Monday, January 28, 2013

Messy Mondays - Jackson Pollock

We have a new program starting up at the library called Messy Mondays.  Twice per month - on the second and fourth Mondays of the month - we will set up some art supplies and let the kids go to town with creative, mostly open-ended projects.  Our goal is not to make identical crafts, but rather to encourage creativity.  We will also use this time to break out some messier media that parents might be wary of trying out at home or might not have access to - fingerpaints, clay, stamps, etc. 

Credit for this program belongs largely to Mrs. Z, who we are lucky enough to be able to hire to run this program for us.  She plans all of the art projects and runs the program, while library staff gets the supplies, handles sign-in and attendance, publicizes the event, and creates a simple handout for parents to take home.  We also owe lots of thanks to our Friends of the Library group, who sponsors the program and pays for all of our art supplies.

We started the program up this month and have had two sessions.  So far, so good!  Today we celebrated Jackson Pollock's birthday by doing spatter painting in his honor.  Here are the supplies that we used:


We watered down some paint (you don't need much water - just a tiny bit to make the paint flow easily) and then gave the kids two options for splattering.  The kids could get paint on a brush and then tap the brush on a ruler, which would create lots of little splatters.  We also had some squeeze bottles with paint inside that could be gently squeezed, dripped, or even shaken above the paper.

We set the paintings aside to dry and encouraged families to look at books while the dried.  When they returned for their pictures, we matted the pictures on larger black paper to make a "frame."

The picture shown below is a sample created by Mrs. Z:


For anyone who wants to paint like Jackson Pollock but doesn't want to deal with the mess, there's also a great website where you can simulate the process online.  There is also an app available to download from this website for your I-Pad.


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