Kids, Art and Motion

I am still feeling the glow of spending the afternoon Sunday helping kids make mobiles. We all had such a good time. I have been leading monthly art workshops for kids at the Daura Gallery at Lynchburg College for 4 years. The workshops are turning into family programs. It's fun for everyone. Sunday I had almost as many adults as kids, including mothers, god-mothers and grandmothers. It takes a village as they say. The kids get more help than I can provide alone and it really is a party.  Originally I was concerned about parents micro-managing their kids projects. Only once has this been a problem. I try to gently make it clear the kids are the creative instigators, the parents are their to help, not direct or criticize.

We used paper clips to chain the drawings the kids made to a paper disc or branches. Sadie took a cue from my sample project with birds and made her own bird mobile. She had a wonderful time, can't you tell? I adore the pride these kids take in their work. It's pure pleasure to cultivate their makers mentality.

When researching activities for this month's session, I found a image of a mobile made from an octopus with fish dangling from each of the eight legs. Bingo, perfect project for our March program. I have made lanterns but never made mobiles and I was ready.  I am a huge fan of Alexander Calder so I didn't need to look far for inspiration. One of my favorite spots at the National Gallery is the room with his wire sculpture. I am especially fond of the wonderful wire fish with glass. The dancing shadows are pure poetry and this room is doubly inviting because it can be seen from the floor above.

Calder Room at the National Gallery of Art      (Photo Credit:SarahStierch)  Wikipedia

I didn't realize then that I would be visiting MoMA's ArtLab before our program and find additional inspiration. Delightfully, movement is the current theme at the ArtLab. One of the first things you see when entering the space is the set up for making Calder-like mobiles. It's a very clever arrangement of hanging wire and baskets on the wall with shapes pre-cut to attach to the wire. That was just the beginning of their extensive exploration of movement in art.

Build a Calder at MoMA's Art Lab

I built a Calder-like mobile, which was fun. However, I quickly moved on to the set up for making stop motion animation. There are three or four work stations with iStopMotion on iPads. 

They have a selection of laminated images (like placemats) and a basket of objects/images to move around on the placemat. The backgrounds are placed on the table under the iPad. Objects are then arranged and moved around the background. The iPad captures photos of these changes and they are the frames of the animation. When you are finished with your project, it can be uploaded  to the AnimationStation MoMA YouTube channel.

 

Choice of objects for stop motion animation

I played around with some fish, a dog and a hand against a brick background. It turned into a germ of an idea for a new app project, Walking My Dog and My Fish. You never know where that next idea is going to come from.  Below you will see what the play back looked like at the stop motion station. If you are interested in playing around with stop motion animation with your kids (or yourself) Lynda.com has a new 2 hour tutorial about the process that is very well done. Here is a link to an introduction to the series.

 They have a nice collection of themed art books for visitors to peruse. 
 

Books about motion at the ArtLab

Among the books are examples of a visual illusion of motion that was new to me, scanimation. A series of video images are reproduced as a single still image. When a plastic sheet with a series of black bars is moved over the image, it looks like an animation. Somehow this technique takes advantage of a moire pattern. Must be seen to be appreciated.

Illusion of animation using a moire pattern invented by Rufus Butler Seder

If you can get to MoMA, with or without a child, a visit to the ArtLab is great fun and an education about how art can be explored from many different angles in many different ways. All while being entertained and challenged. I am a regular visitor. I wrote about my visit last March to MoMA's ArtLab in this post.