Portland Child Art Studio

The Portland Child Art Studio is the second art studio of its kind. It is inspired by the Berkeley Child Art Studio, which was led by Miriam de Uriarte in Berkeley, CA during the 1970s through the 1990s.

The mission of PCAS is to support the perceptual development of children through artistic learning. Our understanding of child perceptual development and the teaching practices that we develop around these ideas were given to us by Rhoda Kellogg. Rhoda was a “psychologist, scholar and child educator who collected and studied children’s art over the course of her lifetime. From 1948 to 1981, Kellogg collected several million drawings made by children, ages 2 through 6, as they scribbled to teach themselves to draw. Kellogg’s thesis was that universal patterns and developmental stages can be found in a study of children’s art.”

Rhoda Kellogg’s developmental stages in art lead us to understand how shapes and compositions are practiced in scribbling, how children extract shapes from early scribbles, how they add shapes together to create more complex forms, how composite forms evolve into contour drawings, etc. Working from the premise that a child’s artistic expression naturally progresses in its own way as they grow, PCAS offers a developmentally appropriate and child-centered learning approach. Our studio supports each child’s unique art practice by providing them with the creative space, high-quality art materials, and the encouragement and support they need to thrive in the studio.

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