Silverwood Park Residency with Seth Eberle – 2.75 hours
On Sunday I taught a lesson at Silverwood Park. Each month the park has a free program for families called Ned the Naturalist. The two-hour program includes a puppet show, art activity, and nature walk. I led the first demonstration for the art activity and helped participants while they screen printed on to a wood panel.
The demo went well, it was a quick transition from the end of the puppet show to the demo so I was able to complete the demonstration while sitting on the floor surrounded by the kids that sat on a rug during the show. I felt a little discombobulated going into the demonstration because I did not do any rehearsing or extravagant planning but I did touch on the important points and people were audibly excited when I showed a screen pull. If I could change something I would have mentioned the gallery show by Margi Grill that the activity is in conjunction with since that would engage the activity with other happenings at Silverwood.
It was so much fun to help everyone screen print. We gave people the opportunity to decorate their wood panel with markers first at work tables and then invited them up to the screen-printing tables. We had three people to help with the screen-printing, Seth, myself and a teen volunteer. This worked out really well since there were about three screens/patterns that people preferred so we each had a station. We would lay down the ink and then have people pull the print themselves. Some of the younger kids had trouble applying enough pressure but we were able to give one on one support. I have screen printing experience and it was really great to give people more information about the process as well as talk to people that had previous printing experience.
We had a total of 63 people in the hall and 50 panels were made! After the first rush of people completed the activity and left to go on the nature walk, we had two families that came in. It was a great experience working with the smaller groups since I got to sit down with them while they decorated their panels.
Overall the lesson ran smoothly and I cannot think of something that I would outright change. Though I had Seth to help with questions about plants I wish I had a little bit more information about the invasive plant species that people were printing since I often forgot the names. I always remembered the golden tansy though!
