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Creative Art Experiences that Refine the Hand for Handwriting

As the young child journeys toward being a writer, several experiences develop her hand-strength and coordination. Many of these can be found in the art area.

Drawing and Coloring


A multitude of drawing media exists for the young child. He can sketch with a pencil, then color it in with colored pencils. Thin and thick markers allow for vibrant colors. Crayons can be peeled or unpeeled, and provide a sensory experience in conjunction with an artistic one. There are different shapes, sizes, and styles of crayons available. Cray-pas and oil pastels are also available, for color mixing fun. All of these drawing media require a grip like you use when writing. The require a degree of control for the drawing to make any sense. Often a child also wishes to start incorporating words into his drawing, and labeling it.

Painting

The child who uses a paintbrush has to learn a proper grip in order to control it. Start with thick, stubby brushes, then gradually introduce thinner ones. Thicker paintbrushes are easier to control; thinner paintbrushes require greater dexterity. Painting requires a lot of whole arm motion, as well as some finer finger work. The more the child practices, the more control she gains.

Drawing on a Chalkboard

Drawing on a chalkboard requires the same arm movements and grip as painting. Large arm movements can be used to draw large shapes and lines on the board that will later be replicated in finer detail with pencil and paper. It's also a great place to practice writing large letters. Similar skills can be attained by using markers on paper at an easel or dry erase markers on a dry erase board.

Painting a Rock

A child refines small find motor skills as he paints a rock. Choose a small, colorful rock and let the child use a thin watercolor brush to paint the rock with water. The color of the rock will change as it is "painted". When it dries, it is like a blank canvas on which to start over. The fine strokes that "color" the rock are reminiscent of those used in writing.

Cutting with Scissors

It’s paradoxical to cite Turner and Blake while simultaneously praising Brace for her “rapturous virtuosity” and condemning her for being monotonous and courting kitsch. After all, in his search to express the “complex mysteries of intuition and imagination,” Turner deployed his own rapturous virtuosity on what was basically the same subject matter over and over again (a charge that, to cite an early example of an artist who attempted to capture a complex mystery through subtle iterations, one might level at Bellini for all of those Madonna and Child variations, and so on throughout the history of art—how many versions of Ocean Park did Diebenkorn really need to paint?). As for the charge of evoking kitsch, it’s of course nonrefutable—it relies wholly on the sensibility of the observer to find a work sentimental and cheap. Mizota looks at Blake and finds an “ecstatic light” where I find ludicrous adolescent faux profundity. Similarly, if the critic finds the present drawings monotonous, there’s no arguing with her perceptions, but it serves no purpose to cloak them in a language that’s ill fitted to transforming her subjective reaction into something to which the rest of us should be expected to assent.

Rather than monotonous, I see Brace as an obsessive explorer returning to territory she intuits has secrets to reveal if only she could get at them—which in fact is what connects her to Turner and other searchers of the sublime. As some have noted, the line between the sublime and kitsch can be thin, but to this beholder at least, Brace has kept well to the side of rapture and wonder.

New, unseen works, both portraits and landscapes, pepper the presentation. But they zoom by, practically unnamed, as though the audience wouldn't care to examine them, much less know details like titles or years.

And they’re lost in a tour that emphasizes Kahlo’s sordid suffering -- her crippling trolley accident, the humiliations of marriage to the philandering Diego Rivera, her debilitating string of unsuccessful surgeries. A marvelous early portrait of Rivera, Kahlo’s lifelong subject and foil, inspires Luke’s commentary that “a portrait like this could only come from love.” A more painterly analysis of why scholars and critics now figure Kahlo's portraits among the greats of art history would lend more insight. 

Reinforcing the mystique around Kahlo, the woman, is Luke's fascination for her fashion statements (one of her real dresses hangs in a glass display case on the Ford’s picnic grounds), and his claim that Kahlo, who dressed in both mannish suits and the feminine folkloric rebozo, invested as much energy into her persona as her art. This well-shared interpretation insidiously devalues her art.

Previously unseen film footage is also on view. A fetching black-and-white film shows Kahlo sketching, an extraordinarily beautiful woman, jet-black hair coiled in neat braids under a chic hat that hugs her small head. But there we go again, lapsing into Kahlo-mania! 

Local area students from Central Los Angeles High School #9 joined four visiting performers from Mexico’s Taller Coreografico de la Unam in a show-opening danced homage. Mexican dance maker Gloria Contreras’s symmetrical choreography has a dated, unadventurous feel, but Olga Rodriguez excelled in her expressive, “Magdalena.” Rina Lazo and Arturo García Bustos, two of Kahlo’s surviving students (“Los Fridos”) contributed memories. The crowd’s many happy Frida-ites, some in colorful costume, circulated the Ford grounds.

-- Debra Levine

Gregorio Luke at the "Ford: Frida, a New Look," John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, Saturday, 8 p.m.

Photos: Gregorio Luke, in front of a portrait of Frida Kahlo, and Central Los Angeles High School No. 9 with Mexican dancer Alfredo Garcia. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times.