- Me, My Grandma and Grandpa
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- Exhibit bridges generations
as prelude to
Young Artists Exhibit, Children's Festival
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- By Mike Youds
Daily News Staff Reporter
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- For the past year, Gisela Harrison
and her six-year old grandson Jesse Mohr have been doing artwork
together.
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- "I'm an art teacher, so
he was always involved with clay work," Harrison says. "and
he always liked drawing."
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- The collaboration naturally
evolved into something that Harrison felt was worth putting on
display, especially as a leader in the Community Arts Council's
Young Artists Exhibit, which runs from this coming Thursday to
Wednesday, Sept. 19, and the council's annual Children's Festival,
which takes place Sept. 16.
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- The pair discussed the possibility
and the result is Me, My Grandma and Grandpa, a unique exhibition
currently on show at the Cunliffe Gallery in Riverside Park.
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- Brightly coloured, imaginatively
- adorned array of shapes and
representative figures, the show is both heartwarming and inspirational
It offers parents and teachers
- a few ideas for their own artistic
endeavours
- with children.
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- And it's fun.
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- "Art is play," Gisela
says. "We were having fun. We were playing. When we got
too serious, at that point it has to be cut off says Gisela.
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- "But at the same time,
you can't condescend," she adds.
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- With a little prodding, Jesse
leads the reporter on a tour of his creations.
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- "This is me climbing. I'm
climbing the mountain," he says of one piece with glazed
footprints weaving up the work on either side
- of a rope.
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- Another piece, aptly titled
Jacob's Ladder, shows a boy climbing a ladder.
This is my bunk bed and this is my brother Jacob (18 months).
He sleeps on the bottom and he likes to climb the ladder, so
I made
- this foam at the bottom so he
couldn't bet hurt."
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- Another piece is called And
Then My Grandma Broke the Ball. It's a ceramic cast of a medicine
ball.
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- It took forever to paint and
on the way to the kiln it fell and broke to bits, so I just patched
it up," Gisela says.
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- While she provided the creative
environment and some of the initial ideas, Jesse began to assert
greater creative influence as they progressed.
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- "I withdrew more and more
as we went along," says Gisela, who has taught art at the
high school level for the past 31 years. "I may have had
an idea but he would totally change it, and since he came first…"
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- Jesse's Grandpa, Donovan Harrison,
is a Web master and enjoys digital photography. His computer
enhancements of photographs taken by Jesse lend another aspect
to the exhibit, illustrating the range of effects available through
software programs such as Adobe Photoshop. One series of images
show the Photoshop image alongside of Jesse's imaginative adaptation
of the art.
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- "He loves colour,"
Gisela says of the boy's creativity. " He loves mixing the
colours."
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- At the end of the tour, she
shows two ceramic turtles.
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- "He had just turned five
when he did this," Gisela says. "The other was done
by his mother when she was five."
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- At this point, distracted, Jesse
has picked up a hammer and is about o to tap a nail into the
gallery wall.
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- "Jesse, we have to decide
where everything goes, we can't just do nails," his grandmother
says.
- "It's really nice to kind
of share the same interest. I think that's the real fun of it,"
Gisela concludes.
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- "I think that kids still
love doing art, and especially if you encourage them. The love
has to be there and the rest will come."
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