Hana-Chaser
Two of my favorite visitors returned to the Museum a couple of days ago and created another amazing project. Their first tinkering, electronic project was dubbed the “Hanna-Occupier”. Their latest project was a motorized car made out of simple, recycled parts. They decided to name it the “Hana-Chaser”. I was excited to collaborate on this great project. Since these were…
Community Highlight: Free Workshops!
Constructing Identity: A series of workshops in costume making Interested in costume making and performance art? Want to be in a fashion show? Now is your chance… Sign up now to participate in a summer-long series of FREE workshops at the Pittsburgh Gay and Lesbian Center with local artist Scott Andrew. Youth ages 13-17 are invited to participate in workshops…
Modern Art
Who knew that a bunch of motors attached to some junk could create such beautiful art? Well, apparently it does… We really like to make things vibrate, shake and spin by attaching motors and simple circuits to recycled materials. We decided to go a step further by adding a marker to discover what patterns our shopbots make. The result was…
Making Use of a Record Player
We needed something that spins for our kaleidoscope workshops. I was planning on making something like a big spinning wheel, but by coincidence, an employee from another department dropped off an old record player. It was a great coincidence! I own a record player and I use it to play music. I never thought I’d be using a record player…
The MAKESHOP is for everyone…
We are a “kids” museum, so little kids come here every day and play. Adults are allowed…no…encouraged have fun too. Case in point: A dad from California visited the MAKESHOP and had the time of his life. This particular visitor came into our Museum not expecting to have nearly as much fun as he did. He wanted to try to…
Pittsburgh is Art…
The Museum visited the Three Rivers Arts Festival over the past two weekends. Our tent featured versions of activities that happen in the Makeshop and Studio, so we had a lot of fun letting visitors get a taste of what goes on in the Museum. We let visitors play with our ShopBots and experience some hands on woodworking processes. It’s…
Exploring and Inventing
Who are inventors? Anyone can be an inventor… Most people probably picture an inventor as someone in a laboratory working with a bunch of complex machines. When I think of inventors, I picture anyone willing to try out something new. Kids are great at inventing things. Case in point: Usman and his “Spinny Thing”. Usman spent a lot of time…
Join Assemble for M3!
Our friends at Assemble are hosting a series of awesome workshops for children. Materials, Media and Me (M3) is a series of Saturday afternoon workshops for children ages 8-10. Each week, a different artist or technologist will introduce a material, show students how they use the material, and lead them through a project. M3 classes will highlight Metal, Paper, Fabric,…
Call for Makers
The Call for Makers for Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire is now open! They’re hunting the region’s most brilliant makers of all ages. Click here to learn more and apply!
Droids and Grandmas
I have had whole families work on projects in the MAKESHOP. This was the first instance where I witnessed three generations create three separate projects at once. We were celebrating “May the Fourth Be With You” day in the MakeShop. Being the National STAR WARS day, we decided to let visitors make “ShopDroids.” A very eager family came in and…