preliminary play in the art class

National Art Education Association

Preliminary Play in the Art ClassAuthor(s): George SzekelySource: Art Education, Vol. 36, No. 6 (Nov., 1983), pp. 18-24Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192644 .

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Preliminary Play in

George Szekely

The Value of Preliminary Play

he element of playfulness that characterizes all creative investigation helps the artist generate new ideas and sus-

tain the freedom necessary to plan and execute works of art. Because children's imagination thrives on play, it can be used to help them create thoughtful and exciting works of their own. When play is used to introduce each art lesson, students can draw ideas from their own experience instead of narrowly following the teacher's lead. Their self-esteem enhanced, they will truly let go and risk trying something new. Initial play can be used not only to present a new concept but also to actively involve the class in its consideration. Thus, the students discover the meaning of each lesson by rethinking, from a personal perspective, the problem that the lesson presents.

Whether it is a quick and simple exercise like making faces in the mirror before drawing a face or a more involved experiment with objects or spaces, initial play resembles the act of creation itself, for it includes such processes as taking apart, putting together, selecting, sorting, and fin- ding new relationships. It is both a preparation for the making of actual artworks and a process that continues throughout that making, helping to enlarge and clarify them. In fact, play is the basis for early childhood learning. Unfortunately, formal education shifts the emphasis to the mastering of facts and ideas received from others. Instead of mimicking academic subjects, art teachers should license and indeed encourage play. Teaching art should never be reduced to the teacher's conception of what is good for children, what they want to learn, and what ideas they should com- municate. Art lessons that are sprung on students at the beginning of each

class cannot be expected to generate an enthusiastic response, for a planned lesson has already determined what the students should learn about art instead of involving them in the process of art itself. Only when art instruction is planned around play experience do children go beyond the teacher's presentation and learn how to discover and plan for themselves. For their art ideas to develop, children need time to experiment. They need the opportunity not only to absorb each lesson but also to examine its objective, altering it, restating it, and possibly even rejecting it.

After developing the lesson's objectives, the art teacher should next consider what play experience will allow the students to respond most fully to these objectives. Being creative cannot be demanded or simply turned on or off. To draw a scene from heaven, for instance, needs preparation through movement, props, and actions so that one can act and feel "heavenly." Each play experience should be designed to elicit a wide range of responses from all the students. As they play out the lesson, they will make the goals of that lesson their own. The students should also be encouraged to develop their objectives. They should sort through the possibilities and consider in depth the complexities of each assignment.

Art teachers may begin with the ex- ploratory play they have devised and follow with a lecture or begin with a lecture to be worked on for play. When play starts a lesson, the students are already involved and ready for the lecture that is to follow. Play is designed to follow the introductory remarks, clarify initial discussions, and develop personal significance from a general statement. As the students work out the possible solutions to an art problem, they find the materials, processes, and means of furthering it in an artwork.

Most art teachers believe that fully experiencing the art process is more important than dwelling on the product. Yet play is necessary not only during the artmaking process but before it. Play begins with the planning of each work. Preliminary play is the initial

research, the necessary investigation, the important shifting of materials and ideas, the experiencing of movements and images through which most of the important decisions about the artwork are made. The more significant this preliminary activity and the more ex- tensive the decisions made during it, the more clearly and confidently we can begin to formulate the direction the work will take. To experience fully the artmaking process, children need a chance to actually formulate plans of their own instead of merely carrying out someone else's. They must also learn to select the materials and space for the project and to recognize the possible solutions to an artistic challenge. As art teachers, we need to be less concerned with the clarity and simplicity of our own presentation than with giving children the opportunity to express themselves.

Play simply inspires artworks. Hav- ing created a series of beautiful struc- tures or made numerous interesting shadows, a child may be inspired to select the best and make it permanent as a work of art. The work may be developed in the same or in a different medium or dimension than was used in the play it derives from. As children keep track of their play-generated ideas and select from them, they begin to see artmaking as the generation of possibilities. The most satisfying works are those created by experienced players who have learned from their play experiences what can be most effectively translated or applied further.

Each new play generates numerous ideas, presents a variety of images, ac- cumulates numerous collections, and encourages choices. Different play can work out the obvious in a visual format or reveal the beauty of what seems simple. They can also help children to grasp ideas that are complex, unusual, or unexpected. Whereas the finished artwork is a limited format inhibiting the arena for investigation and experiments, play allows an active, involved search through concrete forms, many of which would be too difficult to previsuali7e without such searching. Playing out unclear or abstract art ideas with real forms allows a thorough

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the Art Class

understanding of it. Each artwork is a culmination or summary of the numerous visions and ideas generated during the artmaking process and thus can be viewed as a summary of many play experiences. Just as play allows the mature artist to discover beautiful col- or, space, or lines before structuring them into an artwork, it allows children to see what is interesting about a hose, the lines of a slinky toy, or the changing lines of an extension cord. Play thus becomes a means of observing and rehearsing so that a better, more informed use of these elements can be made. If play precedes creation, there is a chance to eliminate many of the surprises.

Students involved in preliminary play have greater patience through greater involvement in preliminary decisions in a format that they know will not be graded or judged. For them, play is thus a pressure-free experience. When the amount of time spent on preliminary play is added to the time spent in creating the artwork, the amount of time and effort spent in working through the piece of art is in- creased significantly. This in turn greatly increases the number of choices a student can make.

Learning that any material, object, or space may be played with to study art ideas expands the student's notion of what art is and what art can be made from. The manipulation of almost any object prepares the player mentally and physically for the artwork itself. All types of familiar objects can be used to inspire the creation of a variety of lines and forms. These objects are best when reminiscent of the open structuring of play blocks. Therefore, a box of stickers, straws, paper clips, or rubber bands may be used as convenient tools for building and displaying ideas that may then be recorded through drawings. Children need to realize that artists can play with anything that's around. Chairs, books, or pencils can therefore be as useful as blocks or Legos, clay or sand to represent and work through ideas.

Play with such objects can be totally open and can range widely, from simply playing freely with them to employ- ing a number of plays designed to explore line qualities, balances, or pat- terns. Because these can also be seen as materials that can be used in making the artwork itself, the range of what students feel to be suitable materials for making art is expanded.

In choosing the objects for play, teachers should take stock of what is available in the classroom and thus quickly accessible to everyone for playful manipulations. What to use may depend on size, weight, flexibility, and ease of handling to illustrate an art concept. Children soon learn to see everything around them as possible sources for display, selection, or manipulation. After having played with most of the objects in the room, they will perceive the underlying theme of preplay experiences, that is, the artist's ability to work with his environment, to play with the spaces and objects within it. Designing a work is often a matter of controlling and defining beforehand the elements that go into it. The artist who selects and arranges objects for, say, a still life is attempting to gain control over the artwork in these preliminary steps. Similarly, children can learn to recognize the posibilities of a floor or a chair as a base, the room as a space, a wall as a background, and the people in the room as forms of movement and change, by learning to use the floor under the table, the wall, or ceiling as surfaces to build on, build from, or at- tach to, and to see the room as a painting with everything in it as a factor on the canvas.

Wide varieties of play can be used to introduce each art lesson. These plays may utilize any medium, any object, and any type of movement, including wrapping, hanging, tearing, rolling, stuffing, and crushing. Line plays, for example, may involve playing with hoses, film, tape, pipes, clips, rubber bands, or pencils. Plays can involve traditional media in the early grades and then advance in higher grades to water, sand, rags, or block plays that study the flowing, tearing, or draping qualities of materials. Plays may involve the manipulation of the environment around objects; that is, their space and the light that is reflected on or from it. They may involve acting; using props, masks, makeup, and the movement, sound, and smell of the human body. They may utilize furniture for a traditional game of playing house or can give the furniture new

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meanings and forms. A chair could become an electric chair, a barber chair, a rocking chair, a human form, or a robot with playful modifications. Store-bought toys from pickup sticks to magic drawing games to space toys, Legos and blocks could become tools for play. Creating surprises or accidents by throwing, breaking, or tearing objects can suggest new possibilities. Plays can range from building, putting together, wrapping, packaging, and ar- ranging objects to destroying, taking apart, consuming, and melting them. Objects can be reshaped, stacked, tied together, balanced or patterned, and they can be arranged in a supply closet, on its shelves, or on a clothing rack. Plays can even deal with sounds and movements by using machines such as projectors, or tape recorders as tools of art. Plays can also involve imaginary landscapes and inner visions, thereby sharpening the children's references to memory and dreams. Response of the eye to objects, movements, and color; responses to visual changes; formation of associations with images and vision; visual responses to sounds and smells; mind pictures; peripheral vision; self- perceptions; and the desire to explore dreams and the unknown are strength- ened by this kind of play.

Ideally, play is a part of each step of the creative process. Once preliminary play is completed, works in progress can be examined or furthered through playful sketches or plays with materials, and classroom works that have become stale or stuck can be given new life by moving the students through a new stage of the play. Ideas resulting from play can be discussed, elaborated, and then incorporated into the artwork. Play may proceed in stages; what has been accomplished in a previous step is subsequently reex- amined in new plays that use different surfaces, different light; and different time restraints. Children can be encouraged to build, destroy, and rebuild; to move objects around; to create new and accidental possibilities; and to create many tentative solutions. The tools of play should be kept available to them and returned whenever they feel a need to reexamine or reinspire artworks in progress. The results of play experiments should also be around the work area as a visible reference.

Whether its ending is satisfactory or unsatisfactory, a work can be made

more meaningful through play at its completion. End plays may be developed that refer to a work, help to view it more closely, summarize it, or even include it in the planning of the next piece. They help students see the work less as a final piece than as one of many possibilities that can lead to a new creation through playing. In other words, the artwork may be completed, but play is continuous.

Finally, the total artmaking process from play to finished work can together be considered the artwork. Furthermore, preliminary plays can themselves become an artwork. Each step of play can be recorded through drawings, photographs, tracings, or constructions, resulting in permanent notes that can be regarded as art.

Play experiments need to become a regular part of each art session so that students begin to see it as something they need to do on a regular basis. The fewer the barriers between the play sessions and the artwork, the more the one will assist the other. Students should not feel that play and ex- perimentation are only preparatory to making of the artwork. They should instead view play as a continuous action that takes different forms throughout the artmaking process. The challenge of art teaching is therefore to plan play experiences that keep the experimental spirit of the work alive throughout the period.

Whereas most of school learning is passive, slow, and uneventful, preliminary plays must be active, and they must use themes, processes, and materials that are of interest and pleasure to the students. Most education is prescriptive, but plays allow children to search independently without being closely monitored by the teacher. Thus, when play initiates the art period, art is separated from the rest of school life, and students are jolted out of a routine frame of mind. The teacher's playfulness can often shock students out of ordinary modes of thinking, allowing them to explore states of mind or actions more con- ducive to the art task. Plays, for example, may allow students not only to leave their desks but to work under the desks, put on strange hats, or even use their books to build monsters. In play, students pass beyond what is considered acceptable classroom behavior. They are motivated to search for the unusual and preserve a sense of

wonder, independence, and the ability to challenge accepted ideas.

An attitude of playfulness can be fostered at the beginning of an art lesson by establishing an imaginative or make-believe perspective. Children should be encouraged to see their pour- ing paint over a surface as covering a cake with icing or a pizza with sauce and their free movement when they draw as skating over ice, hopping over grass, or leaping across a field. Telling children to use their imagination is seldom enough. The experience of play needs to be built into the lesson, and materials and situations set up so that freedom of play can exist. Playfulness, if fostered by such imaginative setups as using a spatula, funnel, and spoons to "frost" a painted cake or painting the pizza into a ready-made pizza box, helps associate action with context. Playfulness is encouraged by these references to objects and experiences already familiar to the child. By re- minding children of playful occasions involving splashing, digging, or pour- ing, pleasurable associations are established that help in the handling of art materials.

Teachers should strive to make all their action playful. The teachers' playfulness, their ability to accept the fantastic, say the ridiculous, and think the unbelievable, sets the stage for the student's playfulness. The teacher needs to be playful even in approach- ing classroom routines like taking at- tendance, putting up signs, and distributing messages. Pointing out the window and wondering what lies beyond the clouds or marching through the classroom as if a parade is following enhances student discovery. When the teacher dreams, fantasizes, and creates new scenes for the children, they will see familiar objects in a new light. Art teachers should therefore feel free to manipulate playfully any material they handle. A teacher's will- ingness to draw in class, to assemble objects, and to take objects apart or fuse them together aids enormously in the communication of ideas to the students. Teachers should therefore feel free to draw and redraw, put on masks or makeup, act out dreams, become sculptures, and otherwise use their bodies to explore visual images. They should be playful both in front of and with their students.

Art ideas are best expressed through the simple and spontaneous manipula-




tion of materials. The teacher may illustrate ideas of line, for example, by using a child's shoelaces, manipulating an electrical extension cord, unfolding a box of paper clips in different ways, taking a ribbon from a girl's hair, or opening a roll of film or tape and discussing its curves. Pencils, rulers, or the tearing or folding of a piece of paper can immediately illustrate a beautiful line and at the same time what can be carried out in a more complex medium. The teacher should therefore feel free to mark all types of surfaces with all types of tools, using soap, tapes, fingers, or fingerprints to explore the many aspects of drawing. Single activities as varied as playing with scraps and pointing out sources of light or color in the room can further the lesson's objectives.

The same toys that are forbidden in school after the early grades can serve to generate ideas in the art class. By rewelcoming toys into the school setting and letting children play again, art teachers can utilize the spirit, the ideas, and the fantasies that accompany play. Blocks, including those the children have designed out of clothes clips, hair curlers, or soap pads, and the magic cubes and related moving puzzles that can inspire geometric works, are useful tools of art. Another category of useful toys includes robots, space creatures, and other fantastic objects. Personal items such as stuffed animals or dolls often inspire artwork because of the child's feelings of at- tachment to them. Electronic games, especially those that create images, such as the many new versions of the traditional Etch-O-Sketch, that can be used to create preliminary images may reintroduce the excitement of doodling

and the free formation of lines into the children's drawings.

Students can also create their own toys for preliminary play. Forming moveable stick people can inspire a variety of playful figure drawings. Sculpting make-believe packages can help in defining sculptural forms or drawing solid forms whereas playing with sand or pickup sticks or crushing a box can help generate new forms. Eating an apple or ice cream, perhaps not directly a play experience but still a pleasurable one, can suggest a se- quence that can be recorded as art. Birthday parties can develop into sculptural lunches, allowing children to consider many visual possibilities.

Children can playfully give life to inanimate objects, feeling free to talk to a spoon or carry on a conversation between forks. The opportunity to bring inanimate objects to life, giving them character and personal identity, encourages children to treat them later as subjects of an artwork. If they truly make believe that a light bulb can talk, they can translate this new identity into a strong drawing. Again, plays like this allow the previsualization of possibilities, the grasping of imaginative solutions or solutions that may be difficult to consider if not played out.

Experiments in movement are important because they give children a sense of freedom to mark surfaces or alter forms. A principal tool in such experiments is a flexible body that responds to suggestions, observations, surfaces, and so forth. Make-believe walks on paper, imaginary movement exercises in the room, and make- believe dances in the room or on paper can illuminate the relation between movement in space and in art

materials. Children can take on the suggestion of animals, machines, or alien creatures to further their adven- ture with movement and the records it leaves in an art medium. Even the marks left by hands, fingers, feet, or the entire body can be called drawings.

The places for playing within the classroom are as varied as the objects used in play. Children can play on a variety of surfaces, moving from one to the other as the play expands. The space allotted for play often suggests the types of movements and plays possible within it. Plays may involve individual objects or an entire space. The classroom can, for example, become a throne room awaiting a queen and be rearranged for the occa- sion. Each element of the arrangement and in effect the room itself can be treated as a painting filled with plays of color, shapes, and lights. As spaces are partitioned, draped, covered, ordered, and divided, the artworks made in the space or about the space are being predesigned.

Central to the creation of any artwork is the artist's commitment to that task. Unfortunately, this commitment is often missing in the schoolroom, for school art consists mostly of exercises that children may not believe in and may regard as something the teacher feels "is good for us so let's just do it." What the art teacher must therefore do is to build the students' interest, involvement, and commitment to their work, making them feel that it is important enough to do. This can be accomplished through preliminary play, which transforms artworks into something more than "projects" or "exercises."

Play is valuable because it both demonstrates traditional practices in art and calls them into question. Students can be told the proper way of handling something, but it is better for them if they come to understand the material or technique through play. In any case, in art the "proper" way may not exist, so we want the students to discover their own options. To find out what a canvas is, we may want the children to fly it, stretch it, stuff it, or wear it; to look at different clothes; or to try different drapings, supports, and surfaces. Thus, well-designed creative games can help young artists not only find out about a material but also rediscover it with fresh insights. It shows them how to conduct their own

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investigation and gives them the tools of questioning and searching. It can even help us discover alternatives to the standard tools of art. In using a typewriter, sewing machine, or scissors as drawing tools, new applications and new tools for making art can be found. In short, play expands our notion of what art is.

Playfulness, so essential to the artmaking process, should be a part of teaching art to children. Teachers should devise opportunities for children to play before, during, and after each art lesson and should themselves exhibit a playful attitude toward art. Play helps to make the art experience less like an exercise and more like art. It is through play that children learn to make the objectives of the art lesson their own.

Designing Preliminary Plays Preliminary plays may be designed in the following categories: plays with basic art elements and processes; movement plays; sensory plays; building and construction plays; pretending plays; memory plays; and verbal plays. Let's examine each category in turn.

Basic Plays. The basic elements of each art technique or medium can be explored through play experiences. In printing, for example, the basics of surface, movement, and a variety of pressures precede specialized processes like wood cutting or linoleum cutting. Basic plays help students see the widest range of

possibilities regarding these elements before narrowly confining their work to a particular process or subject. Movement and pressure can be applied to any surface that one finds interesting to create all types of marks and impressions. Basic plays also demonstrate that every surface can be interesting or possibly beautiful as a printing resource. We move daily across all types of surfaces with our feet, hands, and bodies, and conse- quently the plays might involve leaving all types of impressions on walls, carpets, floors, or even grass. Through playing with the most basic elements of art, one can reach beyond the confines of traditional techniques and media.

To set up a basic play, the teacher needs to determine the materials and movements that are related most immediately to the experience the students are to investigate. For example, most forms have linear qualities, yet some are easier to play with, purer, and more expressive. A garden hose with its long, gentle curves may be a better material for exploring linear qualities than a folding yardstick. Other basic play movements, materials, and store-bought toys may be employed for the following plays: extension cords, garden hoses, Slinkies, chains, and film for plays with lines; bricks, soap pads, potato chips, Legos, and magnetic blocks for form plays; food colors, colored sand, polishes, kaleidoscopes, and neckties for color plays; cookie crumbs, rasps, sandpaper, and scrub brushes for tex- ture plays; and clothes clips, beads,

Rubik cubes and peg boards for pat- tern plays.

Movement Plays. Movement is an essential aspect of all preliminary play activities. The pat- terns and rhythms of movement in space may be carried over to various art materials, and the lively mood that it inspires may extend into the artmaking process. Movement plays might exercise specific parts of the body or specify rhythm, timing, or orientation in space though direction, speeds, or distances of playing. Musical experiences, dancing, moving through space, designing for movement, and sports such as sliding, balancing, and climbing can all enhance artmaking. Movement plays may involve equip- ment such as pulleys, balls, or kites that can be moved or observed to discover visual potentials. The remote- controlled, motorized, self-propelled, or even computerized action basic to some toys can be used to generate preliminary ideas. Through all these activities, children can begin to see that artmaking entails creating movements by becoming more aware of one's own movements and those in the environment.

Movement plays could involve the following: observing and imitating the movements of animals, windup toys, and electronic games; designs for movement involving shadows, springs, and puppets; and sculpting movements using marbles, bubbles, balloons, pulleys, and windup toys.

Sensory Plays. We experience the world through our senses and record these experiences through them as well; ultimately, artworks constitute our sensory responses to the environment. Sensory play is therefore useful because it helps to sharpen our senses, permitting us to experience more fully and to better recall what we experience. When students become aware of and control their sensory intake, every line they produce passes beyond the merely mechanical and becomes a felt and understood image. Preliminary plays involving the senses develop the student's ability to respond to the subtleties of any material they use.

All learning is filtered through the senses. As we grow, we learn that an object can vary in look, taste, feel, and smell. Through preliminary play,



children can increase their sensory awareness and then express this new awareness, matching their thinking by their doing. Because an artwork is organized through materials and surfaces and communicates through all the senses, it is immeasurably enhanced by preliminary experiences that exercise sensory ideas. The simplest drawing becomes much more interesting when students explore its sensory qualities, play with its surface possibilities, become aware of what each tool can do, and experience the sound and feeling of making marks on that surface. The greater our awareness of the sensory qualities that go into making an artwork, the better we are able to choose our materials, surfaces, and performances with it.

Sensory plays designed to aid young artists could include the uses of creams, cosmetics, liquids, and plants for feeling plays; boxes, tents, parachutes, and screens for space plays; whistles, shelves, tape recorders, and walkie talkies for sound plays; and flashlights, sparklers, colored gels, and Lite Brite for light plays.

Building Plays. Building and taking apart are the basis of all artmaking. Hence, building plays are useful because they emphasize the art process rather than the product. Through preliminary building plays, students learn to observe patiently and reshape when necessary and to develop a taste for keeping the art process go- ing longer.

Building shows us how things func- tion. Building plays can suggest the many uses of one material or show how related materials can be handled, allowing us to form predictions about relationships between objects. Students might purposefully plan destruction or disassembly, or they might learn through accidents and change construction. Young children often solve problems by chance and then exercise their accidental plays in all types of materials and forms. Older students should be encouraged to appreciate the importance of these meaningful accidents.

Building plays foster an in-depth study of visual forms. Because building involves three dimensions, it helps students to visualize ideas about shape, the affects of light, positioning in space, and relationships between objects. Through building plays, objects

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can be assessed from all angles, in all lights, and in all relationships. Painting and drawings are generally much stronger when worked out in preliminary three-dimensional constructions.

Through the building process, students discover the natural qualities of objects and materials. They can learn to appreciate the drips, floats, and plops of paint that are playfully poured over working area. They can learn about the nature of forms by putting objects together, fitting them, con- necting them into systems, and taking them apart. The most valuable early building plays can take place in the sand box with kitchen utensils, water, soap bars, or wood blocks found around the house. Experiments that further the range, openness, and possibilities that these early plays foster include construction plays with stones, cups, file cards, sponges, and Bristle Blocks; taking apart plays with clocks, radios, ice cream, and apples; and accidental plays with pickup sticks, ice cubes, eggs, and Magic Sand.

Pretending Plays. The inner world of fantasy, dreams, and imagination is a principal resource for art. A belief in the magic of art can be inspired by the physical and psychological preparations that pretending provides through the use of makeup, masks, costumes, and role playing. Artwork is often a personal statement, and pretending can give the person making it fresh insight. Pre- tending allows artists to see themselves differently.

From the start, children are artists in that they are born observers of the world. During pretend plays, observations become firsthand experiences that can be brought to an artwork. New emotion, such as feeling important, strong, ugly, or powerful, are explored. Behind a costume, puppet, or mask, children come alive and move freely, which obviously benefits the art

projects that follow. Through the simplest props, ideas easily become fanciful, and thoughts that may not be displayed in everyday actions or even in drawings become accessible. The pretend activity gives students a sense of power to change things, a feeling that is highly fruitful for creating art. Students who in a performance are willing to try new things may risk more when they turn to art.

Children can find artistic expression through the props themselves. Although store-bought costumes, masks, and so forth can be used occa- sionally, preliminary plays that use even the simplest student-made items are better because they fit more closely the imagination and dreams of a per- former. Pretend experiences might en- tail makeup, including theatrical makeup, nail polish, wigs, masks, and disguise kits; costumes, including helmets, capes, party hats, and clown shoes; and performances, including puppets, magic shows, and mime.

Memory Plays. The subject matter of much school art depends on the student's ability to recall experiences they have had during the summer, their favorite relatives, dreams, and so forth. These memories are more useful in expressive artworks if exercised through preliminary plays. Through the exercises, they yield a richer and more varied vision, allowing students to become aware of their sub- conscious life. Memory plays could re- ly on autobiographical collections, portraits of remembered persons, drawing when blindfolded, recording dreams and daydreams, automatic drawing, and free associations with objects and images.

Verbal Plays. Verbal brainstorming and idea ex- changes help challenge the visual imagination and to give direction and purpose to an artwork. Playful, almost silly conversations set the mood for an uninhibited pursuit of unusual ideas and the envisioning of extraordinary images. For instance, imaginative clothing designs may be inspired by talk of "chocolate-frosted clothing," and making up silly words for new shapes and colors can stimulate interesting form and color ideas. An inventive use of language leads to experimental visualization through language.




A free use of language allows children to move from realistic to abstract and imaginary ideas both by focusing and loosening the visualization process. Through the creative use of language, ideas can be transported through different times and places, without boundaries. The students can approach art ideas as explorers or in- ventors, describing the unimagined and speaking of the unseen with remark- able clarity. Language can challenge and expand the scale, medium, com- plexity, or any other aspect of the artwork. A challenge from the teacher to make something that is the largest, wildest, most ornate, or most unusual thing of its type licenses the search for unusual visions. Through the playful use of language, technical material and time or supply limitations are removed, and inventive new beginnings to an artwork are developed. When preliminary ideas are playfully discussed, one also gets the helpful reaction of an au- dience, which can often usefully shock a student into building away from one idea to others beyond. Language helps to build bridges to experience. Thus, the creation of a mental picture of a magic carpet can be assisted by an imaginary conversation concerning the carpet. Finally, the playful use of language creates a sense of excitement and humor and ultimately commitment for the artwork that is to take place.

The following are more examples of word plays: imaginary descriptions of views, places, and experiences; imaginative stories; talk of the impossi- ble, the unheard of, and the unseen; setting visual scenes with unusual names, strange-sounding objects, or background information; and building a composite image with information provided by different people.

Final Comments The open and relaxed state of mind needed for making art derives from a sense of freedom to do whatever one likes to do. For adults, play is restricted to leisure time. For children, it is an integral part of working. Schools generally do not encourage play, yet it would be immensely helpful for art teaching. Artists play regularly not only with paint or clay but with any object around them. For children, too, play takes place everywhere, at any time, with everything around them. Play is a way of research for both artist and child, allowing them to approach

everything as if new and to work out any unknown or interesting idea. Play provides learning through experience, which educators regard as one of the most efficient ways to learn.

When play is a regular part of each art period, the lesson becomes in- dividualized, helping the children learn without overdependence on the teacher. Asking students to play in art does not exclude the teacher from the lesson but makes careful use of the teacher's influence so that it does not interfere with the students' self- confidence and independence. Although children are born ready to play, the aoility to play intensively needs to be learned and exercised. It is the art teachers' attitude that can help to bring play back into school life so that each art idea can be fully played out before execution.

Play experiences need to be built on the adult art forms children can best understand. For example, the architect can be presented as someone who plays with blocks to create building ideas. In playful fashion design, children need to be shown the relationship between dressing dolls and the work of the adult fashion designer so that play can lead from dressing dolls toward the artistic design experience. Thus, in developing play experiences, students learn to experience their plays in terms of a particular artist. Generally, plays need to begin with what children like. Cut-out dolls, teddy bears, Barbie dolls, doll houses, and Legos are some of the toys and games of our time that are familiar to children and involve them in ex- tended play situations. The art teacher needs to be aware of what children are playing with - what is new in blocks, games, and art toys - and develop related play experiences with them or with materials that are similar. The challenge is: How can we work from the child's interest in furnishing a doll house to creating interior design games that lead to creative art problems? How can we move from the child's at- tachment to soft toys such as teddy bears to soft sculptural forms?

The older the child is, the more play they need, and the less they experience it in school, and often it is difficult for them to learn to play again. Whereas young students are accustomed to play, older children find it very difficult to return to playful tendencies. It is often necessary for older students to reexprience the smearing of sand, the

excitement of playing with loose, run- ning paint, and the sheer beauty of the color red. Older children are often more reluctant to play and need far more encouragement to avoid self- consciousness or the fear that they will become children again or be treated as children because they are playing in an experimental way. Play can be en- couraging by choosing a direction that is open enough to inspire playing in a specific art area; using the materials best suited to illustrate the desired con- cepts to be played out; assuring that there is adequate space for students to perform openly and without disrup- tion; providing the time for independence and privacy; refraining from correction or criticism during play, and judging its values only by its process and how deeply the student is involved; supporting innovative findings and being openly excited about them; developing a serious interest in individual plays, treating each with respect; and relating the students' play to the art projects they will undertake.

Play experiments need to become a regular and expected part of each art session so that students begin to see it as something they need to do on a regular basis. The fewer the barriers between the artwork and the preliminary play sessions, the better. Children will soon learn that play is a part of the artmaking process. U

George Szekely is associate professor of art education at the University of Kentucky at Lexington.

References Caplan, Frank, The Power of Play,

Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Publishing Co., 1974.

Cherry, Clare, Creative Play for the Developing Child, Belmont, Calif: Fearon Publishing Co., 1976.

Ellis, Michael, Why People Play, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973.

Hartley, Ruty, Children's Play. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1977.

Hurwitz, Al, Programs of Promise - Art in the Schools, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.

Marzollo, Jean, Learning Through Play, New York: Harper and Row, 1972.

Szekely, G. "Toy Design as an Introduc- tion to Sculpture," Arts and Activities, San Diego, California: November 1977. Vol. 82 No. 3, pp. 18-22.




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