Hello everyone!
One of the projects that I have been working on outside of book projects has been volunteering with the local arts league in Chestertown, RiverArts, who have opened a creative space for kids called KidSPOT. Matthew and I got to help with the logo design and came up with something we thought was fun:
That little guy who is waving at you from the O is named Chester. Because he’s from Chestertown. Get it?
Anyway – I’m also part of the creative committee, which means I get to come up with all kinds of ideas for exhibits/projects. Since I’m all about coming up with fun ideas, it’s been lots of fun.
One of the exhibits was to have kids “become” artists by dressing up as portraits of famous artists and posing inside a picture frame. Seeing that we were working on a shoestring budget, I thought it might work by hanging the frame from the ceiling and draping curtains behind it. And, just like with a painting, an exhibit idea has to start with a sketch:
Well, thankfully the great Nicole In Den Bosch (fellow local illustrator) and her equally great husband Joe Karlik stood up and said, “No way! This needs to be BUILT! Out of WOOD! And we will DO IT!!”
Music to my ears.
And look how awesome it turned out – here’s Alden dressed up as Frida Kahlo:
Based on this painting, of course:
There’s some other fun stuff to do too – matching paintings up with their titles, putting your own artwork into the frames. There’s even a dry-erase Draw on the Mona Lisa over there on the right. Anyway. Super fun. And I am SOOOO glad we didn’t go with the hanging-from-the-ceiling approach. That thing would have crashed down on some unsuspecting kid’s head after five minutes in the marauding hordes.
The other project I worked on was a big dry erase mural of Chestertown on the back wall. It turns out that dry erase paint is very expensive, so some of you good folks pitched in for my fundraiser to buy the paint – remember this?:
Yes, well, happily we raised enough money to buy the paint (THANK YOU!) and to make the mural actually happen. And special thanks goes out to Wonder Jane, who painted the whole thing in a couple marathon sessions while I was scrambling around trying to figure out other stuff (like how to get magnets to stick to laminate) (which I didn’t entirely figure out). Here it is in action:
And, happily, you helped us raise even MORE money than we needed for the paint, which is going to go into building a music and art booth that will be up soon.
There are also lots of other activities and stations that other volunteers worked on – painting, mask-making, potting plants, crafting, etc etc etc. LOTS of good stuff. So if any of you happens to be in Chestertown anytime soon, go in and check out KidSPOT. It’s got quite a lot of fun packed in there.
(Also, if you’re a glutton for punishment, Matthew has a post up about KidSPOT over on Idiots’Books, HERE)