My youngest daughter and I have been talking about Halloween costume choices a lot this year. Her youngest daughter really wanted to be one of the Rainbow Rangers (a character from an animated tv show) this year. Her older daughter had easily accepted that in their house they didn’t choose characters for Halloween. The one time she had said she wanted to be Elsa, my daughter had just said, “No, what kind of animal do you want to be?” and she chose a flamingo. (She did get an Elsa costume for Christmas that year for her dress up corner) But this year my daughter mentioned that she had once been Ernie for Sesame Street for Halloween and her daughter was shocked, “Wait, What? You were allowed to be a character? I want to be one too.”
I pointed out that yes she was a character but that I made her Ernie mask and bought her a red and blue striped shirt, I didn’t buy a commercial costume. I said I thought it wasn’t so much what you were but that it was important to make or put together your costume.
But it turns out my daughter has another issue with characters which is that during trick or treating grownups often don’t know who you are. “Oh, what a cute Cinderella!” necessitating an “I’m Elsa” footstomp or eye roll. Given this explanation my older granddaughter who had wanted to be Mal (daughter of Maleficent) from the movie The Descendents said she would like to be a purple witch. Pretty clever since Mal is basically a purple witch. So my daughter bought her a purple witch costume and the younger one decided to be a witch too. Problem solved for this year!
The purchased character costume versus the home made or assembled costume is an argument that plays out in many houses. In an article in the Parade this weekend Kelly Ripa answered the question, “What was your favorite costume when you were a kid?” with this familiar sounding answer, “All I wanted was one of those costumes with a plastic mask that came in the box. But because my mom was not big on store-bought costumes, I always wound up wearing my ballet costume from the year before.”
I didn’t even have last year’s ballet costume, my memory is that I went as a gypsy every year with my pink and orange skirt, a peasant blouse, a kerchief, and curtain rings as hoop earrings. The last year I went trick or treating I tried to make a butterfly costume out of hangers and tissue paper which was very difficult but I managed to create something and then it rained so I just had to go as a modern dancer in the leotard and tights I had planned to wear with the wings.
My children have some interesting home made costume stories too. There was the year my husband created a Tin Man costume for our older daughter out of aluminum duct pipe which looked wonderful but was hard to walk in – she couldn’t bend her legs to climb the stairs! There was the year I made a Hershey Kiss costume for my younger daughter using a lamp shade for the kiss base that was a bit too short.
They went on to create some great costumes for themselves, though. There was Devil in a Blue Dress (Blue dress and Devil horns and tail) and with another friend A Little Bit Angel and A Little Bit Devil (one dressed in white and one in red and they each wore some Angel and some Devil costume pieces), A Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich (Large felt pieces of bread one with jelly and one with peanut butter that attached together), and a Gangster and his Moll (the perfect Chicago costume).
This year Halloween falls on the day I volunteer at the Children’s Museum and I have heard of some amazing past costumes. Since I’ve always thought a hat I had acquired for my classroom dramatic play area looked like Mary Poppins’ hat, I decided to create a Mary Poppins costume. Although when I put it on and look in the mirror I think maybe Mrs. Doubtfire would be more fitting at this point in my life. On the other hand it may seem like an inspired choice since rain and snow are in the forecast for Halloween this year and I’ll have a wonderful Mary Poppins umbrella!
We found a little free library outside the Kohler Art Center. I think its little front porch is a nod to the Italianate home built by John Michael Kohler that was donated by the Kohler Foundation to the Sheboygan Arts Foundation and became the art center in the late 1960’s. While there have been two additions since the house is still an important gallery space for the museum.
The little free library had a couple of surprises inside.
I don’t know who the picture is of. It isn’t labeled and I thought I might be able to find out by looking up the box number on the little free library site but it didn’t seem to be registered.
The other surprise was what I found in the box – a catalog still wrapped in shrink wrap from the inaugural exhibit of the works of folk artist Earl Cunningham at The Mennello Museum of American Folk Art in Orlando, Florida in 1998. The museum which was built to house the Menello’s collection of Earl Cunningham’s work has since expanded it’s collection and dropped the “folk” from it’s name but is still the home of Cunningham’s paintings. I had not seen his work before so finding the book made our visit to the art center even richer!
On our way to the Bookworm Gardens we found another little free library with a beautiful painting on the outside.
We didn’t find any books we wanted in the inside of this library but at Bookworm Gardens we found many beautiful gardens inspired by children’s books. I only took pictures of a few of them.
Little House in the Big Woods
Peter Rabbit
The Three Little Pigs
Many of the gardens didn’t seem to have their main characters so I was glad to see Horton.
The largest and most elaborate scene was of a book I had never heard of titled “Conor the Caddie” which turned out to be set at the golf course in Kohler.
The Bookworm Gardens had its own little libraries with the garden’s featured books rebound for Garden reading.
The Young Artist Program is up and running again. Since the art studio is in a children’s museum not an art museum the projects aren’t usually inspired by the exhibits. But the current exhibit “The Pigeon Comes to Chicago” is based on the work of children’s book author and illustrator Mo Willems. One component of the exhibit includes videos of a talking head Mo attached to a Mo drawn body instructing children on how to draw his iconic characters. “Drawing,” he says, “is just a bunch of letters and shapes put together in the right order.”
One of Liz’s past Drawing Lab exercises focused on finding the shapes in animals in order to draw them and that became the inspiration for our first project of the year – animal collages.
The collage paper is from a former project a large version of the marble in a box project – balls in kiddie pools! (I wasn’t there for this activity so I really hope we do it again)
Since the resulting pictures look more like the work of Eric Carle than Mo Willems, images from his books hang on the inspiration wall as well.
After they finish their animals everyone gets two googly eyes to “make them come alive” says Liz noting that Walt Disney said he always added the eyes last for that reason.
I always loved art classes in school but I don’t think we ever had drawing lessons (which is why although I was accepted into college as an art major I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to graduate as one) so I never heard about the concept of using shapes to draw until I was a preschool teacher. I was trying to copy a Leo Lionni frog and I wanted him to face the other way but couldn’t figure out how to do it. I asked a teacher who could draw for some help. She pointed to his back legs and said, “You see this triangle here you just need to flip it so it goes the other way.” This triangle? It was eye opening. Liz says that when she created her drawing lab exercises she started by thinking how can I teach those who don’t know how to draw instinctively the techniques that artists use. It is exciting that while the art studio visitors have fun gluing shapes to make animals they are hearing about this important concept.
The Kohler Arts Center’s studio space The ARTery is a “free drop in art making studio with exhibition-inspired projects”. It is open whenever the museum is open for self-guided explorations and also offers facilitated experiences two afternoon/evenings a week and on weekend days. It is a beautiful light filled space. One interesting note – the entire floor is covered with cardboard.
One table was set up for map making as part of the Map Sheboygan project.
The project involves collecting hand drawn maps of Sheboygan to “test the hypothesis that official representations of place do not always reflect the way we experience those places and to understand the scope of our unique perceptions of Sheboygan and which places we individually consider valuable enough to include on a map.”
Over 200 maps have been collected and include maps by both locals and visitors and by children and adults.
Unlike other museum art studios I have visited The ARTery seems to be for all ages – not just that adults who come in with children can make art too but that all museum visitors are welcome. In conjunction with the exhibit “Beauty Surplus: Serra Victoria Bothwell Fells” the studio is collecting a series of collaborative journals.
The book is filled with written reflections and sketches from people of all ages. I wrote about the sun shining through the leaves that we could see through the window during our excellent lunch at the museum!
The month’s facilitated workshops are also inspired by the exhibition. The ARTery Beauty Store asks guests to imagine products that can “shift the definition of beauty”. Products developed include “machines that change negative thoughts” and “glasses that help you see the world with new perspectives.”
I was looking forward to the “Dr. Charles Smith: Aurora” exhibit of 218 sculptures from Dr. Smith’s African-American Heritage Museum and Black Veteran’s Archive environment in Aurora and was interested to see what studio project it would inspire. It was to create a “secondary source shape poem” in response to the exhibit.
The studio tables also included several project kits.
This weaving area may be in response to the exhibitions centering around weaver Lenore Tawney.
And there’s a small book area.
The gift store was being remodeled and a corner of the studio was being used as a small gift store area so I am looking forward to seeing what will be there the next time we visit.
I have wanted to go to the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin since I went to the Intuit Art Against the Flow summit and heard about all they were doing to preserve artist environments. But until we went there a few weeks ago I didn’t know about their artist bathrooms. They have 6 of what they refer to as washrooms. Here are a few shots of the men’s entrance washroom “The Social History of Architecture” by Matt Nolen.
And here is the East Wing “Sheboygan Men’s Room” by Ann Agee:
This one and the toilets in one of the women’s bathrooms really reminded me of the artist bathrooms at the Smith College Art Museum.
It turns out that neither are by the same artists but that they are all the result of an amazing collaboration between the Kohler Art Center and the Kohler Factory. The Arts/Industry residency program “provides artists a place to come and make their artwork in tandem with the skilled craftspeople who work for Kohler company” and use the company’s Pottery, iron and brass Foundry, and the Enamel Shop.
In addition to the toilet pictured above “Filling and Emptying” by Merrill Mason includes cast iron replicas of the items you might find in a woman’s dressing room.
“The Women’s Room” by Cynthia Consentino was my favorite.
I couldn’t help but notice that both of the women’s rooms depicted private intimate feminine spaces while the men’s rooms had location as a subject. This may have struck me as more significant than it usually would have because I had read an article the day before that quoted a teenage girl who was very upset about transgender girls being able to use the girl’s locker room at her high school. “Schools have a duty to protect the privacy, dignity and well being of all students” she said, “Girls should not be forced to change next to a boy even if he thinks he’s a girl…Boys don’t belong in the girl’s locker room and vice versa”. I had been pondering her words and the subject matter of these washrooms proved to be thought provoking as well.
“The Women’s Room” also had tiles of parts of women, animals, vases, and flowers put together in different ways.
They made me think of those books that are divided in thirds and that you can switch the heads, bodies, and feet of. But a guide from the museum compared them to Exquisite Corpse drawings (those Chicago Imagists again – I wrote about this in YAP VI post). I was excited to find a set of some of the tiles at the ARTspace gallery in Kohler. I purchased a small magnet white board and stand and have had fun arranging and rearranging my tiles and making my own Exquisite Corpses!
The first sign of Fall was this Hello Fall printable. Unfortunately I can’t find the source. Then I switched out the tulips for the dried seed pods.
We brought the bins up from the storage unit and I created some vignettes.
On Monday we found the perfect Fall branch on the lake path and we decorated it and the little Halloween trees.
The Fall branch has some new additions. I found the perfect string of lights with little golden leaves at Target.
I needle felted a Day of the Dead skull.
We purchased a new wooden acorn at the Christkindlmarket last December.
And a Christmas present from my sister had this beautiful golden bat on top.
We bought another quite different bat at Hazel which seemed right for the Halloween trees.
Hello Fall and Happy Halloween!
When we headed to Wisconsin for the Sugar Maple Festival this July we knew we were going to end the weekend with a visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum but we didn’t know how our day in Madison would go. We drove to the area around the capital and found a place to eat lunch and were wondering what to do next when we saw a kiosk with posters for two exhibits at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) the first for Ray Yoshida (one of those Chicago Imagists I keep hearing about) and one for Jeffrey Gibson (who I hadn’t heard of but I loved the piece on the poster). The museum was free and in walking distance so we headed over – a great decision since it is a wonderful museum.
They didn’t have an art studio but they did have a MMoCAkids art guide and a MMoCAteens art guide with exploration activities and other information. They also had an interactive area in each gallery.
It was fun to walk into the Ray Yoshida exhibit and see the Lynda Barry book on drawing that Liz had recently lent to me. The “sketch book” includes 6 Drawing Challenges inspired by Ray Yoshida, Lynda Barry, aand Ivan Brunetti.
Jeffrey Gibson is of Choctow and Cherokee heritage and many of his pieces use beads and other traditional materials so they set up a touching station.
As well as a book and design area.
The Milwaukee Art Museum does have an art studio. The museum was having a James Nares exhibit and a lot of the pieces focused on movement so that was the inspiration for the art projects – marble paintings and drawing on a moving cylinder.
A series of still life animal environments were set up on other tables.
And there were some exploring tables and a book area.
We’ll definitely be visiting both museums again!
When I started volunteering at the Chicago Children’s Museum Art Studio my only previous museum art studio experience was visiting the art studio at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. I’ve always loved the studio because it is so aesthetically appealing. But I know that when it first opened it did not seem child friendly to many parents. One of the things that rankled was that children were not allowed to draw on the paper that covered the table. When I mentioned that to Liz she said, “Well, our studio is an environment of yes!
I still wanted to share the space with Liz and other CCM colleagues so when I visited Northampton in May I was glad I had time to visit the museum and snap a few photos in the art studio.
The first thing I noticed was that the paper on the tables was black and I thought they had solved the writing on the paper problem.
But then I read an entry on their blog from an educator that had encouraged guests to draw their rough drafts on the black paper with chalk and thought well I guess things have changed!
Things that had not changed were the link to children’s book art and the ways the materials were presented. These tables were set up for children to create collages inspired by the exhibit “The Art of Eric Carle.”
Reverence for materials is obviously still an important value.
That “parliament of owls” you can see on the wall were created in conjunction with the exhibition, “Illustrated Owls: A Who’s Hoo from the Museum’s Vault”
This is the back half of the studio that I think is used for school aged children.
There is a toddler area in the front.
And a light table at the entrance.
Many things to be inspired by!
One of the best parts of going on vacation is checking out the stores and finding new items for our collections. While we were on vacation this summer in Saugatuck, MI we ventured over to the town of Douglas and checked out the stores there. In one that was going out of business we found a mermaid I couldn’t resist even though we haven’t found room in our new place for all the ones we already had! I loved the miniature weather vane but also artist Katie McConnell’s tagline “It’s okay to be a little vane.” Some of the vanes had jewels hanging from the bottom but the mermaid just had a place for one so I used wire to wrap a shell we found on the beach and created a souvenir as well as a new mermaid for the collection. It’s a little ironic, I guess, that she actually comes from Cape Cod. I hadn’t hung anything on the bottom curve of the mermaid shelf here so I had the perfect place for her.
In Saugatuck we went to Amazwi a store we had missed last year. This “contemporary art” store was filled with art from around the world including a decorated gourd that I think is probably from Africa or maybe South America since those look like coffee beans on top.
It found a home with one of the lizards and other pieces on the sideboard.
My favorite project this year was June and July’s chandelier sculptures. Inspired by hanging art especially the Healing Machines of artist Emery Blagdon and utilizing a wooden mobile that had been used for another hanging collaboration at the museum before, Liz conceived a light/sun chandelier to combat the long Chicago winter.
The middle top photo is one of Emery Blagdon’s Healing Machines
Pipe cleaners, yellow “post its”, and plastic milk bottle rings were the consistent materials. Other materials we introduced throughout the project were beads, buttons, ribbons, yarn, fabric, tinfoil, feathers, flowers, sequins, popsicle sticks, old jewelry, and tissue paper. What I loved about the project was how differently guests used the same materials. Also that many families made seperate pieces and then combined them – a collaboration for the collaboration. The wooden mobile frame was attached to the pulley system and lowered each day.
Here are some closeups:
Probably the most valuable thing I learned from Liz this year was what an amazing sculptural material tinfoil can be!
Collections and Other Stuff I Like 