Making an Art Cart

ART WORKSHOP, the new book by Barbara Rucci with essays by Betsy McKenna, has so many wonderful ideas for colorful projects with children. The focus of these process oriented projects is for kids to explore the materials in a non pressure way developing their own curiosity, creativity and vocabulary.

There are a lot of things I like about this book, but what I was first taken by ( besides the luscious images) was how articulate this book is on supporting the making of art at home with your kids and creating an easily accessible space for your children to do so.

Excerpt from Art Workshop-
In the art room, Children work with their hands and innovate. The colorful and inviting materials feed their imagination and the dedicated space gives them  the freedom to explore their ideas. Open- ended creativity in the art room empowers our children to mess about, take risks and discover that they have good original ideas. -

This is such a thoughtful and invigorating way to think of the importance of children having the freedom to make art at home.

Okay so you may know this but I teach art to children ages 2-11 and since I have opened the Purple Twig studio here in LA I have not given my children much support in creating art at home. Now I am always bringing materials home from the studio when we have a big project in mind like making something for a class at school or for the holidays but not on an everyday spontaneous level.

Barbara talks about creating both permanent and temporal spaces for children own art materials so they can bring them out when the kids are so inclined. My home is quite small so I really responded to the idea of an art cart that the kids could wheel around from room to room ( well hopefully to wheel outside to create works of art since we are in Southern California).  I found this cart at IKEA and is what Barbara uses in the book, but any kind of device cart would do. I loaded it with the kinds of things my children art interested in.

Drawing materials are always a must to have and my children love watercolor so I filled the cart with watercolor pencils and paints and paper,  as well as, colored charcoal for drawing, paints and I found this old fish tackle box at a flea market which fit perfectly on the cart and fit all kinds of beads and bobbles in it.

They love the ease of wheeling it around to where they want ,and with my encouragement, outside.

I really can not tell you how excited I am by now having this in my home. I was taking the fact that my kids make so much art with me at the studio for granted. They love and needed an art cart at home.  If you are looking for something to distract your children from a screen, this is a fantastic idea.

For more information about the book go to artbarblog or just buy the book on Amazon