A Child's View From Gaza *CENSORED*

Yesterday, I spent the day hanging a powerful art show called A Child's View From Gaza. Over 40 drawings done by children in Gaza are on display and the artwork depicts Isreali tanks, guns, soliders, violence, burning, Palestine children and families bleeding and running, throwing rocks, and people on stretchers. The art show was censored and cancelled in Oakland, California due to the content.

I learned a lot about this art show from the published book A Child's View From Gaza. Apparently, in Gaza and other places around the world, a common therapy for children is art therapy, where the children are asked to express things that are weighing on them. In Gaza these drawings of death, loss, and war were abundant. The artwork was so powerful that the show was put together and has been show all across the world.

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in the Palestine/Isreali conflict. I also highly recommend this book if you enjoy powerful political art or children's art. From an artist stand point the artwork is really incredible on its own.

Please check out the facebook event page: A Child's View From Gaza. The show will be up for January's First Friday artwalk at the Meg Perry Center and for the remainder of the month.

Some Pig- Making Art like a Child Would

mixed media by william hessian

For a few months of each year I am Mr. Billy. Currently I am Mr. Billy in Jamestown, North Dakota on my 7th artist-in-residency here. I teach art to Kindergarten through 6th grade in all 6 elementary schools. I also teach the arts after school program for kids in 3rd through 5th grade (i also teach adult classes and an elderly mural painting class, but that is slightly off topic). My blog post today is about the kids.

When I am standing in front of a room full of students eager to learn about art there is the teacher side of me and the artist side of me. The teacher side of me is trying to be informative, positive, a good communicator, and entertaining. My goal as a teacher is to present the students with a brand new skill or a brand new idea about what art can mean to them in their lives. The artist side of me is digging for gold, because young children have this brilliant freedom that comes from inexperience and bravery. The younger the student the smaller the skill set, but amazingly it seems to be creativity that is the necessity to solve even a very basic drawing or project. The looseness of the lines and the simplicity of the communication...."this is a pig, because a pig is pink and has a nose like this". I have classroom moments where I want to stop the class and take a students drawing and dissect it line by line to understand all the great things that are happening. I want to ask the student 50 questions about why they made certain decisions and give them a stack of new paper to see if the student can replicate such brilliance. But the classroom is still a classroom, I cannot shine a light on one student and ignore the rest, and there is not time for such sidetracks in my 55 minute lessons.

Thankfully for me, the result of this influence of children's art each week day motivates me to put down some of these images and ideas onto paper myself. I try to attack the paper with the same reckless abandon and fearless excitement that the grade school students have. While, I have a lot of work to do to fully let go, I do enjoy the energy and the raw quality of the work. The two drawings on display here are my attempt to be a child on paper again.

Insert overused but relevant Picasso quote here:

"Every child is an artist.
The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."
Pablo Picasso

mixed media by william hessian

Alphabet for Monty

For the last five months I have been working at Cross Trax deli in Unity Maine. If you ever get to Unity, Maine; first of all how in the heck did you end up there? Second of all, go eat at Cross Trax Deli, they feature locally grown products and have a great selection of sandwiches, soups and deli items.

The reason I bring up CrossTrax is because one of my co-workers named Jess, asked me to draw her an alphabet drawing for her two kids. I got to meet both of them on a few occasions as they ran around the deli. I meant to finish this weeks ago, but finally sat down to complete it. Here is the alphabet art.



I left the borders on so it could be cropped to fit a variety of frames. I had a lot of fun with the different letters and trying to sneak a few extra things into certain letters. If I had more time it would be fun to do a really elaborate version with as many items that start with each letter in each box, but then again Graeme Base already did that with his amazing book Anamalia. Eleventh Hour was my all time favorite.



I wanted to slap up a few photos of the cute alphabet, especially since it gave me a chance to mention Graeme Base, who along with Martin Hanford (Where's Waldo) crafted a lot of my childhood dreams.

A is for Always
B is for Blog
C is for Carefully

Designing a Board Game Class

Last week, I taught a GAME DESIGN class. The goal of the class was to understand:

why do we play games?

what makes games fun?

how can we make our own fun games?

We used matte board for our boards. Mod Podge to make things shiny. Fimo clay to make handmade game pieces. And had a blast. The final day we got to play everyone's game and talk about what we learned about games, and what we liked about games.

Here is some photos of games kids created in my own week Game Class:

Hannah with her game "Guess that card?" She created an awesome game board with some collage techniques. Hannah made some spiral pieces and a unique game play idea, where the goal is to be able to guess the number on the card each time someone lands on that space. The person who can guess the most cards correctly by the time you get to finish, wins the game.

Aaron created "Camping Catastrophe", a game focused around the danger of camping. The first time I played I landed on six "forgot food, go back to start" spaces and hung my head in shame as everyone laughed at me. The game features some secret passage ways, bonus cards and a BEAR!

Aaron's bear gets activated and then can attack players and send them back to start. One of the best parts was when he decided to make it a three person game, where one player gets to be the bear and move around the board eating campers. It made for a really fun (and hard) game.

Rachel's 'dressopoly' game. You must collect the most dresses from around the world. Rachel made two games, and this one was a big success.

Rachel hand made all of these dresses to be collected as you go around the board. Notice the 3-d trophy dress at the top, which you earn when you get the most dresses at the end of the game.

Traven's 'Untitled Game' features a set of really neat handmade tokens and items. The game is unique as you lands on different shapes that make you do different things. My favorite one is the space that you have to scream out loud when you land on it.
Isaiah's "Random Space" game featured a race to be the first player to collect specimens from earth and return them to your planet. Isaiah worked hard on his game board and the art is amazing. Great creatures, aliens and colors. Everyone wanted to play his game based simply on how the board looked.

Here is a close up of his board. Isaiah used some creative ideas to fit aliens into the board and make it look dynamic; like the guy shooting a space with his cyclops eye.
Isaac (not pictured) made a game called "An Inside Job" which is featured on the inside of a mouth. You start on the teeth and fight monsters as you make it to the throat. Then you fight a boss in order to get to the stomach (the green) and then fight the final stomach boss. If you get candy cards it hurts you, if you get carrot cards it is a bonus. Even after you beat the stomach boss, you then you need to find your opponent and go fight them to win the game. The best part of the game is leveling up your character. You get stronger the more guys you fight, and you can buy swords, shields and magic wands from the shop.
Jonas' "Hot Chocolate" game is a crazy and dangerous adventure as two players race to be the first to get the hot chocolate at the top of the mountain. It is fun racing around the board collecting the bridge and landing on each money space to afford the hot chocolate in the end.

Luca's untitled game, which involves trying to race to safety from lighting storms and downpours of rain. The last spot before the finish sends you all the way back to start, so you better roll exactsies.


Here is my game, 'Treasure Divers'. Cat vs pirate vs ice cream man in an underwater battle for treasure.


The board, complete with evil octopus, swarms of deadly piranhas and a blood seeking shark.

Artist Spotlight: Benjamin Aurthur Schulz

title: the mysterious snake picture"
by: benjamin aurthur schulz
medium: colored pencils/crayons/pencil
date:2010

"Hey, why don;t I just make a really cool picture. Then I started, and finished" -Benjamin Aurthur Schulz

Ben came up to me last week asking to be featured on his blog for creating this work of art at school. Ben has been in many of my arts after school classes, and has progressed a lot as an artist. I feel the artwork he has created on his own deserves attention, and that is why I am featuring it on my blog.

enjoy.