“It’s built on frustration,” says Alva Calymayor, a Ridgewood-based performance artist tells Bushwick Daily. “A lot of classes say: ‘Let’s do landscapes that look exactly the same, putting the sun in the same corner.’”
Calymayor, who became a mother in 2016, said she felt disappointed to find that most popular children’s art curriculums were standardized and used replica crafts. Her own multidisciplinary work is a response to her surroundings, so it felt natural to turn to storytelling, acting, and bookmaking to create a curriculum of her own and called it Art Experimentos.
The mission of Art Experimentos is to develop experiences for children that turn decision making into experimental art theories. Calymayor’s classes focus on projects that help to build fine motor skills and encourage creative exploration. One class utilized dance performances to represent the life cycle of a butterfly while another explored memory preservation in a time capsule creation workshop.
