docent – Water :: Earth :: Wind

KidWorks 2014 at the Holter Museum of Art — A circle of hands is how it felt for me, as I helped with *KidWorks!* alongside the volunteers, my fellow docents and staff of the Holter Museum of Art. We needed everyone to make it work.

Last Saturday, the Holter Museum of Art held KidWorks! — it’s 23rd annual arts festival for kids. What a blast!! I had an amazing opportunity to help put on this fun event and boy was it alot of work. Yet, when we opened the doors of the museum at 10:00 am, just like Connie, Judy, Sondra and Hannah told me, the festival took care of itself. A gigantic bulldozer of little kids and and their significant adults moved through the museum playing, delighting, learning, appreciating, thoroughly enjoying themselves and getting a messy education in the wonderment of art.

For me — as a docent — it was incredibly fun (I hardly stopped smiling except when I was concentrating,) extremely exhausting (the tables were set to little kid height and my back hurt like hell at the end of the day) but so, so fulfilling to share my enthusiasm about art with this many kids and their peeps.

I absolutely loved witnessing the diversity of approaches. Every child, has a unique way of seeing the world and expressing what they see! As docents, we have to Let Go of Results and Outcomes. Allow Mess. Delight in Oops. Multi-task-yet-Focus. Smile. Laugh. Make Eye Contact. Then. Clean. Up.

Well … it seems at the Holter, “docent” is a fancy word for a volunteer who:

works really hard
has lots of fun with peers and with the public
stays longer than expected to clean up the mess
knows how to laugh and goof
loves to share his/her passion for the arts
gets training to use Visual Thinking Strategy in educational museum tours
has a lot of energy (enough to keep up with kids of all ages!)
has an awesome opportunity to guide kids, teens and adults in appreciating art through tours and hands-on activities
can think on her/his feet, improvising when necessary
doesn’t mind getting down and messy
knows that every individual’s experience and ideas are valid
helps organize and put on the biggest and best kids’ arts festival anywhere around
then watches the magic happen as our doors open to over 800 participants

that’s alot to pack into one 6-letter word!

The Holter docents I have the privilege to work with, are a diverse group: outgoing, intelligent, friendly and helpful to new members of the team. We are all willing to learn from our mistakes and educate ourselves continuously so we are the best “art guides” the Holter could possibly have. It helps that we have some docents who are great leaders — super organized and experienced. It also helps that the educational staff (Sondra, Aubrey and Hannah) are so enthusiastic about their jobs. I have about half of the skills I need, to be an amazing docent. I’m working on the rest. But boy, was it fun, fun fun to help make KidWorks! happen.

Sorry about the photo-intensive post today. I just couldn’t resist! There were so many sweet moments and precious connections made during KidWorks! that I can’t resist posting these. Below is a gallery with a few more images from the festival.

If you attended KidWorks, or volunteered at the festival, won’t you write a short (or long) comment to say how you experienced it? Thank you!

What is a Docent? Not What You Might Think

Well, I took the plunge and became a docent at our local art museum. Today was a day to get over some of my own stereotypes. Being a docent is something I have wanted to do for a long time, but hesitated because somehow I didn’t identify myself in the group of people who a) had time to volunteer, b) knew the right people or c) had a fabulously rich spouse.

With encouragement from a couple of acquaintances, I dove in and came up swimming. Imagine my surprise to find out that you don’t have to be a well-connected housewife to be a docent. I wonder where I acquired that stereotype? At my first docent meeting, I felt welcomed and valued. There are all kinds of people in this group of volunteers and I look forward to getting to know them and feeling comfortable in my role.

So … what is a docent? Sondra Hines, the Educational Coordinator at the Holter Museum, asked the kids in a school tour if they knew. They didn’t. Neither did I. I was glad she didn’t ask me. A docent is a volunteer trained to share their enthusiasm and knowledge of visual arts with all ages, and to encourage them to experience art in ways that are not available in classrooms. Basically a different kind of educator.

My First Day as a Docent: learning from the students

So, jumping right in, I had a blast with 19 sixth graders today — first, listening to them explore and think critically about “Counting Coup” a warrior made of pieces of rusty car wrecks by Jay Laber. Then, watching how easily Sondra channeled their curiosity and insights. The Holter Museum uses Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) in all tours. After observing Sondra use VTS so fluently, I am excited to learn this method of stimulating more engagement with art. I will write more about VTS as I improve my skills.

After the tour of Laber’s art, we made wire-and-stuff- sculptures. One girl struggled with her skeleton of copper wire and tossed it aside because it just wasn’t doing what she had in mind. She began again a second time with wire so thick that even I couldn’t help her bend it the way she wanted it to bend. I suggested trying the copper wire again. Nope. Didn’t want to. She knew what she wanted, and was going to stick to her strategy no matter what anyone suggested. Reminded me of myself. Stubborn. In the end, she had a spare figure and ran out of time. She had struggled with this really heavy unbending wire in her wish to show it who was boss.

One lesson I think many of the kids came away with was that even if you start out thinking you are making a certain something … the wire and other bits will eventually dictate what you are making… your idea may change from a cat to a chicken. Or from a horse to a spaceship. Or you might take the easy way out, announcing that you have made an abstract sculpture.

Time compresses when you are having fun. Or working on something challenging. Or trying to help six different kids simultaneously. Time compresses especially in the last five minutes of a workshop. You suddenly realize you have a head, two arms and not much else because you have obsessed and perfectionized about a certain placement of the feet or making sure the legs are the exact same length. Meanwhile, your table-mate has willy-nilly twisted, tied, dangled and wrapped his wire with buttons, washers, bolts, window screen, feathers and pieces of nylon cloth. And come up with something remarkably resembling a wild and crazy alley cat.

Steal Like an Artist

Different styles of work and play.
Different ways of seeing the same materials.
We all look at life in a different way.

I recently read a little book titled “Steal Like an Artist.” It’s simple. Compelling. And I read it in the time it took my toes to wrinkle like prunes in the bathtub. The idea that humans are incapable of copying perfectly, stuck with me from the book. Copy copy copy. You will never make the same exact something someone else has made. The students used much the same materials, and some of them emulated Laber’s sculptures (warriors, horses, a buffalo) yet their amazing creations were so much a part of the creators that I marveled at their creativity.

Tag: docent

Kids’ Arts Festival from the Perspective of a Docent

Docenting: Learning as You Go