When my NYC niece came to Chicago for library conference and a visit I was excited to bring her to the Chicago Children’s Museum art studio. So when I went to visit her she was excited to bring me to the Children’s Museum of the Arts (CMA).
CMA is located in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. It has several studio spaces, two gallery spaces, a relaxing space, and a huge lobby.
If you look up you can see the relaxing space. Not sure how relaxing it is as it contains these unstable pieces.
At the end of the lobby hall there is an interactive art piece and the door to the right of that leads to the stART studio for children 5 and under. It has “basic art materials including playdough and flubber” and a dramatic play, music, or theater area.
This picture of the elevated space is a little weird because I was shooting through a piece of glass so you can see a reflection of the building across the street.
At the other end of the hallway is the Fine Art Studio. This space is divided in two by an amazing sink.
My niece who says they had this kind of sink in the shop at her high school demonstrates its use
There are two rotating workshops – one at each end of the studio – as well as an area where guests can draw or paint.
At this end the project was a collaborative box structure inspired by the artwork of an artist whose name I didn’t catch. You can see pictures of the artist’s box structures sitting on the table but unfortunately I didn’t get close ups.
These are the always accessible areas for painting and drawing which are in the middle behind the large sink.
On the other side of the Fine Art Studio the project “Happiness Chandeliers” was inspired by the installation that was currently in the large gallery space “Breaking the Glass Ceiling” by E.V. Day.
The Gallery space has rotating exhibits of emerging, established, or child artists that rotate several times a year. The large gallery space is also home to the Clay Bar.
The museum has another smaller gallery, a Media Lab, and a Sound Booth for teens and maintains a permanent collection of over 2000 paintings and drawings by children from over 50 countries. These can be viewed on Flickr.
The sign in the lobby says “The mission of the Children’s Museum of the Arts is to introduce children and their families to the transformative power of the arts.” The website adds “by providing opportunities to make art side by side with working artists.” In addition to the opportunities to do so at the museum and at classes and camps they also have community programs which work with underserved and at risk communities funded by the museum fees for admission and classes.
For the second and third months of Drawing Lab we focused on dots and lines. In March the tables were covered with paper again and the easels were set up in the open space. Then we randomly added some colored sticky dots. We also gave some dots to each guest and suggested they add them to the paper and then create a drawing by connecting the dots or using the dots as a starting point.
A tri-fold board I made with artist quotes about dots and lines in their art can be seen in the forefront of this picture. It poses a question derived from my favorite quotes – from Wassily Kadinsky, “Everything starts from a dot” and from Paul Klee “A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.” – Can you start with a dot and take a line for a walk?
I may have overstepped my boundary as a volunteer when I brought in this board but after some anguish created when Liz suggested as much I realized that part of why I have enjoyed volunteering in the Young Artist Program is because I have been able to contribute and felt that my contributions were valued. So while I may not be quite as bold in the future I will continue to bring my suggestions and resources.
More inspiration from Liz can be glimpsed beneath the board – pictures of Yayoi Kusama’s dot rooms and part of an “extreme connect the dots” printable (google the phrase – they have thousands of dots). After one of the art educators subbed for Liz and mentioned that the pictures children were creating reminded them of constellations Liz added a few constellation pictures and included them in her introduction to school groups.
After this child connected the dots on all the tables I suggested she begin filling in some of the shapes she created.
Other resources that I contributed include the books The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds and Harold and the Purple Crrayon by Crockett Johnson. I had looked in vain for other books about dots and lines but have since found some great ones for next year. Lines that Wiggle by Candace Whitman, The Line by Paula Bossio, and A Line Can Be by Laura Ljungkvist.
When Liz designed the Drawing Lab curriculum she intended the third month to focus on “drawing machines” which were to be contraptions like markers attached to cars. These were never created but the preparators did come through with some wooden holders that held many markers at once and enhanced May’s open ended marker drawing.
Liz also set up lots of boxes and paper in the open area and encouraged children to draw continous lines a la Harold and the Purple Crayon.
In March, April, and May we introduced several different drawing activities. We started with pen and ink which was actually liquid watercolor paint. Liz made pen nibs out of formica tile samples that had been donated and attached them to pencils. We covered the tables with white paper and encouraged children to notice all the different kinds of lines they could make with the different nibs. There were thin nibs and thick nibs and some that made two and three lines at once. Some kids couldn’t believe we wanted them to draw on the tables but then they really got into it. Some just experimented with lines and some made drawings. Grownups loved drawing too.
We also had a few long pens and a piece of paper taped to the floor. One of the museum preparators carved nibs on the end of the long dowels. It was fun to watch how different children moved as they drew with these large pens. Some just stood still and reached out with their arms. Some walked and dragged the pen along behind them. One little girl danced as she drew. The accumulated effect of all the lines and some spills was beautiful and the finished piece is hanging above the sink now and getting lots of compliments.
We also put out trays with salt mixed with powdered tempera paint and lots of wooden tools (forks, knives, salad tongs, combs etc. from my collection) for mark making.
Fingers work too! We offered these throughout the Drawing Lab months.
While we were vacationing in Saugatuck last week we headed over to Douglas since we hadn’t checked it out last year. I was excited when we found a map of the town on a kiosk that featured artist decorated Adirondack Chairs but as we looked around we realized that there were no chairs. We finally found a school housed themed one “School House Days” by Judy Anthrop behind the old school house.
It turned out that the rest of the chairs had just been auctioned off and gone to their new homes. A shopkeeper told us that the one that was in front of her store was now on a porch a few streets over. These regular size chairs seem a lot more conducive to house placement than the oversized Adirondack Chairs I saw in Wilmington, Vermont several years ago (see post In blank they do blank).
And maybe more conducive to eventual use than the ones from my favorite artist chair fundraiser – the one we did at Nonotuck when we first moved to the Feiker school. The old elementary school had a bunch of beautiful old wooden children’s chairs and since we weren’t going to use them in the classrooms we got permission from the city (our landlord) to sell them. We had a lot of parent artists and artist friends who were excited to participate. I was lucky enough to “win” the bid on the chair by parent Melissa Barillaro’s artist brother (Joe?).
The chair sat at the top of our stairs in Northampton and I wondered where it would work in Chicago but we found the perfect place for it. One of the oddities of our new condo was a small closet space with no door. The former owners had used it as a display area for small glass animals and had installed a heavy glass shelf. After we removed the glass shelf we realized that the closet was the perfect place to put our Levy/Laroque coat rack. At first I thought I would put the small yellow chest of drawers that used to sit by my bed under it but it was too tall and then I realized the chair would be perfect.
I imagined it would be a place to sit on to put on and take off shoes but it has become more like a little table with extra hanging space. Since there is an outlet behind it, it first became a phone and iPad charging station. Then my husband started putting his keys and sunglasses on it and I realized it was a perfect place to hang bags.
In this photo you can see one of the charging cords trailing onto the floor. A blogger I was reading the other day said the difference between photos of a home in a blog and the photos in a magazine shoot is that blog photos show the stuff one actually has on their bedside tables. So rather than retaking this photo I’m going to go with that!
When my oldest granddaughter was two I flew to Chicago to stay with her because my daughter had a work trip to London. I packed some little presents in my suitcase to be opened each morning. Over the years those suitcase presents became a tradition and during my visits to Chicago I’d be awakened by an exuberant “Wake up time Mimi” followed by a whispered “Is there anything in your suitcase for me?”.
Now that we live in Chicago there are not as many occasions for suitcase presents but since we do take vacations together I have continued the tradition. I usually try to find things that will provide an activity since there is always some lag time on vacation and it’s good to have a few things to do. Last year my younger granddaughter was introduced to the tradition and caught on quickly but this year there was no “Wake up time Mimi” and I actually had to remind them about the suitcase presents each day. This worked out pretty well though because I could remind them during one of those lag times.
For the first day I had found a little kit for making layered sand bottles. Older layered hers very carefully and had us put it high up on a shelf to keep it safe.
The next day Older got a puzzle and Younger some fish stickers. I had packed these with some short scrap pieces of paper and a few markers. I introduced the idea of drawing some water and she got the idea to tape the pieces together to make one long picture. It’s so long I didn’t even get all of it in the picture.
On the third day I gave them the Great Lakes mermaid book I had bought in Holland, Michigan during Tulip Time. Since the plot of this book involves special Great Lakes rocks it added another layer to the extensive beach rock collecting.
The next day was not a beach day so it was the perfect day for painting window ornaments.
And for the last day presents to bring back home, Younger got fish bath toys and Older a jump rope.
It was a little disappointing that they had to be reminded each day which made me wonder if it was time for the tradition to be retired. But when my husband was asking us our favorite parts of the vacation I realized that one of mine was doing the suitcase activities. So I think I’ll do it again next year and see how it goes.
In January and February we painted! The museum preparators hung a piece of large canvas to the wooden corner wall and attached large paint brushes to long wooden dowels. We also attached some rollers that I bought at the dollar store to the dowels which were fun while they lasted.
When new colors were added Liz covered some of the piece with cardboard and paper which created texture and sound and also ensured that all the colors would be visible at the end.
When finished the canvases became part of the museum’s Sound Playground exhibit.
Painting small was painting with tempera paint on small canvases – long strips of webbing with small brushes – water color brushes. These turned out really well and we saved a lot of them for a possible future weaving project.
In January we put out my children’s books about color and in February the artist biographies.
December’s art project in the Chicago Children’s Museum Young Artist Program was cake decorating. Liz developed the “cakes” for this herself (the looms for the weaving project had been constructed by the museum preparators). She started by constructing many round cardboard layers but realized these would not be sturdy enough for any goopy “icing”.
So these “cakes” got a layer of outward facing sticky contact paper and children were invited to decorate them with sequins, jewels, foam shapes, and yarn. And to stack them!
As you can see in the background Liz came up with an idea for “cakes” to frost with an “icing” made of tempera paint and flour. She hot glued upside down plastic bowls to wooden Lazy Susan’s from IKEA and supplied children with bowls of icing and plastic spatulas and decorating tools. For additional decorating, she replaced squeeze bottle tops with metal cake frosting tips.
After people had finished decorating their cakes which could take quite awhile, we scooped the “icing” back into the bowls so the next person could get started. It was really busy in December and this project was really popular and really messy! These pictures were taken at the beginning of the day the tables looked very different by the end of the morning.
Last Fall I started volunteering for the Young Artist Program (YAP) at the Chicago Children’s Museum. In addition to documenting the YAP projects I also started photographing other art studio spaces for children. So far all of these photos have just been taking up space on my phone but now that the YAP program is on a two month hiatus I am going to write a series of posts on the projects and on museum art studio spaces.
The art studio space at the Chicago Children’s Museum had only recently opened when I arrived to volunteer this Fall. It had previously been located in two other spaces at the current museum on Navy Pier (the museum itself also has had several locations).
The YAP projects designed by awesome educator Liz are long term and collaborative. The initial weaving project involved large looms built by museum staff. Several of the looms descended from the ceiling each day via a pulley system.
Liz in front of the descended looms
Several different materials including rope and fencing provided the warps of these looms. Strips of ribbons and webbing were provided for weaving. During November we suggested that children write what they were thankful for on the weft pieces before weaving them.
My oldest granddaughter writing on and weaving one of her strips
There were also looms whose warps consisted of branches with yarn provided for weaving or simply adding. These looms worked best for the youngest artists. And for even younger guests two looms had been attached to make a space for infants to crawl under and interact with the weaving.
All of the looms are now hanging high on the walls of the studio to provide beauty and some sound absorption.
You can see a bit of how the looms looked undescended in this photo. The tree yarn looms, temporarily stored on the pulley apparatus in this photo, have now joined the others on the wall.
The YAP program runs on Monday through Thursday mornings and the looms were available during October and November this year. This project was a perfect one for me as a volunteer as weaving with children has always been one of my interests. Many years ago when I was a family child care provider I did a large room weaving with children in a downtown gallery space. As a teacher I had also done many weaving and fiber projects with children and have amassed a large collection of relevant children’s books which I was delighted to share.
This tiny little church replica caught my eye in Madison and when I walked closer I discovered it was a Little Free Library. When I opened the stained glass door on the other side I found a book by Deanna Raybourn in the Lady Julia Grey series – a great find because I have really been enjoying her Veronica Speedwell mysteries.
As a voracious reader who could never afford to buy or store all the fiction I consume I have always loved public libraries. So of course I love the Little Free Libraries that have been cropping up around the world since the first one was built in Wisconsin in 2009 by Todd Bol as a tribute to his mother. Little Free Library is a 501c3 organization and people who want to become a volunteer steward of a box can buy one on the Little Free Library website. There are several different models of them. I snapped a picture of this purchased one on my way to the Uptown branch of the Chicago Public Library.
While it is not as unique as the church it does have an original painted bird decoration on top. Now I think I may have to be on the lookout for these tiny libraries not just to borrow the books inside them but to start a new photo collection of the Little Free Libraries themselves.
“Sugar Maple, isn’t that redundant?” quipped Brennan Leigh during her set with Noel McKay at the music festival we went to last weekend. It is a fitting redundancy because sweet is exactly what the Sugar Maple Music Festival at Lake Farm County Park in Madison, Wisconsin was. It was kind of like stepping back in time for us to the early years of the Green River Festival in Greenfield, Massachusetts. It started on Friday evening with four sets and continued on Saturday midafternoon with six sets. We were allowed to bring coolers of any size and there wasn’t even a cursory search as we entered. There were also a few food and beverage vendors so it was really the best of both worlds!
And we didn’t have to worry if it rained a little, which it did during Eilen Jewell’s set, because there was a large tent. We had been worried that the large tent might affect the sound since that had been the case at the tented Mississippi Stage at the Chicago Blues Festival. But the green and white tent which reminded me of the Heath Fair Music Stage Tent had open sides and the sound was great. It did leak a little so we were glad we had our rain ponchos and umbrellas which we used to shield us from the drips.
The music was wonderful, there wasn’t a set I didn’t enjoy. On Friday night Leigh and McKay treated us to awesome dual guitar picking and a mix of funny and poignant songs. The Garage Sale Song was absolutely hysterical. Hubby Jenkins, who we had only seen before when he was in the Carolina Chocolate Drops, turned out to be not only an amazing musician but very funny and conciousness raising as he spoke at a very fast tempo about the link between slavery and capitalism between songs.
In addition to Lula Wiles and Eileen Jewell who lured us to the festival we also enjoyed a lot of bluegrass! We were sad to miss the Saturday night cajun and zydeco music of Jeffry Broussard and the Creole Cowboys because they were probably the perfect closers but with a threatening thunderstorm expected we headed back to our motel happy with our ears full of music!
Collections and Other Stuff I Like 