Create Your Own Chihuly SculptureOur family unit loves the arts, and we also love creating our own works of art. A few months back I read about a very cool fine art project for kids on the blog Mary Making and it inspired me to do a like project with my children. The projection was to create a plastic sculpture that resembles one of Dale Chihuly'south fantastic glass sculptures.

I wanted this to be an extensive project, where we learned about the creative person before embarking on the actual art project. I think that the idea of exposing children to famous works of art in order to inspire inventiveness within them is a brilliant thought. And we are lucky to have some fabulous museums in our area, and so I decided to take reward of our local art museum and do our own family unit project, a Dale Chihuly-inspired sculpture.

You only need a few supplies, and this can last for hours. Nosotros even stretched out our project over several days. Our journey began with trips to Museums, and ended with my children having learned about an artist and creating their own masterpiece.

Chihuly Sculptures in Museums:

First we went to the Cincinnati Art Museum to visit the beautiful Dale Chihuly sculpture that hangs in the forepart lobby of the museum. It is a gorgeous blue glass sculpture chosen Rio Delle Torreselle Chandelier. The kids and I spent quite a while underneath this sculpture talking nearly how it was made, and what it looked similar to them (the answers included fish, snakes, blue grass, flowers, and more than). Accept I mentioned how cute it is?

Chihuly Sculpture at the Cincinnati Art Museum

Cincinnati Art Museum Chihuly

Also over the summer we visited the Children's Museum of Indianapolis (which is an astonishing place to take the kids!) where there is some other Dale Chihuly sculpture: Fireworks of Glass. And that's exactly what it looks similar, fireworks. This sculpture was awesome because there was an showroom at the museum oriented effectually (or shall I say "under") the sculpture. You could lay back on a rotating burrow and wait up at the sculpture. Information technology was as if you were inside of a kaleidoscope. There were too easily on activities for the kids, like using plastic pieces replicating the drinking glass pieces to brand their own sculptures. Very very cool stuff. This slice is Chihuly's largest permanent installment, and is made upwardly of over three,000 pieces of glass and weighs 18,000 pounds.

Chihuly Sculpture Indianapolis

Chihuly Exhibit Indianapolis

The kids were fascinated by these sculptures. They have always loved exploring museums of all sorts, but this focus on Chihuly's glass sculptures had intrigued them, and it was a great conversation starter for them. I loved hearing their imaginative and unique perspectives on the sculptures. It was fun for me to lookout their young minds at piece of work on this projection. Dale Chihuly has installations all over the world, and I highly recommend you lot discover one near you lot to visit. And and so, if you lot'd like you lot could do this art project…because it is so much fun!

How to Create Your Own Chihuly Sculpture ::

First y'all get together your materials: Shrinky Dink paper (I establish 8×11 sheets on Etsy – aka Polyshrink), sharpie markers (the more colors the amend), an oven, and a hot glue gun.

Make your own Chihuly Sculpture 3

How To: I cutting the big pieces of polyshrink into smaller squares, circles, hearts, and other shapes. Then I let the kids loose with the permanent markers (an old plastic tablecloth is a must for this projection). I worked correct alongside of them, coloring my own pieces of plastic. We worked on these pieces over a period of several days, considering it was a lot of coloring!

Make your own Chihuly Sculpture 4

Make your own Chihuly Sculpture 2

After you color each piece you heat them in the oven according to the directions on the package of the shrinkable paper. Go on a shut eye on them, it doesn't accept long at all…when they starting time curling and shrinking yank them out of the oven. While they are still warm y'all tin can manipulate the plastic a bit into designs (carefully! adults only!).

Make your own Chihuly Sculpture 4

Once all of the pieces are "cooked" and contorted into their funky shapes yous tin can utilise the hot glue gun to mesh it all together into i big sculpture. We hung ours from the dining room chandelier. The kids were then proud of their piece of work, and very excited well-nigh this projection. And I was excited that they were interested in learning about artists and enjoyed our visit to the Fine art Museum. I am looking frontward to doing a few more artist inspired projects in the time to come!

Make Your Own Chihuly Sculpture

And thank you again to Mary Making for the bang-up idea!