Youth in Arts is proud to be participating in What About Age?, which features panels exploring ageism that were originally displayed in NYU’s Kimmel Windows. The show is on display at the Marin Civic Center galleries through May 6. At Youth in Arts, we assembled teams of younger artists (13 to 17) and older artists (65 and up) to create art to hang alongside the panels.
Ageism is one of those things you may not think about much – until you get older. As one artist in the show said, “Aging means walking forward while also reflecting back.”
Our process began with two workshops to take a deeper dive into ageism. We discussed the stereotypes we hold – whether verbalized or not – about older or younger people and how they move through the world. When it came time to create art, artists were eager to learn from each other. Artists who love to draw wanted to work with sculptors; painters learned to make mosaics and work with wood. We paired each younger artist with an older one, and also had a few teams of 3 and 4 who made art together.
As artists, we thought about what we wanted to say visually. An older artist talked about getting comfortable with her wrinkles. One of her younger artist partners said it never occurred to him that she had once been a middle schooler –the same age he was!
