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Designer Swirls #myCMAStudio Challenge

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I step out of the disrupting circumstances of life to make art. I find making art helps me heal. O.K. you may say. How? 

As a child, I gravitated instinctively to art-making and quiet spaces where I would make things with cardboard, glue, rice or shoe polish. These were my art supplies.

As a six-year-old boy they said I was shy, but it was clear to me that I had friends in my mind that wanted to come out on paper as colors, shapes, lines, swoops and swirls. Art, from the beginning, was where I could imagine a nice world. A world where I could wear my Vincent Van Gogh blue swish shoes to the makers studio, play with the blue paint and spread color. Making art that clearly expresses my feelings.  I want to tell all my friends I miss them. 

 

Printables you can use as templates to show how you disrupt your circumstances. 

Find a CMA Studio Challenge that speaks to you and share your creations on social media by tagging #myCMAstudio. 

— Richard Duarte Brown, known as Duarte, is a master artist with the TRANSIT ARTS Youth Arts Program and the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education’s Art in the House Program. For more than 30 years, Duarte has dedicated his talents to helping young people in Columbus, Ohio through countless programs including CAPACITY (CAPA’s Youth Arts Program), the Short Stop Youth Center, the King Arts Complex, Ohio Alliance for Arts Education’s (and formerly GCAC’s) Artists-in-Schools program, GCAC’s Children of the Future, Ebony Boys, Art Safe and VSA Ohio. More than my Brother’s Keeper, Duarte has also worked as a high school art instructor at the Arts and College Preparatory Academy in Columbus. Currently, he serves as a resident artist for Whitehall City Schools and Berne Union Schools in the Village of Sugar Grove, Ohio. His murals can be seen throughout the city, bringing comfort and inspiration to countless viewers.

#myCMAstudio is a digital version of our drop- in program, Open Studio. Which is currently unavailable to the public due to Covid-19, and part of CMA’s JPMorgan Chase Center for Creativity Studio to explore ideas, solve creative challenges, and collaborate with friends and family. 

Pick up a Studio in a Box with all the supplies and materials needed to aid you in our weekly challenges or allow our CMA educators to guide kids Pre-K – 8th grade in an online Studio Workshop. 

 

Woman-About-Town: Newark’s Own Ema Spencer

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Ema Spencer was born to Dr. Benjamin Franklin Spencer and his wife, Susan Porter Spencer, in the Licking County village of Gratiot, Ohio, on March 1, 1857. Benjamin was a well-respected physician in the area and Susan managed the Spencer home and children, which included Ema, Carolyn (b. 1862/63), and Charles Hildreth (b. 1870).

Studio portrait of a young Ema Spencer by "Walt A. Smith" of Newark, Ohio, date unknown. Courtesy: Licking County Historical Society, Newark, Ohio

Studio portrait of a young Ema Spencer by “Walt A. Smith” of Newark, Ohio, date unknown.
Courtesy: Licking County Historical Society, Newark, Ohio

Visitors to Gratiot today might find it hard to believe that this one-street town was once even smaller, but in 1880, the first census in Gratiot recorded a population of only 67. Spencer attended Newark High School, which was about 15 miles away, and graduated Valedictorian of her class. She went on to study at the Young Ladies’ Institute in nearby Granville before working briefly as a school teacher in the area; she then joined her brother Charles at the Newark Advocate. By the early 1890s, Ema Spencer was managing three different departments for the Sunday edition.

Image of glass plate negative by Ema Spencer (Photoshopped
positive images), c.1909. Courtesy: The Webb House Museum, Newark, Ohio

 

In 1898, Spencer helped found the Newark Camera Club with Clarence H. White. The club’s first exhibition was held in August of that year, at Spencer’s home on North Fourth Street. A few months later, Spencer was named Secretary of the Ohio State Association of Amateur Photographers. Though Spencer shot various portraits and city scenes and even published a photo-essay on Granville in Ohio Magazine in 1906, the fine art photographs she produced were quite different. The photographs were often softly-lit domestic scenes featuring simple props like apples, dandelions, and that timeless camera magnet, the cat. Her photographs also focused on the children in her life, allowing viewers charming glimpses into their activities. Her photographic series, A Day in the Life of a Child, depicts scenes of daily life from a child’s perspective.

Spencer and White’s friendship grew and they began to share the operation of a studio. As White became better known outside of Newark, Spencer continued to bolster his work. She wrote the introduction for his solo exhibition at the Camera Club of New York; and an essay, focused specifcally on White’s photographic style, for Camera Craft magazine in 1901.

After White left Newark in 1906, the Newark Camera Club appears to have dissolved; however, Spencer’s photography career continued. Between 1906 and 1914, Spencer showed work in at least seven exhibitions: two in the UK; one in Italy, where she was awarded a silver medal; one in Germany,where she was awarded a bronze medal; and several in New York, including a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1914. Throughout her career, reproductions of her work were printed domestically and abroad in magazines like Photograms of the Year, Camera Craft, and The Photographic Times.

Spencer also continued to be an active member of the larger Newark community. Her long-held interest in promoting literacy led her to serve as one of the founding board members of the Newark Public Library. She is also said to have operated a lending library out of the home she shared with her niece Marian. In 1916, Spencer, using the penname “Aunt Ca’line,” began writing a dailycolumn for the Advocate. She would write this column, titled “The Melting Pot,” for 25 years, stopping only near the end of her life. Spencer died on September 30, 1941 at the age of 84.

Despite her significant photography career, it appears that Spencer’s work has only played a major role in one exhibition since her death, a group show of Newark-area women called In Pursuit of Art Amid Difficulties, organized by The Licking County Historical Society and The Ohio State University, Newark, in 1988.

Ema Spencer’s photographs are on display as part of the exhibition No Mere Button-Pressers: Clarence H. White, Ema Spencer, and The Newark Camera Club, a joint production by CMA and The Works: Ohio Center for History, Art & Technology.

-Jordan Spencer, CMA Curatorial Assistant 

Patterns of Monet #MyCMAStudio Challenge

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Use magazines, old calendars, construction paper, and similar items to replicate the brush work of Impressionism. 

Contemporary collage Artist replicates Columbus Museum of Art’s, The Mediterranean, by Claude Monet.

After choosing a favorite photo, or painting as a reference, begin by selecting a piece of construction paper that could be used as a background color. If construction paper is not available you may use printer paper (printer paper can be painted to the background color if you wish). Examine the photo or painting for patterns you would like to replicate. Then find patterns and/or colors from old magazines, calendars, and other collage materials. Feel free to add interesting patterns to your design! For example, I use a blue checkered pattern for the sky background.

After breaking down the initial design, keep collaging to replicate the brush work of Monet, and other Impressionist Artists. Cool colors like blue will recede from the surface, whereas warm colors will come forward. The more colors you add to your patterns, the more interesting they will become!

Items used to make this challenge:
8 ½ by 11 construction paper
Exacto knife, or cut safe scissors
Old magazines
Old calendar
Favorite landscape photo, or painting for visual reference.

Find a CMA Studio Challenge that speaks to you and share your creations on social media by tagging #myCMAstudio.

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Julian Cennamo, has almost ten years of service as a Gallery Associate with the Columbus Museum of Art. As a contemporary collage and landscape Artist, he has exhibited with the Georgian Museum, Roy G. Biv., and many others. He currently offers classes at the Wagnalls Memorial Library, and volunteers as a Trustee of Ohio Art League. He graduated from the Columbus College of Art and Design, and remembers childhood visits to CMA with his family.

#myCMAstudio is a digital version of our drop- in program, Open Studio. Which is currently unavailable to the public due to Covid-19, and part of CMA’s JPMorgan Chase

Center for Creativity Studio to explore ideas, solve creative challenges, and collaborate with friends and family. 

Pick up a Studio in a Box with all the supplies and materials needed to aid you in our weekly challenges or allow artist educators to guide kids Pre-K – 8th grade in an online Studio Workshop.

CAKE!  #MyCMAStudio Challenge

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Making a cake is an art of its own. 

We construct it out of a sponge cake base like a sculpture; building the tiers of cake up high or filling tiny cups with batter to make cupcakes. Next, we cover it with frosting like painting, taking our time to cover it neatly or globing it on for maximum sugary goodness. Lastly, we decorate it with whatever sounds fun or yummy, leaving us with a beautiful display. Maybe you jam-pack your cake with toys, fruits, icing, or even smaller cakes!!! Maybe you write a sweet message to someone you care about with icing or candy. Or maybe you leave it simple and bare, letting the amazing flavors do all the talking.

Cake has also been an inspiration for art as well. Let’s look at cake paintings by American painter, Wayne Thiebaud. He makes paintings about ordinary things like food and most famously cakes! Do his paintings make you want to eat cake? How does he apply the paint like icing? 

Your challenge is to design your perfect cake. You can go the 2-D route on paper with paint, pencils or collage, or try 3-D sculpting with whatever materials you have at your disposal – clay, fabric, dish sponges, cardboard, etc. Extra points if you don your apron and make a REAL CAKE!!! They can be as big or small as you desire! Tell us what makes it perfect and enjoy!

Find a CMA Studio Challenge that speaks to you and share your creations on social media by tagging #myCMAstudio. 

 

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Avery McGrail is an emerging artist and aspiring educator from Columbus Ohio. Her current work focuses on replicating everyday objects, plants and insects with felt and craft materials. She’s spending her pandemic days working at a local bakery, altering thrifted clothes, playing with dogs, and preparing for an upcoming solo exhibition at Wild Goose Creative this December. Averymcgrail.weebly.com 

Instagram @averymcgrailart

 

#myCMAstudio is a digital version of our drop- in program, Open Studio. Which is currently unavailable to the public due to Covid-19, and part of CMA’s JPMorgan Chase Center for Creativity Studio to explore ideas, solve creative challenges, and collaborate with friends and family. 

Pick up a Studio in a Box with all the supplies and materials needed to aid you in our weekly challenges or allow our CMA educators to guide kids Pre-K – 8th grade in an online Studio Workshop.

Menus #MyCMAStudio Challenge

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I love food. I love eating out in restaurants. I decided it would be interesting to create a menu for this creative challenge. 

How about a menu for a restaurant that doesn’t exist? Even better, what if they didn’t serve food but something else. What if the restaurant served air? 

I created an “Air Cafe” menu with a few selections of bottled air. 

Isn’t it a great feeling when you take off your mask and take a deep breath of the air outside? I have become a connoisseur of air. Fresh air, night air, salt air, pine air …. it feels so good to fill your lungs with it. I wonder what it would be like if we couldn’t breath the air outside and had to wear oxygen tanks and masks all the time. I imagine that fresh air would be very sought after and humans would figure out a way to tap deep into underground chambers to harvest ancient “clean” air. Only the wealthy and elite could enjoy this natural air because it would be rare and very expensive. 

Find a CMA Studio Challenge that speaks to you and share your creations on social media by tagging #myCMAstudio. 

 

—Emily Reiser is an interdisciplinary artist, K-5 Art educator for Bexley City Schools, mom of two girls, dog person (but secretly a cat person).

 

#myCMAstudio is a digital version of our drop- in program, Open Studio. Which is currently unavailable to the public due to Covid-19, and part of CMA’s JPMorgan Chase Center for Creativity Studio to explore ideas, solve creative challenges, and collaborate with friends and family. 

Pick up a Studio in a Box with all the supplies and materials needed to aid you in our weekly challenges or allow our CMA educators to guide kids Pre-K – 8th grade in an online Weekly Studio Meet-up. 

 

Candy Palette #myCMAStudio Challenge

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Use candies to create a palette for a polka dot print for this week’s #myCMAStudio. Candies like gumballs, Smarties, or Skittles can serve as yummy inspiration!

To create your candy print you’ll need: a small bag of candy, fabric squares (8×8), fabric markers or paint, a dull pencil and tape. Play with the candy, arrange on fabric until you find a design that you like. Use the tape if you plan to arrange your print neatly in a row or skip the tape to keep it random and fun.  

Create 3-4 different versions of your print. Use the one you like the most to embellish the bottom of a pair of jeans, a tote, or even make a mask. You can eat the candy when you’re done, if you want.   

Share your creations on social media by tagging #myCMAstudio. 

Lesley Ware is a lefty who believes that fashion is a form of self-care. She is the author of several activity books, about sewing, fashion and style, for youth and this project comes from her latest book, How to Be A Fashion Designer. 

 Lesley is also a fashion instructor in New York City.  She does not have a specific style per se but often dresses like an extra-fancy librarian or a fashion superhero.  

@creativecookie

www.thecreativecookie.com

#myCMAstudio is a digital version of our drop-in program, Open Studio. Which is currently unavailable to the public due to Covid-19, and part of CMA’s JPMorgan Chase Center for Creativity Studio to explore ideas, solve creative challenges, and collaborate with friends and family. 

Pick up a Studio in a Box with all the supplies and materials needed to aid you in our weekly challenges or allow our CMA educators to guide kids Pre-K – 8th grade in an Online Open Studio session (one online Studio session of your choice is included with Studio in a Box). You can also check out previous #myCMAStudio challenges here.