Family Art Nights have been a vital part of P.S. ARTS’ Community Engagement program since 2010. Almost every week of the school year, families come together for a free, hands-on art activity hosted by P.S. ARTS and led by our talented teaching artists at our various partner schools throughout Southern and Central California.
The Family Art Night art project always reflects P.S. ARTS’ unifying theme for the school year. This year’s theme, “All The Colors I Am Inside,” is based on our literary masterwork “Colors,” a poem by Shel Silverstein. We love that this poem reminds students that there is so much inside of them that may not have been discovered yet. It also teaches us that we can’t judge someone by the way that they look and that everyone has so many different qualities and colors layered just below the surface.
Mark Bradford is a contemporary artist from Los Angeles, and his paintings are a perfect example of the way that art, like people, can have many layers. He puts layers upon layers of images and words from magazines, trash, and other bits of paper onto canvas. Then, he paints over them — scratching and sanding away at the surface to reveal bits and pieces of the colors and images underneath the paint.
The Secret Colors project utilizes some of Bradford’s unique techniques. After practicing how to sketch a self-portrait, families cover a sheet of paper with the colors that represent them. It might seem counterintuitive at first, but the next step is to coat the entire sheet of paper with black paint. The final step is to scratch off the paint to create a self-portrait and reveal the hidden colors underneath. The result is a colorful yet mysterious self-portrait that utilizes unconventional art-making techniques; by doing a project that uses paint in a way that’s out of the ordinary, we hope to encourage our students and families to celebrate their unique and diverse identities.
At P.S. ARTS, we truly believe that one of the best ways to learn about the importance of arts education is to make art! Family Art Nights offer people of all ages the opportunity to integrate art into their daily lives by coming together as a community and creating with their loved ones.
For more at-home projects, please visit psarts.org/to-go
