Tate kids has many beautiful art projects to do at home. This one is inspired by the great British sculptor, Barbara Hepworth.
As always, we started our project to talk a bit about the artist. I have prepared a few pages for little Bear. The first one has lots of pictures of the artist. The black and white pictures helps kids to place an artists in time. Additionally you can talk with the kids about weather an artist was born when their own parents, grandparents lived or even before...
The pictures of Hepworth are interesting also because they give an impression how an artist works and also about the scale of her sculptures.
On another page we looked at some of her sculptures. With modern, abstract art it is always fun to let the little Bears guess what is the picture, sculpture all about.
On the last one we looked at three sculptures of Hepworth with the same objects, but it shows beautifully how an artist can express the same topic in a more and more abstract way.
If interested, you can watch together a short film about Barbara Hepworth here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv77WKiUxm8
Now we were ready to start the Tate Kids project.
Inspired by the beautiful shapes and negative spaces Hepworth have created, we did a viewfinder / necklace piece - you can use it for whatever you wish.
We used modelling clay, but a play dough, or home made play dough are all very good. Started with rolling a ball, then turned the ball into an unusual shape. To make the big hole, slowly pushed a pen through the dough. For one of the pieces, we even created two holes with different sizes. Finally, used a toothpick to create a small hole for the string. Before baking or drying, best to smooth the edges nicely. When the viewfinder -necklace is ready, just put a string through the small hole and ready to explore the world.
A viewfinder is a great tool to help little Bears to view art. Looking through the hole, Bears can watch closely the whole or part of an art piece, isolating it from its environment, helping to concentrate and focus on it.
So do not forget to take it with you next time you visit a museum with your little Bear!
