“I don’t know what I’m doing, I just…” mimes dropping paint on the canvas
“Yes! Do that.”
“Do what?”
Mimes dropping paint on the canvas over and over again… “Do that here, and there and then do it again!”
“Wait, I can just do that?”
Artist Without Limits 👨‍🎨
Back with Linda’s Grade 7s, and this week we hit texture—through Rauschenberg, chaos, and glue-covered found objects.
I’ve been learning to trim the intro: less time on artist slides, more time making. So I framed Robert Rauschenberg as an artist without limits. The guy painted on his bed, strapped a tire to a goat, and glued pasta boxes to his canvas. He didn’t wait for permission—he made art with whatever was around.
We opened up a giant Rauschenberg book instead of using a slide deck. Flipping pages, folding spreads, touching the work—that was the hook. We looked at cardboard boxes stacked in galleries, hunks of wood with railroad spikes in them and an old door with a shirt glued to it.
“Wait, I can just do that?”
Yup.
🥽The Making
Each student picked a theme from a list of clashing forces—chaos vs. order, inside vs. outside, who I am vs. how people see me. That tension became their fuel.
Then they cut their own canvas from huge sheets of discarded printer paper—no assigned sizes, no clean edges. Everything about this lesson said: make the rules up as you go.
Linda and I dumped every strange material we could find on a big table: fake vines, fabric scraps, foam, string, plastic bags, broken classroom junk, curtain samples. No neat palettes. No instructions. Just: build a feeling out of texture.
Early in the texture making process.
This time the hesitation was fleeting. They were in.
Some students worked in silence, layering textures like they were hiding messages under the surface. Others went full maximalist—gluing, stapling, stacking whatever they could find. Their canvases looked like they might collapse under the weight.
Linda was buzzing. The day before had been track and field—hot, competitive, high-pressure. Today? Students said this felt like a release. A handful of students made pieces about that pressure. Letting it out in fabric, paint, string and glue.
And they didn’t stop. They worked for a full 40 minutes—way longer than usual. No end product. No right answer. Just making. Just feeling.
The Bonus Artist 🎨
Rauschenberg’s great, but I wanted to make sure that we weren’t just studying another “Male American Pop Artist who worked in the 50’s 60’s and 70’s”. To battle that trope, I pulled in Jessica Stockholder—a Canadian-American artist who builds giant, colourful installations from found stuff. More modern. More abstract. More colourful.
We looked at some of her work too—just enough to say: look, you’re not weird for gluing leaves to a tarp. You’re in excellent company.
At the end, Linda had them write about the experience. Not “what did you learn,” but what did it feel like to make this?
The reflections they wrote hit hard:
- “I got paint on my clothes but I don’t care. This was fun.”
- “I didn’t worry about the final result. I just made.”
- “I liked that everyone’s piece looked so different.”
- “While I was creating this art I felt calm. It was so satisfying.”
- “I felt free. I had no instructions, no plan, no sketch, no boundaries. I just had to create and do whatever my mind told me to do.”
That was the throughline: freedom. Expression without output. Creativity unhooked from polish. A release from the pressures that sometimes push too hard.
Linda doesn’t always assess the way I would—but wow, does she create space for voice. Her students know how to say what they feel. That’s rare.
What’s Next 🔮
Next class is digital art. No idea how that’ll land, but I’ve got a few weeks to figure it out. Might bring some of this analog chaos with me—because now they know: making messy stuff on purpose is legit.
Splatter Batter not Paint 🥞
Rauschenberg splattered paint on his bed. These students splattered paint on vines, bubble wrap, and fabric. Why not splatter batter too? Spirocakes!
That’s right—spirographic pancakes. A hot plate, a squeeze bottle, and geometry. Match made in heaven?