Kindergartners practicing Pollock

Acorn Staff Writer






Kindergartners practicing Pollock By Michael Picarella Acorn Staff Writer



Willow Elementary School kindergarten students have studied different artist almost every month for the past couple of decades as part of a Great Works of Art program and on Monday, Mark Cantor’s kindergarteners explored the work of famous abstract painter Jackson Pollock. This is the first time any Willow class had studied Pollock but certainly not the last, according to Cantor.


The Great Works of Art program is designed to allow different parents to come into class and play art docent for about an hour, said parent and past art docent Brenda Small. Previous artists explored, she said, were Auguste Renoir, Georgia O’Keefe, Gustave Moreau and Roy Lichtenstein.


Taryn Braband took over Cantor’s class as art docent this time and began her lesson with an exhibition of Pollock’s work. The students said the paintings looked like scribble scrabble, but ultimately thought the work was beautiful. They liked Pollock’s use of color, many kids said.


Pollock was born in Wyoming in 1912 and later became one of the most mythic and modern painters of his time. He began painting landscapes, but was ultimately interested and competitive with the work of Pablo Picasso.


A struggling artist, Pollock grew famous when his groundbreaking "drip paintings" caught the eye of Time magazine. Pollock told journalists that his work was like a bed of flowers; you don’t tear your hair out trying to figure out what it means.


Pollock once said he never let an image carry into the painting. If it crept in, he did away with it and always allowed the painting to come through.


Braband showed a section of last year’s Academy Award-nominated movie "Pollock" with Ed Harris to demonstrate the methods the famous painter used for his drip paintings. The students wanted to splatter paint just like Ed Harris’s Pollock. And they were given the opportunity.


Thanks to the Do-It Center and the Woodland Hills Hilton that donated several cans of paint and shower caps, Cantor said, students were given the opportunity to make their own "Pollock" paintings.


Before the kids could touch any paint, they were suited up with the shower caps, shoe covers and plastic bags to cover their clothes. They were each given a sheet of poster board as their canvas and one can of colored paint.


The kids worked on the ground in the schoolyard (covered with plastic tarps) with one color for about a minute and then passed their paint cans to the left. After another minute, the students switched paint again until their art was covered with many shades of the rainbow.


The young artists dripped paint from sticks or string and they poured paint with little cups. Some kids splattered paint or threw it onto their "canvas."


"This is wonderful," Cantor said. "Listen to the children respond." Cantor enjoyed the experience very much, he said. "We’ll be happy to do this again," he said.


At one point during the process, one student said he couldn’t wait to show his parents his art. The "domino effect" took place and other kids said the same thing.


The students are proud of their work, Cantor said, and that’s important for a kindergartener. Cantor told one child that her work of art looked like a $50,000 painting.


The children experienced creation within themselves, as Pollock might have said. They weren’t trying to create a subject, but rather they worked in a subconscious way as Pollock did. And they had fun, many said.


Pollock once told a reporter that his paintings were no accident. When a wind picked up in the Willow schoolyard on Monday and blew some of the poster boards upside down, the paint spread in different directions or got smeared. These mistakes became part of the work.


Jackson Pollock would’ve been proud.







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