Education and Community Programs

I adore the book Where the Wild Things Are! I’m also a big fan of the film’s blog We Love You So and their amazing contests including fort building. We were so inspired that we’ve created a contest of our own using the website ArtsConnectEd. We gathered works from the Walker and Minneapolis Institute of Arts to create a special art collector set to get you inspired.

Now go out and make mischievous works of your own using materials of one kind or another. Email an image of your project to kids@walkerart.org by November 10. Include your first name, last initial, and age. All submissions will be posted on ArtsConnectEd and one winner will receive a $50 gift card to the Walker Shop.

Let the creating begin!

It was a chilly winter morning when my coworker, Ashley, and I were dreaming of the warm summer ahead and the fun activities to do in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. We were both excited by the idea of programming a day inspired by the sculpture Prometheus Strangling the Vulture II, 1944/1953 by Jacques Lipchitz and other mythic works in the garden.

Lipchitz liked to explore themes from mythology. According to legend the Titan Prometheus stole fire from the god Zeus and gave it to the humans. Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock where a vulture would eat his liver every day, only to have it grow back every night. Eventually Hercules killed the bird. It’s a great bedtime story.

Ashley turned to me and said “Prometheus was kind of like a superhero. He fought for the humans and never dies.” Perfect! We had theme for day: Super Sculptures!

Fast forward to September. Families had a great time making their own action figures using masking tape and newspaper with artist Mary Rivard. Heroes are often known for being incredibly strong and the artist gave Prometheus some serious muscles, so we invited bodybuilders to come and flex their stuff.

But what is a superhero without a cool super suit! We gave kids tape, cardboard, some paper, makers, string, and let them go wild. Photographer Sam Hoolihan made some fantastic backdrops and spent the day snapping shots of people in their cool new costumes. It was awesome.
Just look at the results.

(more…)

The upcoming Free First Saturday, People Pictures, happening April 4th, takes inspiration from the exhibition Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton. Find out more about the artist in this family-oriented edition of the 8-Ball interview.

When did you realize you wanted to be an artist?
Very early – as long as I can remember.

How did you express creativity as a child?
I drew a lot and put a lot of pictures of people up on the wall.

How would you describe the art that you made as a child?
Pictures of faces.

How did your family or teachers influence your career as an artist, if at all?
They were very supportive – gave me lots of paper / drawing materials – very encouraging etc.

What kinds of music did your parents play around the house?
They played Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, old Swing. My older siblings were always playing the Beach Boys and the Beatles.

Did you know any working artists growing up who inspired you?
Not really, though my mother painted.

What artist turned your world upside-down as a teenager?
Warhol – I loved Warhol as a teenager.

What was your favorite book?
A photo book of Elton John and Undoubted Queen – about Queen Elizabeth II, a large photo book my grandmother had.

What was your first job?
I worked for my parents in their candle shop.

Did you have an imaginary friend and if so, what was he/she like?
I did. She was like a genie.

What did you collect as a child?
Pictures (photos) of people – ice skaters, tennis players, musicians.

Who was your favorite pop-star growing up?
David Cassidy, Shaun Cassidy, Elton John, David Bowie – in that order.

Is it quiet when you work? If not, what do you listen to / watch?
I listen to a lot of different kinds of music.

Whose portrait are you still waiting to paint?
Jay Z

Arty Pants is all about the exhibition Text/Messages: Books by Artists in January and February, so we’re making books with guest artist Ellen Ferrari. Here’s the fantastic conversation I had last Tuesday with Jack, age 5, about his book.

Christina: Good morning Jack! That is a nice book you’re making.
Jack: It’s a book about shapes.
Christina: Well that’s very cool. I like your triangle (by the way, he has labeled his shapes with proper names, most of them spelled without help).
Jack: Now I’m going to make a hugg-e shape (pronounced “huggie”).
Christina: What’s a hugg-e shape look like?
Jack: It’s two arms like this… (at which point he hugs himself).
Christina: That’s fantastic. I like your book of shapes.
Jack: Yup. I’ts my little book of very large shapes.

The hugg-e shape is picture on the far right, next to the silly shape.

It was a great Free First Saturday at the Walker, inspired by the exhibition Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future. Here is a snapshot of what went down.

In an activity prompted by Saarinen’s grasshopper chair, families got to make their own chairs loosely influenced by an animal, plant, or insect.

Using only cardboard scraps, tape, and markers people set to work and produced wildly imaginative results.

Building Challenge

Some families went on a guided tour of the Saarinen exhibition

Father and son duo Larry and Jessup Yazzie of the Meskwaki/Dine and Lakota nations performed the fast and colorful Fancy Dance.

If you’re confused about the connection between the Fancy Dance and a 20th-century architect, check-out this earlier blog.

Special thanks to: artists Kelly Seacrest and Ilene Krug Mojsilov for developing fabulous activities for the families, our rocking team of volunteers for keeping the place going, and the great families who turned out for the event. And, to the girl who turned to her dad and said “I like coming to Walker Art Center, it’s a lot fun”, you made my day!

Cupcakes are a beautiful thing. And a cupcake is even better when it comes as a complete surprise. When Julie* first brought Joe and Mary to a Arty Pants Daniel was just around the corner. When Daniel was ready to leave the house he started coming to Arty Pants as well.

Today was Daniel’s 1st birthday, as well as Julie’s, and I can hardly believe how fast he’s grown. I remember the tiny baby nestled in blankets, hidden from the cold. Now he’s crawling around during the story times and pulling himself up on couches. It has been wonderful to watch him grow. For the birthday celebration they came to Arty Pants followed by a picnic in the Sculpture Garden, that included some cupcakes baked by the family. I got a little misty-eyed when Joe told me they had baked an extra cupcake for me. I even got my choice of color frosting. So Happy Birthday Julie and Daniel! Thanks to Julie, Joe, Mary, Daniel, and Fluffy Cat for making my job an utter joy!

*The names of the individuals and stuffed animal dicussed in this post have been changed.

R.E.M. was my first concert. I remember gushing tears when I first hear heard Everybody Hurts and a number of times afterwards. In high school a boy once wrote out all the lyrics to Crush with Eyeliner in a Valentine’s

Day card for me. I have most of their albums in my car. Since it’s the summer season and we are in the land of 10,000 lakes Nightswimming will finds its way to play list regularly. And yesterday when I was trying to focus on my work I played E-bow the letter almost nonstop for an hour.

So it should not be a surprise that when someone told me Michael Stipe was eating in Gallery 8 Cafe, I dashed out of the office with a few coworkers in tow. I was horribly frightened of being obnoxious, so I stood there wondering, should I or shouldn’t I? Then I thought “Michael Stipe is at the Walker so he must think its cool, and I work at the Walker, therefore I can approach greatness because I am cool by association.” Behold the results.

R.E.M. will be at the XCEL Energy Center tonight with Modest Mouse. And if we’re lucky enough they’ll play Let Me In!

Escape to the Suburbs was an awesome day and since pictures are worth a thousand words….

The Elia Chair, brainchild of Michael Gross, was a stand-out hit!

The kid-sized chairs are fun to customize, recyclable, and yielded amazing results!

Kids also got a chance to get their groove on as part of the Flow Motion performance featuring Truth Maze, Dancin’ Dave, DJ Stage One, Autumn Compton, Arturo Miles, Debra McGee, and Aaron Barnell.

.

In addition be being awed by the talent, I heard one of the coolest versions of the ABC song ever!

I always enjoy watching the kids diligently work away as they did at the Satellite Suburbs activity, where kids got to create their own aerial view of a suburb by making a collage with satellite images of Twin Cities’ suburbs.

The project was designed by Ilene Krug Mojsilov in relation to the Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes exhibit.

Thanks to all the volunteers, artists, and participants that made it one of those days when, at the end of the day, I think…Wow!

This week the blogs Daddy Types and Stork Bites Man featured a couple of interesting coloring books, The Torture Device Coloring Book and The Lousy Animals and Friends Coloring Book . And it got me thinking about the coloring book conundrum. Are coloring books the nemesis of creativity that authors, like Susan Striker suggests? Many parents cringe at the images that perpetuate stereotypes. Coloring books play a vital part in an endless, daily stream of advertising that bombard children. So they are bad, right?

When I was teaching, coloring books and coloring sheets were just short of forbidden in my classroom. Sheets of blank paper for the young minds to explore in anyway they saw fit (occasionally with large quantities of white glue and nothing else) were piled high in corners of the room. Nevertheless, children would present me with a coloring sheet of some Disney character like they were offering me their soul. I would wince and graciously accept the work.

Free First Saturdays at the Walker have taught me that when you’re designing projects for 450 kids in a five-hour period, “ templates” are inevitable. And now I am beginning to wonder if coloring books could be seen as a form of appropriation. If Sherrie Levine can create a bronze cast of a urinal and have it considered appropriation, should kids be allowed to appropriate Cookie Monster? Perhaps I was wrong to underestimate the value of a meticulously traced and gently colored Cinderella. After all, Cinderella was wearing a neon-green dress not the classic blue, so she made an artistic decision to alter it. Coloring books might be a way to talk about contemporary art with kids.

As for the advertising and stereotypes issues, maybe the solution to those issues is just to offer kids cooler coloring books. What do think?

Nam June Paikʼs wonderful TV Cello now sits quietly up in the Shape of Time exhibition and as I wander in the galleries, I often wonder how cool it would have been to see it in action. What would it sound like if I could hear Charlotte Moorman play it? What was it like to actually see the performance happening?

Nam June Paik,TV Cello, 1971, Formerly the collection of Otto Piene and Elizabeth Goldring, Massachusetts. Collection Walker Art Center, T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 1992.

As several of us were cleaning up after our most recent Arty Pants ended and I was struck with a similar wonder.

Arty Pants goers were presented with paint, paper, a large musical staff mural, foam mallets and some music. As kids streamed into the room, they picked up their mallets and began to bang away. Youngsters got into the flow art-making, literally, as they ran from one end of the large musical staff mural to the other, pounding expressive notes all along the way. A family friendly selection of music provided the sound track for spontaneous dancing through out the morning.

I stared at the large mural we had made that day, but instead of being curious, I knew how cool it was to be in room of more than 100 people experiencing and participating in the moment of art making. Like Nam June Paik’s cello, I am now left with a relic, the musical mural, to remember the sound of creating art.

Thanks to Frannie, Sara, Courtney and Mari for their hard work. And a special shout out to Morgan for the stupendous musical staff!