Dancing Hands and Creative Souls » Art

Making Frames for Art Show

admin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:55:27 +0000

Our nursing center residents are getting paintings ready for a public art show. They needed frames. A carpenter in our town who has done alot of work in building houses, brought his tools and volunteered his time to help us make the frames. He had scraps of woodwork and even some old wooden fencing that he had routed for framing. That is what we used. They are beautiful. Now we are ready to stain them.

Spontaneous Interactive Games

admin — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:48:41 +0000

Games can happen in the moment….unplanned and wonderfully interactive. At Parkview Nursing Center many were milling around waiting for supper. I dug out a container of “things” that could be used for rhythm sounds. One was an old Ball jar of all kinds of marbles. Shaking it made a wonderful sound to go with the songs we were coming up with. It wasn’t long before Ben started taking the marbles out to see what they would sound like if you dropped them in a metal pan. Before long, the washtub that we were using for a drum ended up in the middle of the floor and the marbles were divided up and we were seeing how many could hit the tub with the marbles. If you got a hit, everyone knew it because of the wonderful sound it made. One person said, “This is just like when we were kids…having fun with whatever you could find”

Art and Grief

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:00:34 +0000

James usually sits quietly in a wheelchair in the lounge with us while we do creative things. He participates by watching. Though a vibrant and verbally expressive man at one time, he is now unable to talk much. Like many, he is grieving loss. His daughter died unexpectedly. The tears drop one by one.
I was starting to clean up the paint and put away the easels one evening. James was still there.
“Do you want to paint this time? No one is here and you can be on your own.” I explained to him that it didn’t have to be “something”. It could be emotions and colors. He could paint in the moment. That is what he did. He painted in the moment. He spent over an hour, painting and watching to see what the colors would do. He ended up with a nonobjective but very expressive painting.

Art for your Pocket

admin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:49:54 +0000

I was given some art trading cards from some artists at an art show. Each little drawing was the size of a baseball card and was an original. I think it is great to trade art, but I really have enjoyed carrying those cards around and sharing them with our nursing center patients when they are just sitting around. It brings a smile, conversation, reminiscence, and color/design stimulation. A quick conversation is better than none and I would rather converse on something besides the weather or the frustrations of their limitations. I now have a large bunch of empty cards and we are making our own pocket art. Why is it so much less inhibitive when you draw small? Hmmmm. Pictured are some we have made.

Group Painting on Large Canvas

admin — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:31:51 +0000

It’s the “Galaxy of the Horse”. That is the name we came up with after a group painting session (10 wheelchair patients) done to the tune of the “Hallelujah Chorus”. It all began with a canvas and paint in the middle of our church time at the nursing center. “How can we reflect the “glory of God” on one large canvas”, I asked. Rainbows, fireworks, angels singing, the universe were amongst the many suggestions. We decided as a group to paint our rendition of the universe. The assignment was for each person to take one to two minutes painting with whatever color they liked and brush the strokes to the beat as I played “The Messiah”. By the time we were done, a horse started emerging. It was finished with a bridle and an eye and we had what I consider a masterpiece. If you want to see it in person, bring your sunglasses!

Art and Limericks Combined

admin — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 02:04:57 +0000

Jesse was working on a portrait and learning how to blend flesh colors so it looked real. Let’s practice on a snowman, I said, as I started mixing blue, red, yellow, and white to make a nice flesh color. I painted the outline of a snow man and filled it in and started blending in darker colors so the snowman looked rounded out. We ended up with what looked like a flesh colored snow man, that we decided to call “the naked snowman”. There were others sitting around the table. What a perfect topic and time for a limerick. We came up with rhyming words together and then put sentences to go with them. We posted it for everyone to enjoy.

There once was a naked snowman
Who wanted to get a suntan
He went out in the sun
And thought he’d have fun
But it wasn’t a very good plan.

Group Collage

admin — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 01:52:03 +0000

I walked into the dining room of our long-term care unit and 3 or our residents signalled me to come over to their table.
“We would like to do a painting of the Last Supper.” one said.
I cringed when I thought about the detail. As we talked about it, we decided to do a collage using self-portraits and give it a little different twist.
“Jesus is in us.” another one said. “That means he will still be in the picture.”
We started doing self-portraits and placing them on the paper. We then used fabric scraps to glue on for clothing. We went through stacks of magazines to find just the right food for the table which was covered with a tablecloth made from the cloth napkins we use in the dining room. Pictured is what we came up with! Look for the cats. Along with one dog, they integrated 5 cats into the collage.

Painting Brings a Smile

admin — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 02:33:43 +0000

He wandered the facility troubled….didn’t know what to do. We put the easel up and placed his two bears on a chair. He loves those bears. In a few days he had a wonderful bear portrait and was smiling more

Spontaneous Drumming

admin — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:29:36 +0000

Mary Lou circles the building up and down all day long using her walker.
“Come and sit down,” I said, as I pulled up a chair at one of the dining room tables.
I knew she liked rhythm. I also knew that she played the piano for years and is constantly drumming her fingers in some kind of rhythm.
I placed a drum in front of her and gave her both drumsticks. I played a rhythm on the table and she played one back. We experimented with the natural rhythm of words, using songs and rhymes from childhood like “Pease Porridge Hot”. We tapped the rhythms without the words. As we drummed, more and more songs were popping into our heads.
“Listen to THIS one!” I said with gusto.
“What about THIS one!” Mary Lou would say.
We started drawing a crowd. I handed a tamborine to one of them and a shaker to another and before long, we had a rhythm band. It was made up of those who normally would not participate in organized activities. We sang. We talked. We laughed, and we listened to the overall effect of many instruments.

Maximum Living Magazine

admin — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:59:25 +0000

ARTICLE FOR Maximum Living Magazine