INVITING YOUR INNER CHILD OUT TO PLAY: CREATIVE INVITATIONS
Have you ever wondered why it’s so easy for a child to pick up a paintbrush or a crayon and simply start to create without any fear or anxiety about the blank page ahead of them? How is it so easy for them to tap into their creative energy and begin to work, experiment, and create not only quickly but also joyfully? It is because drawing is one of a child’s first languages, just as a baby babbles before he speaks, a child scribbles before he draws recognizable shapes and representations. However, somewhere along the way, we all lose that sense of freedom.
Usually, around adolescence, as we become less engaged in our inner worlds and start looking outward for validation, as soon as we start to compare, the joy becomes rooted in the product of our work, how “good” it is – and we lose the ability to treasure the joy of the process. We forget the good in the doing as we are so focused on how others will view our work once it is “done.” I have spent much of my career wrestling with this truth, and through my work with young children I have discovered that we never truly lose our ability to speak that language, our inner child still speaks it fluently. ~Raven Juarez
EVENT DETAILS
Friday, February 9, 2024 | 5:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Gould Hall | Room 322
Born and based in Seattle, Raven Juarez is a contemporary native artist, teacher, and presenter. Juarez attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY, and spent a year abroad in Florence, Italy, to study painting, drawing, and print-making as well as Italian art and film history. She graduated in 2013 with a BA in the liberal arts, with concentrations in Child Psychology/Development and Visual Arts. Raven’s work is characterized by intricate designs blending the abstract into symbolic meaning to tell her stories. Created in a process Raven describes as “conversations with herself”, her pieces offer a glimpse into her subconscious and conscious wantings, wonderings, memories, and dreams.
Alongside her art career, Raven has been working as an Early Childhood Educator for the last decade, sharing her love of the arts with very young children and introducing them to a wide variety of art forms, materials, and mediums. Observing young children at work mark-making, painting, sculpting, and arranging loose parts and natural materials has informed most of Raven’s most interesting and rewarding pieces of art, and Raven credits her young students for inspiring her to think more freely, experiment, play and create her unique style and aesthetic which she is now known for in the arts community.
More details about our Drawing in Design workshop series can be found here: https://larch.be.uw.edu/portfolio/drawing-in-design/