Therese Brady Donohue, Director of Picture Book Theater and founder of The Amherst Ballet is leading an exciting workshop called Paint, Shape, Create! for ages 9 through adult here in the Studio on April 20th from 1-4.
Inspired by works in our last exhibition Beyond Books: The Independent Art of Eric Carle, participants in this upcoming workshop will channel Eric Carle and their own inner artists as they paint on aluminum foil and then experiment with shaping it in strips and composing the strips on a painted canvas.
Therese, well known for costume and mask design and construction as founder of Amherst Ballet, told me “For eight years I have worked with reproducing Eric Carle’s picture book images, adapting them into puppets and costumes. I am always interested in taking a technique and creatively using it in different ways. When I saw what Eric had done as an independent artist taking his signature textures and applying them to foil and creating dimension, it spoke to me as a fun technique to introduce to artists of all ages. It is not complicated and does not require in-depth talent to experiment with this technique. This is also a good technique for educators to use in the classroom up through high school.”
With that in mind, Therese and I thought that this creative process would be a great opportunity for an intergenerational class experience in which young artists, parents, grandparents, artists, and educators could work side by side and learn from each other.
The Carle has offered parent/child and family programs before, but with this workshop the elementary-aged artists can participate with or without their parent present. By age 9 some young artists are clear in their creative passions and are ready for an opportunity like this.
Therese and I are both excited about the creative expression and layered learning that will happen this workshop. If you or someone you know in our area might be interested in this workshop learn about how to register (carlemuseum.org/register ) today! We’ll need to have at least 5 participants registered by April 12, and space is limited, so don’t wait!
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Don’t forget to enter The Carle’s Call for Caterpillars Contest for the chance to win an original doodle by Eric Carle! Visit www.carlemusuem.org/call_for_caterpillars for contest details.
Hi! I’m Sarah Johnston and I work part-time in the Studio and conduct Student Outreach Programs for The Carle. Diana and Meghan invited me to contribute to the Studio’s blog about once a month, so I’m excited to start sharing some of my ideas with you. I have a background in art education and taught elementary art for five years in Chicago before relocating to Western Massachusetts with my husband in 2011. I hope you enjoy my first post!
There is something very magical about making the first footprints, snow angels or other marks in a fresh blanket of snow. It often makes me think of a blank canvas just waiting for an artwork to emerge. This project captures that magic in a slightly different and more colorful way. The materials you need to snow paint are ones that you most likely have in your home already, even if you are snowbound. So if your family is looking for something different to do in the snow, give snow painting a try.
The Materials:
Condiment style bottles (we purchased ours from Target)
Food coloring and/or old and dried out markers
Snow!
Part of the fun is mixing up different colors of “paint” into your bottles. I found that about 4-5 drops of food coloring in around 6 oz. of water will give you bright enough colors. The process of making the paint could even be used as a quick lesson in color mixing and discovery. As a former art teacher I often looked for ways in which children could discover on their own how colors mixed to form new colors. The food coloring box may only give you some of the colors in the rainbow so you might have to mix the other colors. What happens when you add a drop or two of red into yellow? What colors do you think you need to mix to make purple?
If you don’t have food coloring in your kitchen I found another way to make quick and easy “paint” when we were purging the Studio’s marker collection. Older and dried out markers may not have enough color to draw with anymore, but if you drop one or two markers into your bottles with water then you will have some other vibrant colors to paint with. Once your colors are mixed up it’s time to go outside and try painting on the snow. The bottles should give enough control to write, draw or just spatter like Jackson Pollock.
Have you used old markers successfully in art projects? I’m always looking for ways to reuse regularly discarded materials, so I’m going to continue exploring the possibilities of reusing old markers. Hopefully I’ll share with you my findings!
Don’t forget to enter The Carle’s Call for Caterpillars Contest for the chance to win an original doodle by Eric Carle! Visit www.carlemusuem.org/call_for_caterpillars for contest details.
Hello educators! I’m really eager to tell you about a new Professional Development workshop I’m developing as a companion to the Museum’s exciting exhibition: Beyond Books: The Independent Art of Eric Carle.*
Eric Carle is primarily known for The Very Hungry Caterpillar and over 70 picture books done in his colorful collage technique.
This exhibition, dedicated to what Eric himself calls his “ArtArt:” paintings, sculptures, and personal sketches that he has been making privately for more than 60 years, offers a view into another side of Eric’s life and work.
Having heard from Eric about the motivation and process behind his “ArtArt,” I began to think more and more about the relationship between work and play and where the two merge with children and materials. This relationship is one we try to cultivate through much of what we do here, so this exhibition provides a great opportunity to share our ideas and experiences!
In the workshop on January 26th 2013, we’ll get our hands messy painting a variety of surfaces such as paper, vinyl, and cardboard. Then we’ll view the exhibition and a video of Eric reflecting on his independent art together. After, we’ll sculpt our painted surfaces into window hangings, mobiles, and more as we discuss Eric’s inspirations as an artist. Participants will leave with ideas for the classroom and an understanding of how his creative process might inspire students to think “off the page.”
Educators will receive 4 PDPs, but you don’t have to be an educator to participate. All participants receive a 10% discount in our Shop on the day of the program.
Here is the essential info again:
Beyond Books: Art Inspired by Eric Carle (4 PDPs)
January 26, 2013. 10:00 am – 2:00 pm
$50 (Members $45) Registration is required. Please click here for more information.
Learn more about Beyond Books: The Independent Art of Eric Carle, in the West Gallery through February 24, 3013, here. Support for this exhibition has been generously provided by Peter and Helen Bing.
I promised some ideas for making greeting/holiday cards with kids. Here is one which will require a little prep and assistance from an adult since it calls for a specialty material and the use of an iron.
First, see what you have for fabric. Scrapish pieces will do. The bottom half of the tee shirt that ripped and a piece of the skirt with the stain on it will do. You might like to start with 3 different fabrics/colors, each somewhere around 12″x12″ but smaller will work too.
You’ll also need some double-sided fusible web from the fabric store. Pellon is one brand that makes some, but other brands work too. Ask for help at the store if you don’t’ know what you’re looking for. 1/3 yard will be enough to make a bunch of cards.
Then, iron the wrong side of the fabric to the fusible web according to the directions it came with. Here’s a tip from someone who learned the hard way: DO NOT touch your hot iron directly to the exposed web or you will get icky stuff on it. You’ll be fine if you trim your fusible web to be just smaller than the piece of fabric you are attaching to it. Since you’re likely using multiple fabrics/colors, you’ll be cutting it anyway.
When the fabric you fave fused to the web is cool, you and your young person are ready to cut it into shapes. If you don’t know what shapes to cut out, just take your scissors for a walk across the fabric and see what you get. The negative or left-behind shapes are usable too!
Next, peel the fusible web backing from your shapes and arrange them on a piece of folded cardstock. You could also arrange the shapes on a differnt piece of heavy paper that you glue to a card later.
Turn the iron back on and carefully iron your shapes to the paper with medium heat, no steam. You can use a thin cotton cloth over the shapes and card as you press if you want to be certain your iron stays safe from icky stuff.
Alternatively, instead of using double-sided fusible web, you could iron your fabric to single or double-sided fusible stabilizer and glue the shapes rather than iron them to your card. The stabilizer adds some dimension to the shapes but if its too thick, you can’t iron your shapes to the paper because the heat won’t pass through it enough to activate the sticky part.
When your shapes are ironed/glued down your card is ready for a message!
“Well, why not just glue fabric directly to the card and skip all the work,” you ask? You could, but sometimes the amount of glue required to glue fabric down warps the paper underneath. And, maybe you’ve noticed how the texture and color of fabric changes after its been soaked through with glue? With fusible web or stabilizer, the fabric still looks and feels like fabric when you’re done.
I wish I could take the credit for these great ideas, but I can’t. Diana first found the fusible web idea in this pretty book and she came up with the stabilizer variation for her Handmade Cards and Books workshop for teachers.
A few weeks ago, the Studio hosted our annual full-day summer class for children, Animals, Art & Imagination. It’s one of my favorite weeks of the summer because of the range of art activities we get to do with the kids in the Museum and outdoors at The Hampshire College Farm. Meghan posted about the program last year, you can read her post here.
First, I talked about the history of papermaking, where paper comes from, and passed around sheets of handmade paper and dry pulp for everyone to feel.
I went through each of the papermaking steps, turning the blended mash into a finished, pressed sheet of paper. For this activity I showed them the pour method, where the pulp and water mix is poured over the mold. The dip method is another way; you scoop the frame into a large tub of the watery pulp mix and pull it up, collecting the fibers on top of the screen and letting the water drain out the bottom. I chose the pour method because it’s easy to make as many sheets of paper as you need without any waste. I think it’s best for working in smaller groups or in indoor spaces where it’s not an option get the space very wet.
I took papermaking in college, and the lab was designed with water drains built into the painted concrete floor and we had to wear rubber boots to keep our feet dry and prevent slipping on all the dripping water. Needless to say, papermaking is a very wet (but fun) media!
When it was the students’ turn to make paper, the children eagerly picked from the flowers, plants and seeds (collected from a nearby farm) and mixed them with the cotton rag and natural fiber pulps in apple sauce to-go cups (any yogurt or small plastic cup would also work).
1/2 a cup of dry pulp = One sheet of 5.5″ x 8.5″ paper.
As you can see, no two sheets of paper were alike!
I put the blender at a big table so everyone could watch each other blend the pulp while they waited for their turn. You want plenty of water mixed with the pulp (we used about 3 cups) to help distribute the pulp evenly over the paper mold and keep it from clumping. Because the pulp was purchased pre-shredded, it only needed to be blended for about 10 seconds on low.
I assisted with pouring the pulp mix over the mold & deckle to make sure the pulp spread evenly across the mold. The oldest children poured the pulp themselves.
After removing the deckle, the wooden frame that helps give the sheet its form, we put a piece of screen on top of the pulp (it comes with the class kit) and used a large sponge to absorb as much water as possible, ringing out the sponge between presses. It’s hard to see in these photos, but the blue mold is sitting on top of a white plastic grid that came in the classroom kit, which helped give the mold its structure and made the water drain more quickly.
With most of the water drawn out by the sponge, the pulp sheet was transferred from the mold onto a couch sheet (very absorbent paper or material designed to draw any remaining water from the paper without sticking to the wet pulp). Anna helped them press out any additional water.
The next morning, the kids proudly showed their parents the paper we left drying on trays overnight. All of the paper sheets were completely dry and ready to bring home by that afternoon.
For this activity we worked with a group of twelve children, ages 6-10, and I had an assistant, Anna, helping me supervise the stations. It would have been very tricky to supervise everything myself. If I did papermaking with a larger group of children (classroom size), I would pre-blend the pulp in large buckets that we could scoop from and pour over the molds, instead of using the blender. The children could still make their paper unique and colorful by adding petals, leaves or seeds between poured the layers of pulp.
I’m by no means a papermaking expert, but having some previous experience from college made me more confident with trying papermaking with a multi-ages class. I would recommend testing out all of the steps yourself a few times and watched some videos online to see the different variations.
Participants in my upcoming Fall Workshop will also get a chance to experiment with hand papermaking:
Bridging Art and Nature for Teachers and Parents
Sunday, October 14, 2012
10:00 am – 3:00 pm
$60 (Members $55)
(5 PDPs) Using some of our favorite picture books and our beautiful surrounds, we will explore ways to link the art and design of the picture book with an exploration of the natural world and a variety of open-ended art projects. Designed to enhance your science curriculum or provide ways to share outdoor time with your children, the program includes time spent outside, so please dress accordingly. We also suggest you bring a brown bag lunch in order to maximize workshop time.
Instructor: Diana MacKenzie. To Register for Professional Development Workshops at The Carle, click here
If you want to learn more about how to make paper, I encourage you to do some research, take a class, or watch some demonstrations of the pour and dip methods online. Below are a few quick videos that I found helpful:
Here’s a 4th grade teacher demonstrating the dip method to his class.
Today, March 20th, is very special to us here at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, and that’s because it’s the day each year that we celebrate Very Hungry Caterpillar Day in honor of one of Eric Carle’s most beloved picture book characters. This past Sunday, we pulled out all the stops for our fuzzy green friend and invited everyone to join us for art making, cookie eating, story listening, and the chance to win some fun prizes!
In the Studio, we challenged visitors to create their own version of The Caterpillar using an assortment of found materials. Here are just a few examples of what kids and adults glued together!
I love the variety of ways visitors used the mix of bottle caps, ribbons, paper, foam, corks and odds & ends. If you missed the party on Sunday, make your own Caterpillars with any found materials and email me a photo of the finished sculpture! Send photos to DianaM@carlemuseum.org, subject “Found Materials Caterpillars.”
In case you don’t own your own copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, you can check out this link to Eric Carle reading The Very Hungry Caterpillaron the Penguin Young Readers YouTube channel. Happy VHC Day!
This is my second post about printing with found materials. To see my first post in this series, click here. This post is all about making printing rolls made with PVC pipes. This is the project for you if you are interested in printing in repeat on a large surface like paper or fabric. Directions below:
I started by spraying Scotch Super77 on the outside of the pipe so I could position the fruit netting and yarn on the surface without it sliding off. Also try any other relatively flat textured found or natural materials to stick to the pipe. Not everything will stick but experimenting is all part of the fun!
I sealed the yarn and plastic netting with two coats of water-based Minwax Polycrylic Gloss (available at hardware stores). The gloss needs to dry completely between coats. Cleanup is easy with soap and water and brushes can be safely rinsed in the sink. An alternative to the Polycrylic is to use any brand acrylic gloss medium available at art supply stores. I prefer to use the Polycrylic gloss from the hardware store because you get more for your money.
Once the second coat is completely dry, the pipe is ready to ink up and roll! Try tempera paints or any water-based printing ink and use a brayer to get the paint into all the nooks in the yarn and plastic netting. See my previous post for printing surface suggestions.
An easy alternative to the process above is to cut out shapes from sheets of adhesive-back foam (available at craft stores) and stick them to the PVC pipe. Try printing multiple colors at once by rolling sections of the pipe in different colors. Mix the handmade printing roll with stamps or drawings or print directly onto a tee shirt or make your own wrapping paper.
The great thing about these printing rolls is they can be rinsed off in the sink and used again and again. PVC pipe is available in different diameters, so you could create an assortment of large rolls and mini rolls. The third and final post on printing with found materials will appear next week, so stay tuned!
To prepare for my recent Professional Development workshop, Possibilities in Print, I wanted to make a visual example of printing with found materials to hang in the Art Studio. There’s an unlimited variety of interesting patterns and shapes you can make with materials that are free! I printed with black and red washable tempera paints onto white Smart-Fab™ Disposable Art and Decoration Fabric but you could use any color ink or acrylics and any fabric or paper. Smart-Fab™ is available through Nasco in several different colors and three roll lengths at a very reasonable price. It’s a great alternative to printing on paper.
The first found material I experimented with was a regular 1-liter plastic seltzer bottle after seeing a pin on Rosemary House’s Pinterest board “Prints and Printmaking.” One of her pins lead me to the blog post by Inner Child Fun about making flower prints with bottom of soda bottles. Using Inner Child Fun’s idea, with a foam brayer I inked up the bottom with red tempera paint and stamped the bottle across the fabric.
If you can use the bottom of the bottle, why not the sides too? So using a sheet of adhesive foam, I cut a variety of shapes and wrapped them around the flattest part of the bottle. When inking up the foam try not to get any on the plastic bottle or your print will not be as clear. The tapered neck of the bottle made a good handle as I rolled it across the fabric. When I ran out of ink half-way across and needed to reink, it was easy to look through the clear bottle and line up the shapes to keep the pattern continuous.
Other found materials you could print with:
Candy packaging
Packaging from glue stick 12-packs
The side of a tofu container
The bottom of various to-go packaging
A new Public Art Project, Prints, Patterns, and Papers starts on March 14 in the Art Studio and is free with Museum admission.
Use your handmade stamp to print a set of beautiful patterned papers while exploring color and design.
New York-based artist Michael Albert makes collages from cereal boxes and just published his first book, An Artist’s America. Last Saturday he visited The Carle.
Starting the afternoon in the Reading Library, Michael shared how he became an artist, how he makes his art, and read from his book.
After, guests followed him to the studio to try their hand at creating their own cereal box collages with encouragement and suggestions from the artist himself.
Guests were really inspired by Michael’s desire to make something beautiful, interesting and potentially great from what would otherwise sit in a landfill. I was struck with how the activity got kids and adults alike to look really carefully at something they might otherwise take for granted.
People worked individually and with friends or family to find all the letters in their name, or just create interesting compositions out of the colors and shapes found in discarded packaging. I’m sure many of the families who participated will be making cereal box collages for weeks to come.
Michael was very generous to offer postcards and bookmarks to any guest at the museum that day, and he even let each person who participated in the studio workshop choose a poster of his work to have signed and take home.
If you missed seeing Michael at The Carle, you can learn about his other upcoming appearances on his website.
In The Art Studio Latin Landscapes April 10 - May 21, 2013 Free with Museum Admission Capture the beauty of the landscapes from Latino Folk Tales: Cuentos Populares–Art by Latino Artists and create a picturesque panorama adapting the textured drawing style of illustrator Raul Colón.
