Co-Creating Spaces for Imagination, Creativity, and Narrative: Space
An Outer Space Installation Collaboration with Young People at The Art Institute of Chicago Continuing Studies Summer Program
July 2013 with students ages 4-5 + Louie Raymo and Ariel Wolfe
Collaborative Space Installation
Using Joseph Cornell shadow boxes as inspiration, students transformed a window display case into a collaborative space scene. Students spent time brainstorming what sorts of things from their imagination could possibly go into outer space. Students worked together to create the necessary background and props to make the case look like a believable space scene. How do we create a believable space? How does creating a separate reality redraw our boundaries for possibility?
Heidelberg Project Collaborative Space Station
Using Detroit’s Heidelberg Projects as a reference, students created a collaborative site specific art installation (a space station) from a pre-existing cardboard structure. Students looked at the ways in which the Heidelberg Projects engaged artists and community members to work collaboratively to create works of art from old houses. Students made distinctions between artwork that exists inside galleries and museums and artwork that exists in public space. Students navigated tensions that arise when artists must work together to create.
Jackson Pollock Space Paintings
Using Jackson Pollock paintings as a reference, students expanded their ideas on different ways that paintings can be made. Students used contrasting brightly colored pastels and metallic paints on black paper to depict their own galaxies that might include planets, moons, suns, asteroids, and other space phenomena. Students experimented with different gestures and body movements to apply paint. Why might an artist choose to use this style of painting? What do the characteristics of the different marks make us feel?
Space Helmets
Using contemporary fashion as a reference, students looked at the ways we accessorize our garments to create statements about our identity. What do different accessories say about who we are or the way we want people to perceive us? What do accessories say about the function of a garment or where it might be used?
Hot/Cold Paper Mache Planets + Triptych
Students explored place and narrative by creating a fictional planet. Students created a crayon-resist triptych that depicts the plant life, animal life, and atmosphere of their fictional planet. Special attention was paid to climate, such as hot and cold weather. Using the triptych to inform them, students then made three-dimensional planets that were painted in hot or cold colors depending on the climate determined in the triptych, and bridging connection between color and feeling.
Kara Walker Alien Silhouettes
Similar to contemporary artist Kara Walker, students used gesture, hybridity, and peculiarity to revamp the medium of classic silhouette-based portraiture. Students looked at the ways in which Kara Walker combines forms to create characters and narratives that cause us to question identities and situations. Students then created their own life-sized silhouettes by having their gestured or combined with an object form traced against a large paper and painting it in the colors and patterns of their choice, resulting in alien silhouette portraits.