Arts Splash! Montalvo Arts Center

Yesterday I participated in a student art festival at the Montalvo Arts Center. I had a drop in recycled art workshop station for children of all ages. Using recycled water bottle bottoms, cardboard, tea bag tags, food wrappers, produce netting, wire and an assortment of other recycled materials, people created nature related art pieces.

Above: project sample bookmark. Media: recycled cardboard, tea bag tag, Japanese comics and plastic sushi grass. A "L" shaped slit is made in the cardboard and the tea bag tag's string slips into it.

Above: Bookmarks created by children in the workshop. I had a wallpaper sample books that the visitors used. You can see elements of these wallpaper papers in the right hand bookmark.
Below: visitor create diatoms (water born algae with silica skeletons). I had sample images for each table of what these water born algae look like so that the children could draw inspiration from the elaborate silica skeletons of these creatures. I explained to them how such algae can bloom in abundance when our local creeks are clog with plastics.

 Above and below: A child's creation with wire and produce netting. She patiently sat working on this creature for quite a while.We had one table station set up to be for wire work. I had many mini pliers set out and the children looked at pictures of locally endangered creatures as well as drew from their own imagination for inspiration.

Above: A child artist created this car made of water bottle bottoms. I like the green person made of produce netting!

Above: A student sketches ants as he designs the construction of his wire creature.

Above: The student displays his final creation.
Below: using a template, visitors created flowers from wallpaper sample books and leaves from recycled sushi grass.

Below: Foam packing sculptures created by Rainbow Art in Cupertino

 

Above: a sculpture created by Ann Weber. Her amazing works are of cardboard. Yesterday she had a workshop in which children could get creative with staplers and an unlimited supply of cardboard. A small warrior tests out his new armor and sword below.

Above: The few remaining scraps of cardboard remaining at the end of the day at Ann Weber's station. Children were still cobbling together wonderful creations up to the last moment.

My son and my daughter enjoyed the afternoon at Arts Splash with their dad as I worked. My son was on a speaking panel of student artists who discussed their creative process. He had a movie in the festival. It was very inspiring to see the beautiful student art, some of which was quiet large. Next year I hope to see some of the performance pieces for the festival. I enjoyed seeing proud students in matching T-shirts from their schools and arts organizations roam around.