Today’s reading is a celebration of making. In Making Art, Diana Ejaita shows children building with blocks, drawing with chalk, playing homemade instruments, dancing, and shaping clay. Her message is simple and generous: everyone can make art, anywhere, with whatever they have. What I admire most is that she does not pretend it is always easy. Finding an idea takes time, bringing it to life takes patience, and art can hold sadness and worry as well as happiness.
I shaped this episode around a “Make and Share” arc, following the children from noticing and gathering ideas, through the work of making, to the moment of giving their art to others. My favorite page says it best: “By sharing your art, you share yourself!”
Before recording, I decided to answer that page directly. I made an index-card portrait of the girl in round red glasses who appears on it. I pulled a purple gelli print for the background, cut her dress from plain white paper, and gave her bright green leggings, pink socks, and blue shoes, with her face and arms drawn in pink and red. She stands inside a red border with black dots, in my handmade red-and-black frame. Ejaita works as a textile designer as well as an illustrator, and her flat, bold shapes felt like a natural match for cut paper.
Watch the full episode, and then find a scrap of paper and make something of your own.
