turn, making your art.

Use whatever materials you have at home, as long as it's flat and can be mailed.

(bright music) Make art about something you're grateful for, maybe, especially since COVID happened, make art inspired by a song lyric, or a mantra, or a verse or something that's really encouraged you during this time that you'd like to share with everyone else.

You can also just make art using your favorite colors, your favorite subject matter, and send something that you think would just brighten other people's day.

So all you gotta do, make art, mail it to us.

Help us unite, help us stay together during this very hard time.

We can't wait to see what you create.

Join the Art of Community Postcard Project.

(upbeat music) (bright music)