Museum Thursday

The Kid is all excited about art again. He's been through an artist phase before but its been Legos and video games for the last year or so.

We made a trip to the art supply store last week and had a blast. He charmed the folks who run the place and we bought paper, good colored pencils and some paint. He's always been enthusiastic about art but has been frustrated this year by the confines of his art assignments at school. We had a talk last week about art class vs. life, that in art class the goal is to follow instructions and that out in the larger world, art has no instructions, no rules.

We're lucky to live practically in the backyard of a very fine museum and we went over Thursday afternoon and looked at all the different ways artists break art class rules. We looked at paintings with texture and found objects. We saw multimedia paintings on chalkboards and corrugated tin. Afterwards we roamed around the grounds.

I want him to know that creating art is not just for those who can follow directions and please the art teacher – that art is about more than staying inside the lines and not making a mess. I want him to be creative, get messy, make mistakes and to feel the joy of creating something new.