Brittney Wills – Third Week at Gateway

Well… not much has happened for me this last week. Because of the -30 to -40 weather we had, my van wasn’t running well, and my kids were home all week from school.

One thing I forgot to write about from a couple weeks ago was what I learned from the reflective art session that we did as a team. I consider myself to be a creative person and being that I was preschool teacher for so long, you would think my capacity for open art would be awesome. Yeah, no… I really struggled with the process of, “letting the material become what it wants.”

With tissue paper and pipe cleaners, I ended up fashioning a bird of some sort, mostly because I had a dress on with birds all over it (So creative right? Ha-ha). The facilitator then gave us three questions to answer and I realized I take things waaaaay to literally. She asked us to name our art piece. Everyone else had very relevant and creative names for their pieces. Me? I named it Kevin. Yup. You ask me to name something that’s what I do. I was kind of embarrassed when I realized what was meant by, “name your art piece.” Insert face palm here!

Then we had to think of what the piece is trying to say and what secrets it is keeping. Of course; with my literal brain… I end up saying something ridiculous and unmemorable. However, when my colleagues were asked to describe what they thought about my bird named Kevin… they all had very insightful and accurate theories about him. Overall, I learned that I really struggle with abstract thinking regarding art, but the process was enjoyable. Maybe with more practice I will get better with this type of reflective thinking!