Maker Blog

How it started

When my children were very young (to my husband’s dismay) I turned our small apartment in Queens into a mini atelier.  I had all kinds of materials and tools readily accessible to them to use whenever inspiration struck. 

To quote David Lynch:  

“Ideas are the number one best thing going and .. we don’t really create an idea, we catch them, like fish.  We get an idea and it is like a seed and in our mind the idea is seen and felt and it explodes…Then the thing is translating that to some medium…” 

When we moved to Maplewood, it became clear that dance was my girls’ creative medium of choice.  So I filled our garage with the stuff I had been trying to force on my kids, scouted out a few makers from the community, and VOILA:  Oakland Rd. Art Club was born.  

How it’s going

What makes Oakland Rd. Art Club (or “Art Garage”, as the kids call it) unique is the focus on collaboration, experimentation, and the messy, time-consuming process of figuring stuff out through trial and error.  The only “lesson” I teach is that when you trust your inner compass and explore what draws you in, you'll discover your own specific and personal creative vision.  

When makers envision something they want to create, they're naturally motivated to learn the skills they need to bring it to life.  My role, as I see it, is not to tell them what to do but to help them acquire the skills THEY want to learn and to motivate them to work through and around roadblocks and material limitations.  By working with donated and repurposed materials, children learn to embrace the unexpected and develop flexible thinking.  It’s not always pretty, but it’s THEIRS.

Art After Dark

My Friday evening Art After Dark workshops are for the 12 and up crowd, and they are a great way for kids to engage in a setting in which the focus is on making stuff, without the pressure of direct social interaction.  For newly-minted middle school kids or any kid who finds it difficult to make friends in the socially volatile setting of school, Art After Dark provides a materials-first environment where social connections develop naturally through shared creative exploration.