FAMILY OUTING
Will these art events turn your child into the next Picasso? Probably not, but it will be fun.
The first weekend of February offers open studios at area museums, a chance for families to make and experience art that ties to art institutions’ current exhibits.
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft hosts the free Hands-On Houston event the first Saturday of every month. With this weekend’s art project, guests will learn how to make a monoprint from current artist in residence Angel Oloshov. Oloshov is a ceramicist who often uses an ombre color technique; print is also part of her process. Guests will see inside Oloshov’s studio and get a glimpse of the projects she’s working on before getting instruction from her on their monoprint.
“A lot of craft is explored through materials and process, so we like to open up our institution to families so they can learn through the physical making,” says education director Natalie Svacina.
On Saturday, with provided paper, scissors and paint, guests will learn about color theory and the color wheel and, with complementary colors in mind, get to work. They’ll then add layers and textures “inspired by works on view,” Svacina says.
The monthly projects are “meant to be worked on as a family,” she says. “We try to give them a lot of freedom. It gives the opportunity for self expression by experiencing a new technique or material and to have a little bit of imagination with it.”
Meanwhile, over at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston on Saturday, kids can make Valentine’s Day cards during the free Open Studio in the education room.
The project is tied to the current exhibition “Christopher Knowles: In a Word” on view in the museum’s main upstairs gallery. Knowles creates drawings with a typewriter. Using his work as inspiration, guests will be asked to participate in “surrealist parlour games,” like Exquisite Corpse, to begin their projects, says Michael Simmonds, who coordinates the museum’s public programs.
Employing the technique used by artists such as Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst to create a surrealist human form, a family will come up with an abstract shape together. The first member of the group draws an open-ended shape then folds the paper to hide it. Without looking at the first drawing, the second person adds his own drawing, folds the paper, and so on.
Another prompt for creative card-making involves pulling a random word or phrase from an envelope. For example, a young artist might need to find a way to include both “coffee mug” and “solar system” in a valentine’s message on a card.
The project prompts lead to visitors “being creative within the limits of what you’ve already been given,” Simmonds says.
While local artists attend Open Studios like this one, the themes also are “geared toward people who aren’t artists to come in and respond to the exhibitions using materials that are familiar to them.”
Paper, markers, lace, ribbon, sequins and faux flowers will be on hand to make the unconventional cards.
And on Sunday, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, hosts a Family Studio that focuses on a vase in the museum’s permanent collection created by German artist Max Laeuger. Families will use stainedglass shards and air-dry clay to make their own vessels.