2021-22 Sherman Fairchild Fellow Shiloah Coley interviews some of our youngest artists about the work they made at Art Investigators: Phillips@THEARC Summer Camp.
Our investigators hard at work at District Clay Center during their field trip
In August, The Phillips Collection hosted Art Investigators Summer Camp, offering the 8-12-year-old participants the opportunity to ask questions, make art, and take fun field trips to The Phillips Collection and District Clay Center free of cost with two sessions available, one each week.
The investigators participated in art activities, exposing them to a variety of mediums while at the Phillips@THEARC. The activities ranged from making paint to organizing their work for a show at the end of the week. Many of the pieces the kids made built on each other as they drew inspiration from still lifes for sculptures and then created photographs and paintings from those sculptures. On field trip days, our young artists toured The Phillips Collection and learned different ways of working with clay in partnership with Community Clay! by the District Clay Center, which brings clay and ceramics to the youth of DC, with a focus on Wards 7 and 8.
We caught up with some of the artists to ask them about their favorite investigations.
Meet Chioma!
Chioma exhibiting her work at Phillips@THEARC
Q: Of all the pieces you made, can you show me which one is your favorite? Can you describe it to me?
A: I like the sculptures, and the one I’m making right now is a collage about my sculptures.
Chioma works on a painting alongside her sculptures
Q: This camp is called Art Investigators. Can you think of anything you have investigated? What is something new that you have discovered?
A: The clay that you bake in the oven and how they mold the clay on the spinning wheel. When I was working with the baked clay, I saw that it had to dry for longer and you had to paint it a different way than regular clay.
Meet Neveah!
Neveah holds up a photograph she took
Q: Of all the pieces you made, can you show me which one is your favorite? Can you describe it to me?
Neveah rolls out her clay at District Clay Center
A: My favorite is the coil. You have to roll out the coil. I like the teapot thing, so you roll it up in a circle and then you put your thumb into it and you gotta put both of your thumbs in to flatten it out and push your thumb down to the bottom. Then, you gotta put the teacup holder thing, and then it’s a teacup.
Q: Why is it your favorite?
A: Because it looks like it’s real, and it looks like I really want to drink out of it!
Meet Our Art Investigator!
Our Art Investigator displays her painting connected to her sculptures
Q: Of all the pieces you made, can you show me which one is your favorite? Can you describe it to me?
A: We went to the clay center. We got to make our own sculptures like a still life so I decided to make a pitcher, that was on one of my images and that was my favorite. First, it was pretty hard to do it, but there are these things called coils that you roll and that’s what I used to make the pitcher. I made a bunch of texture on it to give it a pretty old look because in the image I was looking at, the picture was not like a modern picture, it was very old. So I tried to make it like that… I think it’s my favorite because I really like working with clay.
Photograph of our art investigator’s pitcher and mugs
Q: How are your works of art connected? Do they have anything in common?
A: Yes, so I ended up making two more items which were a coil pot and a pinch pot that were just like practice. But when I made the pitcher, I kind of understood that could be connected because it was a little mug (the pinch pot), and I could use it for the pitcher to pour a drink in the mug so I made this little strip of water out of clay to make it look like it was pouring out water and the coil pot actually did the same thing. I painted the inside of the mug and coil pot like a blue and dark blue to be able to look like it was pouring water into it.