Dale Chihuly Art Project

 A few weeks ago I posted some pictures from our trip to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

 The museum is home to a permanent collection of works by Dale Chihuly.

 When it comes to art, I usually prefer more traditional pieces, but I love Chihuly!

 Everything is so bright and colorful and full of crazy shapes.

 

 

 

 Because he lost his sight in one eye, Chihuly doesn't have any depth perception (you can see a short video clip about this here), which makes glass blowing rather dangerous, so he actually paints pictures and directs the workers in his studio to make his creations.

 We watched a video on how to make your own Chihuly-inspired art and had so much fun with it!  We did use the clear Shrinky-Dink paper she suggests in the video because we actually had it already.  Sometimes it pays to be an art supply hoarder.

 

After you have drawn your shape and colored it in (using Sharpies), you cut it out and put it in the oven.  I placed them on top of a bowl while they baked.

 This was Jack's big bowl.

 It's kind of hard to see here, but Alice made two and glued them together.

 Alice tried tracing her hand to make a turkey and when we baked it, the fingers curled into some interesting shapes.

The kids also colored on the little scrap pieces and baked them and they curled up into little pieces that would be good if you were trying to glue lots of pieces together for a big sculpture.  We had so much fun with this project.  The kids worked on it the entire afternoon and we definitely got our money's worth from the Shrinky Dink paper!