Arty Pants activity

I took both O and J to Arty Pants today — technically, J. is a bit young and O. is a bit old, but they both had a great time. There were two activities — one was a “magic” watercolor painting (you draw with “invisible” white crayon, then paint over it to make your drawing magically appear –see O.’s painting of the “textures of the world,” above). For the other, kids used felt shapes to make versions of minimal sculptures.

Oskar was very hesitant to play with the felt at first — but Christina, the WAC staffer who worked with him in the gallery, had really good ideas for getting him started experimenting. Here’s what she did:

- First, she had O. use the felt shapes to make an arrangement that was just like the Judd sculpture (6 dark blue boxes, six dark blue pieces of felt).They got up, and counted the sections of the sculpture together.

- Now that he had that down, and had made something just like the sculpture, she started giving him random pieces, “Here! Add this in!” By this time, he was warmed up, and the variation made for a good twist.

- My favorite thing she did: they scooped up all the felt compositions, and she said, “Okay, I am going to close my eyes and count to 25 — make something!” This was great: no time to worry about what to make, or whether it was perfect — just make something, and quick! Then they looked at it together (he made a tower), and they added windows and a door, and a few things just to finish it a bit more.