Send in the clowns! Photos of student artwork courtesy of Colorwheel Trust your eye.
Look, don't think, draw.
Draw what you see, not what you think it is.
These are some of the principles Jeff and Kay Benesi teach at Colorwheel Studio on Queen Anne.
A young student once did several pencil drawings of a chair. She was sitting at an angle from her subject, but she drew it straight on. In her next draft, she drew it at a slight angle. In her final draft, she drew it at even more of an angle. She had learned to draw what she saw.
"She got it," says Jeff with satis-faction.
Colorwheel Studio opened its doors in March 1990, but Jeff dreamed of starting a children's art studio for years before that.
He earned his bachelor's in landscape architecture from Michigan State University, where he met Kay, an art student. The two wed in 1971 and moved to Seattle in 1974.
They lived in an apartment for a few months, then moved into the house on Queen Anne in which they still live. Jeff practiced landscape architecture, and eventually their family grew to include sons Peter, now 22, and Steven, 18.
In 1980 Jeff decided he wanted to change careers and teach art at the university level. With that goal in mind, he attended the University of Washington and earned a B.F.A. in painting and a teaching certificate in art, as Kay had done in Michigan years earlier. While he did so, he taught a children's art class on Saturdays in the UW Extension Program, a commitment that lasted eight years. Occasionally Kay assisted him.
When Jeff finished at the UW, the sort of teaching job he envisioned did not materialize. He continued practicing landscape architecture and teaching children's art on Saturdays.
He and Kay began to seriously consider opening a children's art school of their own. In December 1989, Kay found a space for rent just a few blocks from home. It seemed like a great spot for what they had envisioned.
A former beauty shop, it had blue walls and shag carpet. They painted the walls white, ripped out the carpet and laid down linoleum tiles. They bought sturdy oak tables and chairs of different heights at an auction at the Queen Anne Library. They installed sinks where they wanted them (the existing plumbing made it easy). Jeff brought flat files from his office to store large pieces of paper and drawings.
Their first class had about 10 students in it, children of friends. For advertising, they hung a sign on the studio door.
Within a year they widened their advertising by distributing brochures to local schools and businesses and placing ads in Seattle's Child magazine and the Queen Anne News. Now word of mouth suffices. Sometimes their classes are so full they must either split them or turn people away. They might add more classes if enrollment continues to increase.
Most of their students live on Queen Anne and Magnolia, but some come from places like Ballard, Capitol Hill and even Mercer Island.
Colorwheel's brochure proclaims, "Art is primary, not secondary." Kay explains that the whole world is made up of art elements. "Everyone can benefit from art instruction," she says, "to see things in a different light.
"Unfortunately," she continues, "there is not much art in the public schools." The Benesis are filling the gap, meeting a community need.
Their goal is not to turn out famous artists, but to give all students another avenue of self-expression. "It's a communication tool," says Jeff.
Many children don't think they're very "good at art." At Colorwheel Studio, it's not a talent contest. Students are encouraged to do their best work in a noncompetitive way. They learn to appreciate art in general, one another's work and even their own.
Upon seeing his artwork displayed at Color-wheel's annual show in April, one student exclaimed to his mother, "Wow, Mom, I didn't know I was that good!"
KAY TEACHES younger children, ages 5 to 10. Jeff teaches older kids, ages 8 and up, and some adults. Kids learn skills in Kay's classes that they will use in a more sophisticated way in Jeff's.
"We don't teach together," they say. "Our collaboration is more administrative and outside decision-making."
Most of their students are children, but more teenagers are signing up. Recently a group of teenage boys requested a class in figure drawing, and Jeff obliged.
He also teaches a class parents can take with their children. "It's a wonderful way for a parent and child to spend time together," he says. Not long ago, a family of four en-rolled. Family dynamics are minimized in class, and people in the same family are treated as individual students.
Classes are usually taught once a week in eight-week sessions throughout the year except in summer, when classes are taught in short, intensive workshops.
Both Jeff and Kay regard what they do as serious fun. They take it seriously - they offer art instruction, not daycare - but they want it to be fun for the students.
They work with many elements: color, texture, value, line, shape, movement, shading and perspective. "When kids mix colors and don't just use the palette that is presented to them," says Kay, "they really get the idea of experimentation."
If they are working in two dimensions, students learn to fill the page, leaving little or no white space. They also work in three dimensions, building things with wood or clay.
"We use good materials here," says Jeff, "not just newsprint and crayons." Students are able to apply acrylics, pastels, charcoal, watercolors and oil sticks onto good-quality paper or canvas. (No oil paint is used because it is toxic and extra messy.) They make prints from linocuts or woodblocks, paint small pieces of furniture and create projects with mixed media.
Students use a variety of tools and are taught to treat tools and materials with respect for their function. "A tool is not a toy," says Jeff.
Most classes have a theme: animals of Africa, self-portraits, flowers, cathedrals, the seashore, totem lamps and oversized tools, to name just a few.
Sometimes students make things big and bold, as they did with the tools. Other times they make things little and detailed.
They are encouraged to collaborate. They learn to learn from other kids, not just the teacher.
NOW THAT THE reputation of Colorwheel Studio has grown, some parents have come to expect that their children will produce all frameable art. Most of it is, as a matter of fact, but artistic growth is not always immediately visible. "It is the process that counts," Jeff and Kay agree, "not just the product."
For years the Benesis operated Colorwheel in the red. Now they're finally a tad in the black and can afford an extra trip once in awhile. Between work and family life, the only painting Jeff and Kay still do themselves is on those trips, and the resulting paintings are often used as examples for the classes they teach at Colorwheel Studio.
And so the cycle goes, like a wheel. A colorwheel.
Colorwheel Studio is
located at 1959 Sixth Ave. W.
(at Crockett); phone 283-6089.
[[In-content Ad]]
