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May 16th, 2012
by Diana
Sorry you haven’t heard from me in a while! Last week I returned from a long overdue trip to Savannah, Georgia to visit friends. Early May happened to be a great time to visit the city; the trees and flowers were in full bloom (and spanish moss in full hang), It was warm and sunny but not too hot, and there were tons of activities for us to partake in throughout the weekend including a 5K benefit race, historic trolley tour and farmers market (hello Georgia peaches and blueberries!).
One of our wanderings last Saturday lead us to a cafe on the edge of beautiful Forsyth Park called the The Sentient Bean. In their main lounge area hung a cheerful exhibition of children’s art work, black paper shapes arranged and glued to a large white background.
The way they used wires with clips was a really creative and simple way to temporarily exhibit art work on the walls. How beautiful are these collages by 3 and 4-year-olds!?
At the bottom of each column is a photograph of the child who made the art. If anyone has additional information about which school created these please comment below.
If you’re in the Savannah area you should check it out for yourself, I recommend after a slow stroll around the fountain in Forsyth Park sipping a smoothie from The Sentient Bean…
Tags: displaying children's art, Savannah, The Sentient Bean
Posted in Collage, Infants & Toddlers, Preschool | No Comments »
May 4th, 2012
by Meghan
We’re in the thick of preparations for a busy month of programming on the road. Next week we’re excited to celebrate National Children’s Book week at three different sites. Thursday I’ll be at Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, MA.
My first program there, Art Studio-to-Go, is for ages 3-5 with a caregiver. I’ll be sharing a picture book and helping young artists make shape collages.
I Am an Artist, for ages 5-8, is all about Eric Carle’s techniques and process.
My final program at Cary, Possibilities in Print for ages 9-12, delves into how picture books are produced and offers a change to make multiple color prints of one’s own.
If you’re interested in learning more about these programs and what else is on slate for children at Cary Memorial Library, click here.
Also next week, Sarah visits kindergarteners in Enfield, CT, and Diana will be at Ashland Public Library. Click here to learn more about our outreach programs for students and check back later when we post about how everything goes this month!
Tags: Art Studio-to-Go, Ashland Public Library, Cary Memorial Library, Eric Carle, I AM an Artist, National Children's Book Week, outreach, Possibilities in Print
Posted in Collage, Elementary School, On the Road, Preschool, Printmaking | No Comments »
April 28th, 2012
by Meghan
As I was going through our photos today, this one of a materials buffet from a conference we hosted a few years back jumped out at me. I’d like to call myself a color minimalist. But, since having a baby last year, I’ve become especially interested in colors, particularly… all of them. At once.
I was one of those kids who like to keep my crayons in spectrum order. Were you too? There is just something about the spectrum that makes materials so enticing to me.
Do you use the spectrum to order materials in your classroom or home? Do your children or students want to organize their things this way? Please share!
Tags: being an artist, color, materials buffet, organization, rainbow, spectrum
Posted in Found Materials, Materials, Mixed Media | 3 Comments »
April 26th, 2012
by Diana
I wanted to share some photos from last Sunday of one of my favorite events, Drawing Day in The Art Studio. The Carle devotes one Sunday every spring to scribbles, doodles, designs, paintings, cartoons, traces and sketches. For Drawing Day this year we brought out some of our most popular drawing tools and divided the room into six different stations for visitors to work with the materials in an independent, open-ended way.
Thanks to a generous donation from the paper company Canson, Inc., each visitor received a free sketchpad to use at the different stations and to continue their drawing discoveries at home. Thank you Canson!
At the “Make Your Mark” station visitors scribbled and rubbed different textured rubbing plates onto their papers with colorful crayons. For a similar activity you can do at home, visit the Web Activities page on our website or click here for the printable PDF.
At the “Free Draw” station some experimented with drawing without looking (or contour drawing) by wearing our funky “blindfold” sunglasses. We made the blindfolds from a pack of party glasses from Oriental Trading Company. Pop out the lenses, paint them with a few coats of black acrylic or gesso, let them dry, and pop them back in place and you’ve got a blindfold! These are a great alternative to cloth blindfolds for a classroom or party.
When you can’t see what your hand is doing, what you think you are drawing is often quite different from what you actually draw! It’s a fun challenge, try it the next time you’re drawing at home.
Here’s a photo of visitors making 3D wire “drawing” sculptures.
The thumbprint cartoon station and the watercolor station were the most popular tables of the day and visitors filled their new sketchpads with brightly colored doodles, marks and cartoons.
Also on Sunday, author and illustrator Durga Bernhard shared a few of her books at a special storytime in the Reading Library.
Afterwards, Durga joined us in The Studio to meet with visitors and give them a a chance to see her drawing process. Durga and her friend came up with a delightful caption to the illustration she hung up on our back wall. She drew “A long-tailed firebird who stole a fish from the octopus.” Stop by The Studio this weekend to see Durga’s beautiful drawing. Thank you for joining us Durga!
For more information about Durga Burnard visit her blog, click here.
For a link to some of the Canson paper products we sell in The Museum Shop, click here.
Tags: drawing day, drawing exercises for children, Durga Bernhard, rubbing plates
Posted in Activities, At The Carle, Drawing, In the Studio | No Comments »
April 23rd, 2012
by Meghan
In my last post I showed you how guests made foam stamps in our last public art project and promised I’d show you how we made stamp pads for the entire studio. So first, the how, then, the why:
Start with some upholstery foam. Sold by the yard at fabric stores, and sometimes in packages at craft stores, it’s worth the effort to find a coupon if you’re going to purchase a lot. It doesn’t need to be super-dense or thick, maybe 1/2″ or 3/4″.
Hot-glue a piece of upholstery foam (or sponge) to a plastic plate or polystyrene foam tray. The tray should be just larger than the foam, and the foam should be just larger than the stamps you will use.
Use a plastic spoon, palette knife or spatula to smear tempera or other water-based soluble paint into the upholstery foam. The first time you load the pad, it will take a fair amount of paint. Now its ready to use. Easy, right?
If you plan to use the stamp pad the next day, just slip it into a zippered bag to keep moist. Let it air dry (with the paint on) if you won’t be using it again within a few days. Too long in the bag and it gets moldy. Spritz with water and add more paint when you’re ready to use it again.
If you’ve been to the studio you know we offer a specific selection of materials to explore, and we arrange multiple sets of those materials around the room so they are available to whomever stops in to experiment. When we include stamp pads in our projects we make them the same color across the entire room. Usually that’s so they don’t all end up turning brownish-black from the stamps traveling around the room. With this last project is was also so that the activity focus could be more on shape and pattern than on color, though we did also offered colored pencils so that color could be introduced to the papers through drawing.
We’ve used traditional black ink stamp pads in public art projects before, but we find they work best for smaller, rubber stamps. They aren’t ideal for our large, handled stamps. They also make parents of very young children nervous with all their blackness and permanence. Kids do love black, but that’s a post for another time.
Tags: collage papers, pattern, Patterns and Papers, polystyrene, prints, Prints Patterns Paper, stamping, Styrofoam, tempera paint, upholstery foam
Posted in Activities, Elementary School, Middle School, Mixed Media, Nurturing Creativity at Home, Preschool, Printmaking, Public Art Program, Uncategorized | No Comments »
April 19th, 2012
by Meghan
Yesterday we started a collage project in the studio, but if you missed getting to make a stamp and a collection of patterned papers in our last project, don’t fret! You can easily make stamps and stamp pads like we used in the studio.
In the studio guests started by cutting shapes out of 2″x2″ rectangles of sticky-backed craft foam and then arranging the shapes small rectangle of polystyrene (like meat tray) foam.
Names and initials were a popular design. E made a one with her initials that she was happy with, even though the E’s read backwards. For her second stamp she wanted to make her entire first name. Together we talked about how to cut and arrange the letters so they would read correctly when stamped.
Some guests chose to leave their stamp behind for others to use. We displayed a selection of them on our front wall to inspire our guests’ designs.
If you don’t have any foam at home you can use interesting or discarded objects as stamps. Diana recently offered some great stamping/printing ideas here and here, and we a have printable/PDF about printing with found objects here.
In my next post I’ll share how we made white stamp pads, so check back soon!
Tags: collage papers, Craft Foam, design, homemade materials, Patterns and Papers, polystyrene, prints, Prints Patterns Paper, Public Art Program, stamping, Styrofoam
Posted in Elementary School, In the Studio, Middle School, Mixed Media, Nurturing Creativity at Home, Preschool, Printmaking | 1 Comment »
April 16th, 2012
by Diana
During our preparation this week for the next Public Art Project, I was reminded of how much we love using magazine paper for programs here at The Carle. From time to time we’ll acquire a stack of cooking or home magazines from someone’s attempts to clear out their clutter. We cut out interesting patterns or textures and organize them in baskets by color (plus one basket just for fun, crazy patterns!) and set them aside until we might need them.
We’ll be using magazine papers (as well as other types of paper) for the upcoming project The Shape Game, which starts this Wednesday the 18th. I took a moment to play around with the clippings when I was photographing the baskets, and very quickly made a color wheel.
The magazine papers are so much fun to arrange and sort! It’s just another great way to explore color, pattern and visual texture with children.
By coincidence, one of our regular visitors (and mom of three) Sara G. brought by a whimsical tree she recently made with magazine clippings and other materials she had at home. This is a great example of a project you could work on as a family or a class to really customize to the style. Bright colored papers and drawing tools make a ‘loud’ tree, or just pencil drawings on neutral colored papers make a ‘quiet’ tree. Or go all out and make a color wheel tree!
Sara collaged both sides of every leaf on the tree with a mix of patterns and colors. The leaves are ‘laminated’ between pieces of packing tape and attached to the branches with floral wire. They still have a lot of movement and when I was photographing the tree in our orchard, the leaves were flapping in the breeze just like the real thing. The branch is attached to a block of wood, which she collaged with paper and brown beads (to represent the roots).
I even love the surprise birds’ nest she tucked into one of the branches!
For another color wheel project Meghan made click here, or search keyword “color” in our search bar.
Do you save magazine clippings for collage at your home or in your classroom? what’s your sorting system?
Thanks for sharing your project with us Sara!
Tags: color, color wheel, magazines, texture, tree, visual texture
Posted in Collage, Public Art Program, Studio Favorites | No Comments »
April 11th, 2012
by Diana
Making books with kids can be a lot of fun, especially if you have the right materials and enough time to work at a comfortable pace. The best book styles to make with young children have easy to follow steps and open-ended ways for them to show their individuality through pictures and stories. Here are a couple of book forms I made with Lilly DePino’s kindergarten class last Thursday at Dummerston School in Vermont.
Before I arrived, we prepared a set of pre-folded warm or cool papers for each student. They could cut any 2 shapes out of the paper with scissors, but were instructed to leave plenty of space along the center fold so it could be bound at the end.
Some children cut small shapes, and others cut large shapes.
After all of their shapes were cut, students decided the order of their pages, thinking about what areas they wanted to reveal from one page to the next. The teachers and I helped them staple the finished book along the spine. The rainbow book provoked an interesting conversation about color, and I asked them what each family of colors made them think of. Warm colors reminded them of fire and the sun. Cool colors made them think of water, grass and the sky.
For the second book form, in a circle on the carpet I introduced the students to bone folders (seen in the image below) and allowed them to test the new tool out with scrap pieces of paper. Then I handed out a long sheet of colored construction paper and step by step we turned them into accordion books. Having everyone in a circle made it easy to see who needed help or was still working on a step.
Next, the children went back to their tables and drew stories with markers on four separate sheets of drawing paper.
Once they finished drawing their stories, they glued each page in the order of their choice.
Behind the little girl holding her book below, you can see two very kind kindergarteners helping put away the baskets and trays (without me even asking!). If I’ve learned anything from my many school visits over the years, it’s that they love to be helpful! I will take all the help I can get when it comes to cleaning up after making art  .
My next stop this week is to work with the kindergarten classes at Pine Hill School in Sherborn, Massachusetts. Hopefully I’ll have some more photos to share when I return! For more information about The Carle’s Outreach Programs click here.
Thanks for having me Dummerston School!
Tags: accordion book, book making, bookmaking with young kids, Dummerston School, kindergarten, rainbow book
Posted in Bookmaking, Elementary School, On the Road | 3 Comments »
April 8th, 2012
by Diana
On Monday and Tuesday of last week, Sarah and I got to work with all of the kindergarteners and 1st graders at Florence Roche School in Groton, MA. I just wanted to share some fun photos from working with my new friends!
First, they took turns stamping with a variety of textures and colors.
Then, they cut their textured papers into Eric Carle inspired collages.
I wish I could remember the stories that went along with each picture they created! I have memories of alligators, airplanes, rocks, snakes and birds. What do you see when you look at each of their beautiful collages? So many creative solutions working with the same materials!
Tags: Eric Carle Activity, Eric Carle-Inspired, outreach
Posted in Collage, Elementary School, On the Road | No Comments »
April 7th, 2012
by Meghan
If you’re on The Carle’s educators’ email list than you have probably already learned that we are once again co-hosting, with Smith College, an educator’s institute this July 14-16. All the details can be found on the institute’s page. Rather than repeat the info here, I’m hoping to entice you to participate in the learning yet to take place by sharing images from our last institute Landscapes of Literacy (2010).
Learning about Eric Carle’s techniques
Painting unique collage papers
Selecting materials to transform worn-out books into works of collaborative art
Old board books finding new life as sculpture
Inspiring words from our Italian colleagues.
I hope you’ll consider joining us this July!
Tags: Italy, learning, Lella Gandini, Materials as provocation, Pistoia, Reggio Emilia, Smith College
Posted in At The Carle, In the Studio, Infants & Toddlers, Our Approach, Professional Development, Special Guests and Artist Visits, Uncategorized | No Comments »
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