Sunday, February 2, 2014

Artist Study: Alexander Calder

 In January we learned about Alexander Calder.  That's not what I had originally planned, but a field trip opportunity came up, so we went with it!

 This biography is out of print but I was able to get a copy of it from the library.

 We started with Sandy's Circus, which tells about the circus Calder made from wire, cloth, and all kinds of found objects.  It is now housed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which has a lot of neat information about the circus on their website.

 Roarr has lots of pictures of the circus objects.

 This is a photo of Calder operating the circus.  I've also got a video of him pinned on my Artists board.

 We tried making some things with wire and found out it's harder than it sounds!  This is Jack with his sun.

 We took a field trip to The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art to see some of Calder's lithographs.

 It was a very small exhibit, but they had some great booklets that told a lot about Calder and the prints.

 Alice made this painting based on the one on the booklet cover.

 When we visited Crystal Bridges in November we saw some more of Calder's work!

We're also finishing up The Calder Game.  This is actually the third book in a series so it seems like we're missing a bit of information, but it's pretty good!

This was one of my favorite Artist Studies we've done.  There are so many different things you can do, even with younger kids!

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