Speaking & Special Projects

Speaking

I speak on The Creative Process.

For elementary age kids, I often use my approach to illustrating books as a model of the creative process. I share images, live drawings and bits of silliness to inspire the kids to unlock their creativity in both methodical and spontaneous ways. Talks are between 35 and 45 minutes. Costs to come to a school start at $500.

 

I speak on Visual Literacy

For older students or adults, while I still touch on the creative process, I like to focus on visual literacy. That is, I like to talk about how we “read” images.

Here’s a mini version of my creativity talk.

Here’s a TEDx talk I gave on creative play.

I speak on Faith and Art

I speak for school chapels, Sunday School classes, and different parts of worship services. I love to talk about how God made each of us creative, how creative disciplines line up with spiritual disciplines, and how art can communicate faith messages. I also like to simply model how art can be used in worship.

Murals

I love painting murals — the bigger the better. Whether it is in your home, institution or business, I’m game.

I often do these projects collaboratively. The process of working with me on a mural project looks like this:

1. I will work with your institution on your theme.
2. We will schedule a solid week or two during which we will:
   • Hold assemblies to talk to all of the children/people involved about the art process.
   • Have the participants draw and brainstorm ideas to contribute to the process.
   • Rotate all of the participants through in small groups to add to the mural.
   • Draw on inspiration from the participants’ suggestions, and pull the painting together.

These are exciting projects that are educational, fun and community building.
Murals start at $5000.

Special Projects

Similar to the mural process, I love to come into group settings — schools, churches, non-profit groups, businesses etc. — and work collaboratively to make a piece of artwork. I will engage in a theme or topic of emphasis for a group and then provide ways for everyone to create a piece of the puzzle. This often takes the form of creating organic shapes that I can incorporate into a collage that then gets painted back into.

Pricing for this has everything to do with time, materials and end product so it can vary greatly. That said, most run between $1500 and $2500.