Free Family Sundays
Join us every Sunday for family artmaking in the Joseph Education Center Studio.
This free, weekly program is designed to teach children how to think and see like artists. Children and families are encouraged to work together, use their imagination, and learn though making. Workshops are led by experienced teaching artists and inspired by rotating exhibitions and the collection.
Soap Carving
Over 3,200 years ago, a stone carver in Egypt used a variety of hand tools to sculpt an image of Pharaoh Ramesses II (1303–1213 BCE). He and many other stone carvers worked together to create magnificent relief sculptures on the exterior of buildings in the pharaoh’s city. You can create your own relief sculpture at home using a good old-fashioned bar of soap.
Make a Drawing of Feelings
Shapes and colors can create different feelings – the same way music does. In Bubbles, artist Thomas Hart Benton explores this idea using a style of painting called Synchronism. Synchronism encourages artists to create harmonies with colors and shapes to make paintings, similar to the way musicians create harmonies to make music. Today we will explore shapes, feelings, and colors and create a drawing.
Make a Paper Flower Bouquet
A still life is a painting or drawing of a group of objects (often fruit, flowers, or other items) arranged in any way the artist chooses. In New England Still Life, artist Rebecca Salsbury James painted an arrangement of flowers in a vase. Instead of painting on canvas or paper, the artist used a different approach: she painted on the back of a piece of glass. This method is called reverse glass painting. Rather than starting with the background, James first painted the fine details of the flowers, then the vase, and the background last. See how the petal of the white flower at the bottom right sits on top of the vase?