Project Impact

Explore the history and uses of masks and the techniques of maskmaking with artist Howard Berelson. Using simple materials, sequential steps and structural folding techniques, students will create brightly colored realistic or fantasy masks.

A brief lecture about the many cultures who have utilized masks will lead participants to discover and express their own magical persona through their mask creation.

Mask characters can be related to the class curriculum as students explore the history, literature, language or culture of a particular topic.  

Residency Available
Grades K-12
Curriculum Connections:  Language Arts, Social Studies

Students build working musical instruments including strings, winds, and percussion.  These simple versions of standard orchestral instruments serve as models for an exploration of acoustical principles.
 
Artist Jody Kruskal shows how vibration energy moves from object to object. The children's homemade instruments provide hands-on tools for investigating the relationship between pitch and the speed or frequency of vibration.

Students will collect items to be used with this workshop to emphasize the recycle/reuse concept.
 
The workshop ends with the class using their new instruments to play a short piece of music together.

 All of the instruments that the students make are theirs for further use in the classroom or at home.

This workshop is successful as a single workshop, a three-day residency, or a hands-on extension of The Science of Sound assembly program.

Grades 1-12
Curriculum Connection:  Science, Music

Take a guided tour with artist Gail Fishberg through an ancient craft that has become a contemporary art form.

Students learn about the history of communication as they make their own paper from raw pulp, using rainbow-hued dyes and found objects such as thread, yarn, leaves, and flowers. 

This very hands-on workshop is creative and fun from the minute participants dip their hands into the colorful pulp-filled water, until their one of a kind design is completed.

Participants can take their handmade paper home to frame and hang as a piece of art, or use as a cover for a journal, diary, scrapbook, or on a book the students write themselves.  A favorite of all ages!

Residency Available
Grades PreK-12 & Adult
Curriculum Connection:  Social Studies