This past week I was invited to participate in a very special event called "Girls Can!" for local 5th grade girls. It was hosted by Luna Community College here in town. The idea is to introduce them to all manner of possible careers ranging from traditional jobs for women like teaching, nursing, and cosmetology to non-traditional jobs for women like welding, computer science, and art!
My plan was to get the girls thinking about all the places art shows up in the world--not just in the studio. Over the past several weeks I talked to many artists about jobs they have done that required artistic and creative skills and made a big list:
After making the list I realized I've done quite a few of these jobs: website designer, all manner of graphics, visual merchandiser, costume designer, set designer, curator, teaching, photographer's assistant, chef, and marketing!
Anyway, when the girls arrived I had them make a self portrait as an artist using a paper doll. They could decorate it with all fun stuff like construction paper, cloth, crayons, and glitter glue.
Next we talked about all the places artists are in the world (see above list) and then I asked them to pick a job and make a backdrop, or a scene, where one of those jobs would be. I had supplies for them to draw or cut pictures/words out of magazines and then glue it on a large piece of white paper.
This part seemed harder than the self portraits because, I think, many of them weren't interested in any of the artistic jobs which surprised me. But then they may not have really understood what they were even though I did my best to explain.
Anyway, most of the girls ended up gluing pictures of things they liked to the page. 😊
The last step was to glue their self portrait doll onto the backdrop to create a sort-of vision board of a possible future.
We only had 30 minutes to do all of this so it was FAST.
And then I did it 4 times in one morning.
Whew!
Each group had between 8-10 girls and one or two chaperones who also participated and they all walked out smiling even if they hid their smiles behind their work. 😉
Overall it was a fun day and I will do it again next week. I hope that it makes a difference to at least one girl!
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