presenting art materials
presentation as inspiration
Havi Katchalsky: art and food
Presenting a meal or art materials on a table is food to the body and mind. It similarly affects us. It calls for action through objects, tools, materials, and food. It bypasses language, instructions, talking, reading. It is NOT an intellectual process; rather, it is a sensuous one.
Our body is responding immediately. No need for words!
We are invited to DO something.
In everyday life, we sense it in holiday meals, birthday table settings. At their best, they convey abundance, generosity, feeling of belonging. It is also a physical expression that echoes yearly cultural heritage rituals and faith. It symbolically links us to our ancestors and to the future.
Helit Shacham
Well-thought suggestions demonstrate purpose, intention, reason, accuracy, and direct invitation to the body to act.
Look at these suggestions and try to imagine and feel where to they meet your body.
Helit Shacham
As an art educator, kindergarten teacher, or therapist, we need to create such settings with intent to our group of children, to their needs and curiosities. We need to think of our shelf organization as meals.
Osnat Yavin – table center
One of a few suggestions to a group of art therapists: wood and metal connector by black and white plasticine.
It was a course about the spirit of materials.
Thus, serving materials to the table or on studio shelves in the studio is an intentional and a deliberate nonverbal task.
Many supervisees that manage a studio have shared with me that when they became more aware and precise with material and container choices, they noticed that the children, in turn, became more curious, and their levels of concentration and involvement were much higher and lasted longer. This is quite a surprising phenomenon—that the concentration and liveliness of an art session, or an art therapy session, would deepen or even be affected simply by having been precise with the presentation of the art materials.
This is how the aphorism “presentation as inspiration” came to be.
The art teacher or art therapist can deliver a full message without saying one word.
So now, Look around your studio: where do you need to be more accurate?
How about the different containers you use? Are they accurate beyond practicality?
What about all the texts on the walls that no one actually reads? Are they necessary?
Go set a table and see what happens.
More here:
Much more about this in my new book: The Good Enough Studio
Thanks