"Written by a couple who run a successful combination art gallery and art school for children, this book presents the authors’ most popular art projects for youngsters, covering an ambitious range of materials and techniques. This guide offers a greater-than-average number of open-ended and inventive projects that can be taught to younger children and teens alike. Each project is paired with an example of a work by a modern master or living artist. Many photographs illustrate techniques and show children deeply engaged in creativity. VERDICT: Recommended particularly for teachers and parents." - Library Journal
"I love Susan's Art Lab series and reference them in the Art Studio often. They're easy to follow, full of images, and directed at open-ended exploration - exactly the kind of reference I need for my own busy home." - Meghan Burch, Art Studio Educator, The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, MA
Susan Schwake is an artist, art educator, and curator. She actively exhibits her work in galleries around the United States and Europe and sells her work online and in her own gallery, artstream. Susan has been part of juried public art exhibitions, creating large-scale, site-specific works. Her passion for teaching and making art with others grew from a tiny seed of an idea in the fourth grade. Working in such diverse settings as schools, community centers, special needs nonprofits, summer camps, intergenerational facilities, libraries, and her own little art school, Susan has taught art to hundreds of people over the past twenty years.
She created a permanent exhibition of children’s art, involving more than one hundred local children, that graces the walls of a new children’s room in her local library in 1997 and refreshed it in 2007 to celebrate its tenth anniversary. In 2000, she directed a similar project with four hundred people in an intergenerational setting for a new multi-agency facility, bringing the staff, families, and clients more closely together through the process of making art. She has enjoyed many residencies in public and private schools, with whole school projects, and in special needs groups and single classrooms. Since the release of her first book, Art Lab for Kids, Susan has offered workshops to parents and teachers and student teachers at universities, art studios, and schools. She enjoys sharing her methods and learning from others.
In 2005, Susan began a blog called artesprit. Through the blog, she embraced writing and photographing her world, meeting many new artists and friends around the globe. She co-owns and is the curator for artstream studios in New Hampshire. She enjoys bringing compelling group shows of contemporary art to her corner of New England. She is happy to be working alongside her husband every day doing what she loves most. Follow her adventures.
Blog: www.artesprit.blogspot.com
Website: www.susanschwake.com
Gallery: www.artstreamstudios.com
Rainer Schwake is a versatile and talented media designer holding a masters degree in graphic design. His photography has been used in hundreds of business- and arts-related design works for print and websites. He is co-owner of artstream studios and lives with his wife, Susan, in Rochester, NH.