Body Art, or How to Design a New Art Experience

The three variables of a typical ‘decorative’ art project (as opposed to sculptural or performance or…) are the type of media, applicator, and base.

The media can be tempera, watercolor, crayons, markers, pencils, wax, dye, glue and glitter, paper scraps, tiles, mud, stickers, beads, sand, rice, pasta, gravel, leaves, acorns, feathers (the collage materials category is practically endless)…

The applicator can be fingers, brushes, crayons (media and applicator), match box cars, bubble wrap, aluminum foil, sticks, feathers, string, nails, forks, rubber bands, feet, straws (blowing or dragging), bicycles…

The base can be the driveway, canvas, windows, sand paper, cardboard, contact paper, eggs, rocks, aluminum foil, cloth, balloons, any object you can think of, twenty types of boring old paper large and small, or one of Rebecca’s favorites, the body.

It can be fascinating to list all the art materials you can think of, some in more than one category, and then marvel at the massive number of possible ways you can combine them, (media * applicator * base = a lot!). Post the list next to your paint storage, and then the next time you are tired of paint+brush+paper you can pick one from each column and set out an entirely new project. I think the really fascinating child-art blog posts are always ones that put together a media, applicator and base that I’ve never considered combining before. Hot rocks and crayons? Using paper cups or toilet paper tubes as circular paint applicators? Painting shaving cream? Crayons on sand paper? Blowing bubbles dyed with liquid watercolors onto paper? ‘How to make a caterpillar out of an egg carton’ is fun, but there is nothing like an open ended exploration project using a combination I’ve never thought of before to blow my mind and expand our artistic horizons.

Here are some tables, would you like to help me expand them?

Obviously not all of these combinations work! But some that you think wouldn’t at first glance, if you think about it a bit more you can figure something out. Chalk and bicycles? Well, you *could* run over the chalk, but you could also try tying it onto your bike frame.