What a joy it was to work with Gemini Ink & the students at Camelot Elementary. I had the opportunity to create a workshop that focused on emergence and self expression through photography and art, and to discuss ways to express our individuality while taking self portraits. The activity was to create a mandala with nature items that surrounded a self portrait. The mandalas helped us understand the idea of transformation and how we are constantly changing and emerging into our true selves.

It’s not everyday we let children touch cameras because we fear they will break them. And the thought of our children playing with grass, dirt, and rocks can also be overwhelming when thinking about the mess and cleanup that will follow. This project gave the students both of these opportunities. Their faces lit up as we set out the jars of dirt, rocks, sticks, flowers, dried grasses, and art supplies for their mandalas. One child yelled, I LOVE GRASS! Others commented excitedly on how beautiful the flowers were. They all wanted more dirt (Natures glitter), and rocks as their mandalas came together. Then they used Fuji Instax cameras to capture their self portraits. They watched in awe as their images emerged from the cameras and developed into a photograph. After the mandalas were complete, we spent some time outdoors creating more self portraits with iPads.

We had so much fun, and could have spent all afternoon creating together. The final result was an art piece and photographs that will be included in an anthology the student’s have been creating with the Gemini Ink team. It was so inspiring to see the students process on creating art, and to hear their ideas. I can’t thank Erica & Des enough for helping me bring this activity to life!