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 room with nothing else in it.

Here in Pittsburgh, any excess rainwater can cause sewage overflow, which is a public health hazard, as well as pretty gross. Plants and gardens can help prevent this, by giving that extra water a place to go before it ends up in the sewer. Drains, water, and plant growth are all intricately tied together here. (Learn more!)

As part of the museum’s emphasis on sustainability, nearly everything in the arrangement was salvaged or reused from somewhere else. The pipes to hold the plants were purchased from a local secondhand building materials warehouse; the wooden box, plastic sides and pottery shards were donations or left over from previous museum projects; the small lights inside used wires and a switch taken from donated and dismantled electronics. We’d hope to use flowers from our museum garden, but the weather wasn’t cooperating. Green Sinner stepped in and saved the day, providing and arranging locally-grown plants.

A special thank you to Jim from GreenSinner for helping us to secure locally grown flowers and for arranging a beautiful display. Visit his website for information on his flowers and services. Also, a congratulations to Rebecca Grabman, MAKESHOP Teaching Artist, for design the concept and design for this arrangement.

Michael has been to MAKESHOP before.  His favorite thing to do is stop-motion animation.  He came in a couple of days ago and couldn’t find the stop-motion computer.  We move things around a lot in MAKESHOP, so I showed him where the computer was residing and he got right to work.  His first animation was about the “fiscal cliff,” but that footage was deleted by accident.  Undaunted, Michael began another animation that happened to reference one of my favorite TV shows, Cheers.  It took a lot of takes and experimentation to figure out how long to keep the speech bubbles on screen for the movie.  Thankfully, Michael has a lot of patience and didn’t get flustered when the animation didn’t turn out perfect.  Instead, he just deleted the clips and started all over again.

Our stop-motion animation program was written by our staff with special consideration to the needs of children. We purposefully designed the program so that the process of making a stop-motion animation film was clear and easily explained. Sometimes, the program is a bit glitchy, but visitors love it!

-Kevin

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 she was confident about what could be done.  She consulted me, Derek, and Amy about what she should do with her old jeans.  We all brainstormed some ideas and in the end Amy helped Katie create a really stellar clutch bag out of a portion of the jeans.

Amy then instructed Katie on how she could turn the rest of the jeans into shorter pants for summer.  Katie left with one finished project and another project to finish at home.

We provide a lot of materials in MAKESHOP and receive donations of fabric, recyclables, and wood all the time.  It is really impressive when visitors bring in materials for a specific purpose.  Katie’s project really exemplifies what MAKESHOP is all about.  It is a place to share ideas, materials, and tools to create something new.  That “something new” doesn’t have to be a product.  It can be more than that, it can be a new skill, a new memory, a new friend, a new idea, or a new way of thinking. Katie is a great example of a visitor who was inspired by our activities and decided to repurpose, instead of throwing away, and to do it herself, instead of buying it from someone else.

-Kevin

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 develop a new magnet activity in MAKESHOP.

You can’t move too fast or the ball will simply fall to the floor.  Since this is such an interesting structure, the dome has really inspired us to make something new for visitors to explore. Our idea is to let visitors explore magnetism by moving a metal ball or two around the inside of a dome.  It takes some precision and patience to really move the ball around.  As usual, the prototyping process is alive and well in MAKESHOP.

When we want new activities or exhibits, we typically build them ourselves.  We also share them with our visitors.  This magnet project already has some shared consultation between us and our visitors.  Katie, a repeat visitor to the Museum, helped us brainstorm some ideas for this new magnet project.  We always encourage visitors to help us create things whether it is a simple magnet activity or an entire exhibit like Waterplay.  Every opinion is always valued.

-Kevin

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 lost my voice by day three. Many of the conference goers seemed to have many questions about MAKESHOP, our museum, and Pittsburgh. We were humbled and excited about the positive response that we received.

We were left with this nice and short stop-motion video created by to attendees to the conference.  This simple little video is a nice reminder of a very busy and exciting week in Pittsburgh.

Thanks again to everyone who helped make this year’s ACM conference happen and to all those who attended.

-Kevin

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 a laser cutter. Some days I deal with a loom, and other days I deal with lasers.

The ETC team did such a great job developing, prototyping, and creating this project that anyone, even me, can make a drawing on an iPad and then have it cut out of cardboard using a laser.  It does take some converting and resizing and calibration to get a finished product, but the team was able to teach us everything.

Like I said, “if I can do it then anyone can.” This app is especially great for young children to interface with the design technology needed to use a laser cutting. Since we have this app available in MAKESHOP, we can open many doors for young children to use modern fabrication tools, like laser cutters.

Thanks to our latest ETC team and especially thanks for letting me make a cardboard dinosaur. Stop by MAKESHOP to ask us about it or check our calendar to see when the laser cutter will be running.

-Kevin

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 truly cross-disciplinary way. There are four different aspects to the course:

Design:

The first step is creating the image. We’re using a free vector-drawing program, Inkscape, to design a line for the laser cutter to follow.

For this project it’s very important to think about positive and negative space, because the designs are going to be used as stencils. This is Natalie’s pattern in outline form (on the left) and how it will look when it’s used for printing. On the right side, we made all of the enclosed spaces black. Any enclosed space — any part which is completely surrounded by an outline — will be completely cut out of the paper, leaving a hole that the ink can pass through. In this case, the detailed interior shape of the star will be held to the rest of the paper by a single tiny “bridge” on the left side.

Cutting:

Once the design is complete, it’s time to use our newest MAKESHOP tool to translate it into something physical! The laser cutter uses a high-powered beam of invisible light to burn into a material (we’re using several pieces of paper on top of each other in a stack) wherever the computer tells it to move.

In this photo, a red dot is visible. The machine also has a visible red laser that helps us line everything up correctly before we begin cutting. Because the material is being burned, there is a small puff of air aimed at the cutting point, to put out any fires, as well as a filter to help clear out the resulting “campfire” smell. You can see where some of the small strips of paper have been blown around.

Printing:

Once cut, the stack of identical stencils can be used for silk screening the patterns. We are using textile ink, which is flexible enough to be printed onto the fabric and won’t crack when folded or bent. Each student has a 1′ x 5′ piece of canvas to print on in whatever way they choose.

Sewing:

Once the fabric is printed and the ink is dry enough to work with, we set to work on the sewing machines to create… whatever! A bag, a wallet, a piece of headgear, anything that can be created with canvas and a little creativity.

Thanks to all the students who came, on both days, to make this a really fun event to plan and run! Hopefully this will pave the way for more exciting workshop opportunities in the future, using all of the amazing resources, machines and materials we have available at MAKESHOP and the museum!

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 Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh?

I’ve been a Teaching Artist since the end of February, and I was an intern last autumn.

When did you know you were a maker?

I’m not sure I really identify as a “maker” any more than I identify as a “breather” or an “eater” — making is just how things I want to do get done, and it’s a very broad category of activities.  I’ve identified as someone who sews since I was in about middle school, when I started using a sewing machine in addition to hand sewing, and I’ve identified as someone who makes computer games since I started publishing them in public places, in about 2009.

Who or what influences what you make?

Art, architecture, movies, plays, and games.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned by working at the MAKESHOP?

Patience and not being a perfectionist.  Okay, maybe I have not completely learned these yet, but I’ve made progress at least.

 What do you not know how to do?

Pretty much anything involving sound.  I usually focus on visuals and don’t tend to notice sound, and I don’t have much experience generating or manipulating it.

When you are not in the MAKESHOP, what do you do for fun?

I love watching movies — the weirder, the better.

If you were a material or tool, what would you be?

Seam ripper.

You can learn more about Lea at her website:

http://instamatique.com/lea/img/mussels.jpg

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 explain this concept only in words is very confusing.

A couple of Sundays ago, Derek and I spent some time creating a really simple prototype.  Hopefully this prototype can help Derek better explain his final goal. I, for one, think that it is a great idea to introduce other forms of mechanics in MAKESHOP other than electricity.The Museum is full of simple machines:  inclined planes, pulleys, wheels and axles and gears. Why not let our visitors further explore these machies on a daily basis in MAKESHOP?

The more we make connections to the rest of the Museum, the better.  Making connections is an extremely important part of learning.  I can’t wait to see the next steps that Derek takes to continue this project.

-Kevin

“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 in the morning thinking about this theme.  I could observe the flow of visitors through the exhibit or I could observe how people explored the flow of electricity through our circuit blocks.  I could even just observe how people use the sink!

In the end, I decided to build my own version of “flow” by designing a simple ramp for a ball to roll down.  I built a structure out of recycled materials and tape that allowed for a ball to roll from point A to point B.

To my relief, several groups of visitors helped me continue this simple physics experiment by adding more ramps and tubes and tracks to the structure.  The project grew and changed throughout the day.

A theme like “flow” may seem abstract but we can always find some way to invite visitors to join in with our fun experiments.  Maybe it is more rewarding to challenge visitors to build something a little more abstract.  You have to invest a little more time and thought into your creation, and I would say that that is a good thing.  Visitors should care about what they’re making and creating in MAKESHOP.  A challenge like this helps expand the sense of possibility at the Museum.

 http://youtu.be/3CWfcZxvXww

-Kevin