Here’s a sample of all the fun things guests are making in The Studio lately. The current Public Art Project is Animals in Motion, making moveable animal mobiles or puppets with chopsticks, coffee stirrers, paper card stock, wire and lots of fun furry and feathery materials. Above, Maiya and her mom made a few birds, and a rabbit that really hops! Below is a beautiful pair of galloping (Blue?) horses by two sisters.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?
A pair of friendly giraffes marching side by side…
One slithery, bejeweled snake…
And a few more feathery friends!
Animals in Motion runs now through April 9th, 2013, so stop by and make your favorite animal move.
**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. Submissions must be postmarked by May 31, 2013.**
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.
It feels good to be back at The Carle! I’ve been scarce for a while because a very young person has come to live with my family and I took some time off to get to know her. In the past two months I’ve learned that life as a working mom of 2 kids under 2 years old is super busy but full of learning. I’m grateful that I get to spend time at home and time at The Carle learning about how toddlers explore materials and use them to make discoveries about the world.
While I’ve been out for most of our last Friday morning Materials Play for Toddlers series in the Studio, I wanted to share some pictures that were captured in a few of the sessions:
Pictured above: marbles, tempera paint, liquid watercolor paint, & black construction paper placed in the bottom of a plastic paper tray. Below, paper circles, cookie tins, tempera and liquid water color paint. Shake rattle and roll!
***Safety Note: if marbles are a choking hazard in your setting try golf balls or ping pong balls.***
Below: plexi mirrors, washable markers, water-soluble oil pastels, wide cups of water and brushes.
Truck Printing! Tempera squeezed into trays, toy cars and rolling stampers, black paper taped to the floor in the shape of a road. Secondary colors (violet, green and orange) chosen so that the mixture of the 3 would resemble mud.)
A buffet of beautiful ingredients: (colorful paper dot confetti, raffia snipped to smithereens, reflective plastic Easter grass, plastic newspaper bag shreds, white feathers, yarn scraps, clementines box mesh, (in other words, all the bits we had laying around) . . .
. . . pressed and sprinkled onto contact paper (paper frame attached first). This is my own sun catcher experiment. My guest’s compositions were less ordered, more spontaneous.
I hope this inspired some experimentation and creative fun with your toddlers! Happy mess-making!
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.
Tomorrow is the first day of the new Public Art Project, Animals in Motion, where we invite you to create a moveable animal mobile of your favorite creature. It’s inspired by the exhibition The Art of Eric Carle: Feathers, Fins and Fur, opening Tuesday, March 12th in our West Gallery.
The video above is an inspiring glimpse into the world of large-scale kinetic sculpture. In 2008 The Atlanta Botanical Gardens featured an outdoor exhibition of 16 kinetic sculpture artists displaying their large moveable sculptures around the gardens. This video, created by PBA30 Atlanta’s PBS station, features the kinetic artists: Tim Prentice, Zachary Coffin, Kristina Lucas, George Sherwood, David Fried, and Susan Pascal Beran. Which sculpture is your favorite?
Inspired to create a mobile at home?
Click here for a very sweet and thorough video tutorial by Big Red Hat Kids on how to make an Alexander Calder inspired sculpture from wooden dowels and air-dry clay.
Click Here for a tutorial by Blick Art Materials on how to make a kinetic Dura-Lar mobile.
For more videos like the one above, search “kinetic sculpture” on YouTube.
I hope to share some photos of visitors’ animal mobiles in my next post, so stay tuned!
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.
It’s February vacation week and we’ve been busy making maps of all sorts in The Studio. Meet our fleet of future cartographers!
Adding some land and sea…
The brown shape is Florida. He said he colored it in a warm color because it’s hot there.
These are pictures of the creatures that live on the land and in the ocean on her map.
“Treasure Land”
A railroad in the “old fashion map style from 1998″
This treasure map is read from right to left. The treasure is protected by a dinosaur, a giant octopus/squid and a crane (the treasure is sitting under the paper crane on the bottom left).
“Rainbow Island”
This is another treasure map with a squid, a skeleton and a family of dinosaurs protecting the treasure.
“Our happy vacation to the creek”
This is the Bermuda Triangle protected by a giant dragon in the middle of the ocean.
Thanks to all the Museum guests who shared their artwork with me! The current Public Art Project, Mapping Makeover is running now through March 5th.
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.carlemuseum.org/call_for_caterillars for contest details.
To celebrate The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art’s 10th anniversary year, we invite friends, families, schools, and other organizations throughout the country and abroad to create 3-dimensional caterpillar sculptures out of found materials. Be inspired by Eric Carle’s most beloved character, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and transform ANY combination of recycled or found materials (plastic, paper, foam, wood, metal, etc.) into a 3-dimensional caterpillar sculpture. Photographs of the caterpillar sculptures will be displayed at The Carle and on The Carle’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and homepage.
What You Could Win:
Three entries will be chosen at random at the Museum’s Children’s Book Festival on June 8, 2013 and will receive an original doodle by Eric Carle!
How to Enter:
Have fun creating your caterpillar either as an individual or part of a group.
Submit up to four digital images of your sculpture. These photos can be of the various stages of fabrication or of the completed caterpillar taken from different angles. Photos should be high-quality .jpg images, no larger than 2MB.Please do not send original artwork!
With each submission, please provide artist(s) name(s), a daytime phone number, email address and mailing address of the primary contact. Primary contact must be 18 or older.
If you are sending multiple entries please put photos of each submission in a separate folder on the CD.
How to send us your digital images:
Mail images on a CD to: Call For Caterpillars, The Carle, 125 West Bay Road Amherst, MA 01002
Email images as attachments to: callforcaterpillars@carlemuseum.org (see above for photo size guidelines)
Submissions must be postmarked by May 31, 2013. Pictures of the sculptures will be
displayed at the Museum either on a digital picture frame or printed and displayed in the Art
Studio from June through August 2013.
Submitted photos may be featured on The Carle’s social media pages, website or print
publications. Photos become the property of The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art
and will not be returned.
To print out a PDF of the contest flyer, including guidelines and rules, click here!
For more information visit www.carlemuseum.org/Call_for_Caterpillarsor email callforcaterpillars@carlemuseum.org
Stay tuned for future posts about this contest. We hope to see your caterpillars very soon!
Reid, our January-Term intern, designed and hosted a really fun special Studio activity last week for Museum guests. Here is her report on the planning process of the project and her reflection on the day.
When brainstorming for my Special Sunday activity, I knew right off that I wanted to experiment with the way we use light to make images. In the studio, our large windows provide so much beautiful natural light, and I wanted to utilize this feature in the activity. Meghan and I were bouncing activity ideas off each other when we came up with the idea of tracing shadows. Upon further elaboration we came up with the idea of using found objects to make shadow collages, tracing the lines, and finally painting over the drawn images. Initially I was having trouble deciding between collaging and painting, and this project combined the two!
Once I knew what I wanted to do, I began to plan out what materials we would use. I played with different kinds of drawing tools, paints, and paper to find the perfect combination of supplies. In the end, I decided to use Staonal crayons with tempera cake paints on large pieces of watercolor paper. I found the paint appeared bold and bright on the paper and didn’t smudge the Staonal, so the tracings remained intact.
We put out baskets of found and natural objects that would cast interesting shadows. Each visitor could choose up to 4 objects at a time, and when they were done with those they could trade them back in for different pieces to trace. We had natural objects like stones, pinecones, and seashells, along with found objects like ribbon, bottle caps, and mesh. It was important to have a variety of different shapes and sizes available.
On the day of the project we were lucky enough to have gorgeous sunny weather. Of course, because of New England’s unpredictable weather, we were prepared to use an overhead projector as a back-up plan in case the sun wasn’t out. We arranged the back of the art studio so that the tables were pushed to the right side; this area was set up as the painting area, complete with paintbrushes, water, sponges, and of course paint!
The left side of the studio was the tracing area. This is where visitors would put down their paper on the floor or sit on a chair and trace on a stool to arrange their objects and trace the shadows. We had cool shades that had previously been crafted by staff members on the windows already, and we moved these so there could be some interesting shadow patterns on the floors for the visitors.
The cool thing about this project was it could be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be, depending on age level, ability, and interest. I didn’t want something where the guidelines were super stringent. If a child didn’t want to draw on the floor, they could just paint at the table. I made sure to emphasize that when talking to the visitors. There were no rules to this project; the point of it was to allow the materials and the environment to inspire and to create.
I would say this project was definitely a success. It was exciting to see the families collaborating with each other and having fun with each other’s work. This activity was able to engage visitors of all ages. I was delighted to see how creative the children (and adults!) were with this project. Some visitors were very abstract with the images they made, while others used the shadows to create scenes out of their objects. All in all, it was a very fun afternoon in the art studio!
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.
Just in time for Halloween, the Art Studio came alive with creepy, crawly, hairy, spiky creations in yesterday afternoon’s Special Sunday Monster Mash Workshop. We were very excited to host artist, educator and author Susan Schwake for the day in the back of the Studio, where she lead the workshop and signed guests’ copies of her amazing new book, Art Lab For Kids (available for sale in The Carle Bookshop).
Susan runs a gallery/studio/art academy called Artstream Studios in Rochester, New Hampshire, where she’s been teaching art to children and adults since 1993. She describes the book as a collection of all the successful art lessons she’s taught over the years.
Artist and Author, Susan Schwake
The Texture Monster activity is just one of many drawing, painting, printmaking, paper and mixed media lessons featured in the book. Susan’s husband, Rainer Schwake took the beautiful photographs of the step-by-step process of each lesson. It would make a great gift for the young artist in your life and I highly recommend it for any parent or educator looking for fresh ideas.
If you’d like to make your own Texture Monsters like the ones we made in yesterday’s workshop, you’ll need cover weight paper (we used 11″x17″ white) and wax crayons or oil pastels in different colors for doing the rubbings. You could use store-bought or homemade rubbing plates for this part.
Next, use watercolors to fill in the paper with areas of color. The wax or oil will resist the watercolor paint, creating a neat effect. Allow the paper to dry completely before cutting or tearing out shapes for your monsters.
Use a large sheet of sturdy paper a the support for your texture monster collage. We used 12″x18″ sheets of construction paper and guests chose from black, pink, yellow or blue as the backgrounds. Use your imagination to arrange your shapes to make friendly (or scary) monster characters. Making monsters is great activity for a family Halloween party or and would make festive home or classroom decorations. Art Lab For Kids suggests taking this activity a step further by making monster birthday or get well cards.
Susan has a few more books in the works which sound pretty exciting and we look forward to having her back for another fun workshop in the future! You can follow Susan Schwake on her blog Art Esprit , her website SusanSchwake.com and purchase a signed copy of her book in the Carle Bookshop or here.
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.
