Artasia at Our Lady of Mount Carmel

It was very rewarding for me to deliver programming for the children at HWCCCC Our Lady of Mount Carmel over the course of five weeks. Throughout these sessions, I feel as though I’ve learned a lot about every individual child, as well as the collective pressures they all seem to experience in our day and age, simply through the process of art-making. 

I noticed that a lot of kids in this age group (~6-12) lacked some self-confidence in not only their art-making abilities but also in their capacities to come up with new, creative ideas. I’m not sure what caused such hesitancy, but I made it a priority of mine from the outset of my site visits to help them build their confidence, and I believe we made some great collective progress along the way.

On Week 4 our activity was to make wearable art, and this one girl was delighted that she was not restricted to making clothing items for herself – she could make clothing for her new stuffed animal, too! Together we made her stuffy a shirt, a hat, and even a bicycle helmet! One thing that especially stood out to me was the kids’ reactions to my bag full of scrap fabrics. On a few separate occasions, they would ask me questions such as “why did you bring garbage here?” and “do you want me to throw these out?”. I explained to them that objects were only “garbage” when we decide they are “garbage,” and that just because an item has been used doesn’t mean that it needs to be thrown away. Some of them were completely floored by this idea, and though this was surprising for me to witness, their reactions tell me that they were truly listening to me and were receptive to new ideas.

Lauren Misiaszek