Purple Twig- Art Exploration for kids. A mom run small business in Los Angeles. Stop by to see the trials and tribulations.

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Terr = earth/ arium = receptacle


Living in Los Angeles one thing that is in abundance in our neighborhoods is succulents. When going for walks around town we can see all kinds of succulents; flapjacks, pinwheels, bigfoots, hens and chicks. Colors vary greatly with blues, purples, bright greens, deep reds. They are strange plants that grow beautifully in our sandy, clay like soil. If you take a small clipping from one of these succulents and place it in water,  roots will begin to sprout. Or you can just place it in very wet soil and eventually it will ground itself and grow roots.



When a fantastic little restaurant on our block, Four Cafe, kindly began saving their extra large pickle jars for us. I felt so lucky to have these receptacles to store a lot of our materials. But when contemplating the plethora of succulents in our neighborhood and even in my own yard, I managed to save enough jars for kids to make terrariums.  I mean what a great combination. 


Using small rocks, big rocks, sand and dirt, I thought we could take advantage of the transparency of the jars and layer the different materials to mimic the inner structure of the earth and lets face it,   because it looks beautiful to see the different textures of earthen materials.


The students chose their succulents and collectively decided to choose a rock to paint for the top of their "earth". Furthering our investigation we looked up succulent's name and the kids made labels for  their terrariums.




The result was a heavy, precarious and beautiful terrarium that the kids were excited to take home. 

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Celebrating the Sun


For Mother's Day we made these lovely sun prints mounted on wood. These early photographs are a wonderful way for kids to explore the nature growing in their neighborhood, even if that nature is planted and controlled. We gathered leaves fallen from trees and clipped leaves and flowers from abundant bushes. 


Once we got back to the studio we furthered our investigation of our botanical bounty. We squished, smelled, we looked closely and compared sizes, shapes and colors before they made their thoughtful choices of which plants to use on their photographic prints. 



We used rocks to weigh done the plant materials so they wouldn't blow away in the wind. So just the count to 20 in the sun and then into the water bath to wash away the light sensitive chemicals. 




While we waited for the prints to dry the kids prepared their wooden bases for their prints by sanding down the edges to a smooth finished edge. Using drills they drilled holes in the top of the wood to pass a wire for hanging. 


A layer of Modge Podge under and over the sun print and they were finished. Moms will be happy about these. I know I would. 





Happy Mother's Day