I met Ada when she had just turned 3. I met her in the galleries with her mom and she talked to me so openly that I invited her to come to Mini Masters, a class I teach for 3-5 year olds. She's been coming now, twice a month, for two years and I've gotten to know her fairly well.
Looking at the Turner, she is the child who wants to talk about the dark water, who moves her arm like the waves and shows us how all the movement flows up to the tiny flag.
Yesterday with the Kerry James Marshall, she noticed the fists behind the loving couple. She talked about the shackles for slaves and that the artist was showing us that the fist broke the shackles and now the fist stays on the fence forever.
She questioned Sol Lewitt's originality with bars of tones, wondering if he didn't owe Ellsworth Kelly something (ha! she's right) and opened up a PRESCHOOL WORKSHOP to a conversation about participation in a school of thought.
She's homeschooled, or unschooled, evidently-- something I'm interested in. Her parents support her ability to construct her own learning.
I'm thinking about asking her mother (and Ada) if I might make recordings of Ada. I'd use lapel mics and walk around the museum having casual conversations. My work is usually fiction, and I really don't know much of anything about crafting solid non-fiction, but I'm thinking about it.
2 comments:
sounds like a pretty exceptional child. and what a great relationship you've built with her.
i've read some about unschooling, and my wife is actually really interested in the concept. i think with both her and i in education, we often wonder whether any system is the right system for our kids, being as attuned to the flaws that we know of in the current educational systems. really interesting ideas in unschooling though.
i think that would be great to record her! and i bet as unschooling parents they would be really open to this kind of partnership. let me know how it turns out!
wow. bring her to grad school - she's ready! ;)
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