Art in Bloom
Art in Bloom is an event held by the Carnegie Museum of Art each year, when local people and organizations create floral arrangements inspired by and based on artwork at the museum. This year, Children’s Museum created an arrangement for the event. Ours was to be a companion piece for “Drain” by Robert Gober, a hand-crafted pewter drain set into the back wall of a…
Repurposing Jeans
It was around three o’clock in the afternoon when Katie came into MAKESHOP with an old pair jeans in tote. She explained to me that the jeans had holes in them and her mom wanted to throw them out. Instead, Katie brought the jeans to the Museum to turn them into something new. Katie has been to MAKESHOP before, so…
Design and prototype
Sometimes, we can find some really cool stuff in the Museum’s basement. Our basement serves as one of the exhibit workshops, so many of the materials were at one point used for prototyping or repairing exhibits. For example, this acrylic dome. It was originally used as a prototype for our newly renovated Waterplay exhibit. Now, it is being used to…
ACM Conference Animation
A couple of weeks ago, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh hosted the Association of Children’s Museums conference. This prestigious event brought together over 1,000 international museum professionals for three days of presentations, workshops, and events. It was a blast meeting all these people from across the world. It was incredibly inspiration to share ideas, tell stories, and hear about other museums. I…
Laser cutting for anyone
Anyone can do it… A typical day at work in MAKESHOP can be hard to predict. A couple of days ago, I was taught how to use a laser cutter. An amazing team of students from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center spent an entire semester developing an iPad app to allow someone like me to do something like use…
Textile Design Crash Course
Lea and I, both Teaching Artists, ran Textile Design Crash Courses for two different groups of visiting Winchester Thurston high school students on special day-long field trips, one on May 20th and another on May 21st. Asked to come up with a 4.5 hour workshop of our choosing, we jumped at the chance to work with older kids in a…
Meet a Maker!
For a limited time only, you can visit the MAKESHOP and work with Lea on Sunday – Thursday. Lea will be working with us until the end of August when she will continue her creative pursuits at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. Name/ Nickname: Lea Favorite color: Teal How long have you been working at…
Another Gear Idea
Derek, a new employee at the Museum and a local teacher in Pittsburgh, presented a great idea to me a couple of days ago. He wants to make a mechanical version of our circuit blocks. He thinks that it is important to utilize various types of gears to create blocks that visitors can connect together to further explore mechanization. To…
An Abstract Theme
“Make something that flows” This was the challenge that we presented to visitors a couple of weeks ago. As facilitators, it was our challenge to document what visitors did when given the challenge. Typically themes in MAKESHOP revolve around less abstract ideas like 3D objects or light, but mMake FLOW. What does that even mean? I spent about an hour…
Dream Flight Adventures
MAKESHOP was recently transformed into an interactive spaceship. Gary Gardner and his Dream Flight Adventures prototype returned to MAKESHOP for another day of playtesting with our visitors. He has already playtested his program at the Museum and a post describing that visit can be found here. He brought with him a newer version of the flight simulator software that he…