After years of working in schools, museums, and arts organizations, Colleen created Start With Art to better serve the St. Louis community and beyond with a simple goal: to provide thoughtful and engaging art programming for young children that encourages a start with art.
Why start with art?
Art encourages fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, neural development, and problem solving abilities.
Art provides an outlet for children to process their world, experiences, and emotions.
Art encourages experimentation, imagination, and risk taking which are all important skills to foster in our modern world.
About Colleen
Colleen Fitzsimmons-Wiviott is an art educator with over ten years of experience creating and facilitating arts experiences for children and their caregivers. Colleen designs programs and classes that are student led, including a mix of inquiry based discussion, interactive activities that utilize a variety of modalities to suit learning style needs, and hands on art making. These experiences help to reach certain goals with students and families: discovery of the creative process, self expression, and purposeful connections to the world around us. She has taught in schools and art institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, El Museo del Barrio, and the Saint Louis Art Museum. In addition, her virtual art program, "Wee Wednesday," airs on NinePBS as part of Teaching in Room 9. Colleen holds a Master of Science in Education degree in Museum Education and General Childhood Education from Bank Street College of Education in New York.
Out in the world
Watch Colleen’s virtual art program with the Saint Louis Art Museum, Wee Wednesday. This collection contains over 35 virtual art lessons that feature a read aloud, mindfulness exercise, guided exploration of a work of art, and a hands on art making project using materials found at home. You can also watch this program on NinePBS as part of their Teaching in Room 9 program.
Learn about tips and tricks for creating art at home with little artists in blog posts for St. Louis Mom.
What kind of art do we create at
Start With Art?
You won’t find cookie cutter, step-by-step projects here. We’ll explore the process of making, rather than focusing on the end product. Children will dive into art mediums as artists do and will experiment with:
Drawing using crayons, pencils, markers, pastels, and chalk.
Painting using acrylics, watercolors, and nature based paints.
Printmaking using stamps, stencils, and collagraph techniques.
Sculpture using Model Magic, plasticine modeling clay, homemade doughs, and recycled materials.
Collage using glue, varying types of paper, and recycled materials.
Mixed Media using all of the above!
Collaborative Art where we will create something together.