Mini masterpieces at Czech Center

For the past several months, passers-by looking into the windows at Rytířská 31 may have seen a floor full of children hovering over pictures, markers, paints and other art supplies. Since February, the Czech Center Prague - which calls this address home and is part of the network of 24 Czech Centers promoting Czech culture - has been inviting schools, parents with children and anyone else who cares to join in to a new series of interactive arts workshops called Creative Art Games. Connected directly to the center's regular art exhibitions, the aim of the workshops is to give participants a look at art beyond just a first glance.

"Art is more than having a look at an exhibition; it should teach you something," says Radka Labendz, Czech Center Prague's program and PR manager. "It's important for students to come and see the work, but also to think about it."

Held once per month, Creative Art Games is one of many activities offered at the Czech Center and includes games, discussions and, most importantly, participants' creation of their own works of art.

"Every workshop is a straight reaction to the exhibition," says Lucie Haškovcová, the developer and facilitator of each workshop and also the head of the education department at the City Gallery Prague, which provides the materials and created the program in cooperation with Czech Center. "The children try to express their ideas and reactions to the exhibition through their experimental work, their creations."

Of course, there is some structure to the workshop. Focused on the main topic, technique or idea of the exhibition, the activity is tied directly to it. The first workshop, for example, held in conjunction with the exhibition "Landscape," which featured a series of black-and-white photography by artist Tomáš Bican, played with the black-and-white aspect. Haškovcová made copies of some of the images and asked the students to add to them. Another workshop had participants experiment with size by working on very large paper to correspond with the large-format pictures that made up the exhibition "Transmission of Movement" by artist Libor Lípa. One of the most recent Creative Art Games' workshops - based on the exhibition featuring the work of artist Josef Hnízdil - also asked students to focus on the large-format of Hnízdil's paintings, but in a very different way.

"The children played games with the details of the paintings," says Haškovcová, who made photos of the details of the pictures, and the children made their own interpretations of these details. "The interpretations were very interesting and surprising."

The artist, who stopped by to see the results of the workshop, was also pleasantly surprised.

"Working with the details of the paintings to create something totally different from them was a really nice thing for me to see," Hnízdil says. "It's a very good way to open the eyes of the students with the details of the paintings, because they can read the paintings much better this way."

Learn by playing

Haškovcová also had them try to find those details in the actual paintings.

"It was something like a game for them," she says.

This playfulness and a sense of freedom to explore is what she hopes participants experience at the Creative Art Games workshops. To foster this feeling, Haškovcová has them sit or lie on the floor as opposed to working at tables, which might feel like school.

"Through the experimental workshops, I hope the students see that the Czech Center is a very free place for playing games with art," she says.

After the workshop portion of the program, participants walk through the exhibition again and discuss their creations and thoughts about the exhibition. For students from a school in Kolín who participated in the workshop based on Hnízdil's exhibition, the discussion carried on during the ride home.

"On our way home, some students continued to discuss their impressions of the exhibition," says the school's art history teacher, Roman Plachy. "They all left with a lot of interesting insights and inspiration. I am sure that this was not our last visit to the Creative Art Games."

Labendz insists that anyone passing by can join in the Creative Art Games, including English speakers (Haškovcová, Labendz and many of the artists who take part speak English).

"That's why the workshops are by the windows: so people walking by can see in and come inside if they want to find out what's going on," Labendz says.

Joann Plocková can be reached at
features@praguepost.com