10/17/2026
Joy alert! Paintings! Paintings created in response to Abstract Expressionism: The Women by students from Grinnell College Preschool, Grinnell Early Learning Center Preschool, Loving Hands Preschool, Grinnell Area Arts Council’s Studio Six program, and Central Iowa Residential Services.
Participants spent time viewing Abstract Expressionism: The Women, with Tilly Woodward, Grinnell College Museum of Art’s Curator of Academic and Community Outreach, to look, think, talk, listen, and make. They thought about the paintings as visual music— how some music has words that tell a story in the same way that a painting of a person, a landscape, or a still life tells a story, and how other music is beautiful without words, just as paintings without words are beautiful. Elements in both music and painting, like melody, harmony, rhythm, layers, tone, repetition, volume, color, size, shapes, contrast, movement, texture, and composition, create meaning and feelings that there may be no words for.
Participants talked about what sounds the paintings might make, and what words described things they felt when they viewed the paintings. They listened to different kinds of music and were asked to choose paintings that matched the music.
We considered how there were different kinds of abstraction including action paintings, figurative abstraction, and color field paintings.
After time in the exhibition, participants created paintings as a group and as individuals, while listening to a variety of instrumental music, with instructions to respect, layer, echo, pattern, and embellish. They did wonderful work!
