It worked for Claude Monet and John Singer Sargent, so why shouldn’t your kids learn to render outdoor scenes from life? This week, Soho’s Drawing Center will introduce Draw On-Site, where Wooster Street will stand in for Rouen Cathedral. Children can roam from station to station, working with a variety of materials to create their own masterpieces. Each area is supervised by an emerging artist who’s recently exhibited at the center. At one of the more frenzied stations, a game of musical chairs—usually every-kid-for-himself—will teach teamwork as artists Oliver Halsman Rosenberg and Clint Taniguchi will conduct a tag-team drawing activity as music plays. Judy Stevens’s giant 3-D maze of red nylon tape inspired her station, where kids will first negotiate the ins and outs of the labyrinth itself, then make a drawing, abstract or literal, reflecting their experience. Pulp-paper-making—the basic craft from which all these activities begins—will be taught by a contingent from the Dieu Donné Papermill. The Drawing Center’s education coordinator, Aimee Good, says she had no trouble attracting even solitary artists to an event that’s open to the masses. “Artists are actually very generous, and they like to work with children,” she says. “They like finding an opportunity for collaboration and seeing how their work plays out in the moment.”

DETAILS: 6/17 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster St., nr. Grand St. (212-219-2166 or drawingcenter.org); free.

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• Articles by Susan Avery
• Table of Contents: Jun 19, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!