Celebrating Spring! ~ Paddy Art #6

Folk Art Flower Collage - Watercolour paper painted by residents with dripped and squirted paint and printed with bubble-wrap. I cut out flower shapes and vases, which the residents assembled (with varying degrees of assistance) to create their masterpieces. We finished them off with some glitter glue. Every one turned out beautifully!

Watercolour Flowers - Still celebrating Spring! I drew some flowers free-style on watercolour paper. Residents painted with food dye and then sprinkled with salt. They loved the colours, and marvelled over the salt effect.

While we're enjoying the school holidays, life in Pademelon continues unchanged for the residents. One of the highlights each week is our Friday Art Group - a chance to create together, a chance to admire our own and each other's creations, a chance to share a laugh :)

Even though I carefully choose no-fail projects, and for many there is a great deal of assistance every step of the way, there is always a sense of wonder and magic when we hold up the finished pictures. The heart felt comments of 'I didn't think I could do that!' and 'It's beautiful!' make the effort so worth while!

"Sing Wild Songs of Adventure..." Paddy Art #5

If you've been following you'll know that I've been leading a weekly art group at Pademelon, a home for people with advanced dementia.

We have the most wonderful DT (Diversional Therapist) Sally, who forever goes above and beyond to keep life interesting and exciting for the residents. From high teas in the garden and daily music concerts to fish tanks and bird houses, she is always full of ideas and plans to add joy to the day, and she makes it happen! Because she does so much for my Mum, I would do anything for her! So when she approached me to lead a weekly art group I was delighted to lend a hand.

One idea we discussed early on was a collaborative Tree of Life.Our idea is to hang it in the living room and to have the residents glue on self-adhesive gems, with each new resident adding their gem as part of a 'welcome' to their new home. So while I wanted the residents to be as involved as possible in the creation, I also wanted the finished product to be something that would be a lovely and permanent addition to the room where they spend so much of their time! This is our final effort....

We started with 9 X 20" canvases which I pre-painted with a wash of Atelier Red-Gold Interactive acrylic. Residents Ken, Rae and Dorothy helped me to spatter paint Jackson Pollock-style all over the background. We used squeeze bottles of watered acrylic in cerulean blue, red-gold (same paint but stronger concentration) and metallic gold. I flattened cardboard packing boxes to shield our feet from the spatters. Lots (and lots!) of paint flying everywhere and loads of fun!

 I then took the canvases home and painted the negative space background in cream house paint, which gave good coverage but left the texture of the dried spatter paint. The tree shape stands out beautifully!

Meanwhile, I drew up some birds and dragonflies onto thick watercolour paper which Dorothy, Maureen, Neen, Elis and Nancy painted in cerulean blue. I embellished them with gold and red detail, cut them out and mod-podged them onto the background.

I also added some inspirational words (found on the Pinterest, where else??)
Sing wild songs of adventure...Dance lightly with life...Laugh for no reason...Love beyond words...
A bit kitsch I know, but it pretty well sums up what I want for my Mum at this stage in her life.

We refined the gem idea to include a gold leaf for each resident, with their name and birth date.
Here is my gorgeous Mum adding her leaf to the tree, with help from my sister Leanne.

Although I have come to prefer smaller individual projects which give the residents immediate results, as an on-going 'living' work, I'm pretty pleased with this one :)

Go here to see more Paddy Projects.

Folksy Birds - Paddy Art #4

Sally (our Pademelon Diversional Therapist) had a lot of old stamps and suggested that we might be able to use them in our art group.

I drew up some basic shape folk-art style birds on a couple of canvases, and the residents collaged the stamps all over them. This was actually quite a good sensory activity as they ended up with glue on their fingers which they rolled off by rubbing their fingers together.

Then it was a simple job for me to then paint in the background with off-white (although it appears quite grey in these photos), and add a black-glue outline to make the images 'pop'. I love the white-on-white texture that the painted-over stamps create around the edges of the birds.

I'm quite enjoying our collaborative projects - everyone can be involved to some extent... Some are very hands on, while for others it's an opportunity to sit around the table and enjoy the social atmosphere. Either way it's a way to create a moment of fun and meaningful interaction (and every one of those is so precious!)

Thanks Moonflitter Musing and Eva Crawford on Redbubble for your creations that inspired this project :)

Click here to see more of the art we have been creating at Pademelon (an aged care facility for people with dementia).

Paddy Art #3 Tulips

Although I have some wonderful group projects planned, at the moment I'm going with individual pieces that can be completed within the one session. My darling group of elderly people with dementia really need that instant reward for their efforts!

This week I found a lovely picture of tulips on line. It's a free printable but unfortunately my watercolour paper is too thick for the printer so I redrew it several times and pre-painted the backgrounds in blues and purples. This provided my group with section (of tulips) that they can paint, and an artistic choice while removing the confusion of too many lines and blank spaces.

Go here to learn more about how I have come to modify some of my teaching beliefs and practices (in particular the use of colouring sheets) when creating art with people with advanced dementia.

We started with a palette of red, yellow and fluorescent pink, then I later added two shades of green to the colour choices. I provided the green later to avoid mixing muddy colours.

They seem to prefer the painting process over colouring (see our Goldfish wax crayon resist project last week). I think this is because they get an instant result, and strong vibrant colours.

We had so many great successes with this painting! Although many residents (sadly including my lovely mum) are simply unable to focus for more than a moment or two, there are several who, like Rae, June and Rose, spent a whole hour painting, and only stopped because it was lunch time! It is so rewarding to see their satisfaction and pride in their art work.... :)

Go here to see all my Paddy Projects!!

Paddy Art Class #2 Goldfish

We recently installed a lovely large fish tank in Pademelon, full of beautiful goldfish. The residents love to watch the flashes of gold as the fish swim in and out of the foliage and rock decorations.
(Pademelon is the secure dementia facility where my Mum is a resident.)

Since starting the art activities at Paddy, I've been steadily learning more about the residents - their capacity to stay on task, and to listen to, comprehend and follow instructions is severely limited. As the dementia progresses, these capabilities diminish further.

I am learning to modify my expectations, not of the residents artistic endeavours, but my own goals for each session ....

When I work with children I would not dream of touching their work without their consent, and then only briefly to demonstrate a technique or to help them understand an elusive concept. When I am with the Paddy residents we often work on their piece together, even with me guiding their hand.

As an art teacher, I have quite strong views about 'colouring in' sheets. I rarely use templates, and then only when the goal of the lesson is quite separate from the basic drawing and our time is so limited that I have little choice. But if presented with a blank page, my elderly dementia sufferers are lost, even if I place a pencil in their hand.

With my art students, the lesson is all about developing new skills and building on previous learning. At Paddy it is about maintaining skills that are fast disappearing. What is important from their sessions is not necessarily the end result (a completed work of art that is all their own work), but rather the social process of being there - enjoying the feel of the materials, marvelling at the lovely colour combinations, having a laugh, and feeling good about what they have accomplished.

It has taken me some time to get my head around this, and to embrace the colouring sheet concept for Paddy.

For our goldfish pictures I made a colouring-sheet using Word and Clip Art. This gave my group a starting point. I gave them wax crayons to add colour (bright colours only!) Most had had enough after just a few moments, but 2 or 3 sat colouring for nearly a whole hour (June, whose picture is featured above, is one of these. She carefully selected the colours she wanted to use and sat colouring for the fish and leaves for ages!). I had planned for them to add patterns to the table cloth and perhaps a wallpaper pattern, but no-one was able to do more than colour the shapes they had on the paper. (They just do not have the fine motor skills and ability to apply pressure to get the colour strong enough.)

The real pleasure came from watching the wash of colour go on, and the transformation of their pictures with the crayon glowing in the blue wash field. There were lots of 'oohs' and 'aahs' then, so I counted this activity a great success!

Paddy Art Classes - #1 Butterflies

My lovely lovely Mum is a resident at Pademelon, a secure residence for people with dementia.

Mum is now non-verbal. She has lost nearly all her ability to care for herself, and also much of her interest in just about everything - she walks continuously and needs full assistance for every aspect of her personal care, from the time she wakes up to the moment she goes to bed.

Despite all this, she still seems to recognise us (judging by the look on her face when I walk through the door) and is still quick with a laugh. She loves to dance and gives kisses freely - she is a joy to be with, and she still is, as she always has been, my mum!

I've recently started doing art 'classes' with the residents at Paddy ....
For our first project I had no time at all for preparation, so I 'borrowed' it almost exactly from Kathy Barbro over at Art Projects for Kids. I saw the idea on her post Butterflies from Central Asia which featured a mural by one of Kathy's followers, using one of her butterfly designs.

We completed our butterflies as two 45cm square canvases.

I provided the residents with a palette of warm colours, a blank canvas (divided roughly into quarters with a red painted line, with an overlaid square in the middle) and a large black marker drawing of a butterfly. The residents then painted them.... bearing in mind that these are people with varying degrees of advanced dementia, I had many variations in degrees of participation - from the higher functioning ladies who sat for an hour meticulously painting the butterfly, to the people with lower functioning who painted a few brush strokes as they walked past, or contributed a brush-stroke with me guiding their hand. I also needed to give lots of encouragement and suggestions for "a bit of yellow here do you think?"

We didn't need to worry about staying in the lines, as they were going to be cut out and outlined heavily with black glue.

We repeated the process the following week with a cool palette.

There was great hilarity when we spattered the backgrounds with yellow paint!

When both were complete I cut out the butterflies and glued them onto the backgrounds with Mod Podge, outlined them with black glue, then sealed everything with another coat of Mod Podge.
(Next time I will try using Elmers Rubber Cement as the glue, as the butterflies have warped a little bit.)

They are so proud of their accomplishment on this project, and I am so proud of them. Some of the 'walkers' touch them as they go past (the black glue makes a raised line that feels good). Rose and June want them to be hanging in their rooms, but we have them in the lounge for everyone to enjoy :)