Artful Weeding

We have a backyard with little to no sunlight but lots of wet soil perfect for weeds..... Lots and lots of weeds. Last year we let them go wild and they grew taller than the kids. This year we are mowing them down. Although yesterday my two little ones decided to weed an arty path.

We are into creating, walking and drawing paths right now. Last week we went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and walked the Labyrinth in the courtyard. This opened our eyes to where there are other patterns, paths and mazes around town. We also stumbled upon this link to a sand artist. He draws/rakes in the sand on beaches the most amazing ephemeral designs.  I'm sure there was a little inspiration for the weed path from this.

Art Scavenger Hunt continued....

A gorgeous day to spend 4+ hours at the Arboretum to finish the art scavenger hunt we started a few days ago!

 We also took some time to do the maze..

 Check out the fountain and fish

We voted on our favorites and "Poppies of Oz" was one of them...

 This was another....

 

We ended the day with tag. Could there be a more beautiful place to play tag?

Franconia Sculpture Park Adventure

We went on a fantastic field trip Saturday to Franconia Sculpture Park to celebrate my Mom's birthday. There was bluegrass music, plenty of outdoor art to see, delicious pizza from a homemade outdoor pizza oven and we met some wonderful people as well. Below are some pictures of the day. I brought pipe cleaners along in case we were inspired for some mini sculptures ourselves.....

Inspiration for a pipe-cleaner mini sculpture

Outdoor Sculpture

Today we had an outdoor art adventure to the MN Landscape Arboretum. There are 32 works of art scattered through the arboretum. We started a scavenger hunt of our own to begin to see them all.
The fish in the Japanese garden were our favorites so far......

A tiny bit of nature art on the side. The pattern on the caterpillar was an inspiration for a project we worked on later... (pictures to come)

A Little Found Turtle Friend...

We found this little guy on our nature walk and it inspired some turtle art....

We let him go after he modeled for us :)

Good Turtle reads:
Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss
Turtle Splash Countdown at the Pond by by Cathryn Falwell

Art Trucks

Check out this article in the NYTimes about art truck/galleries. Art Rolls!

Click Here NYTimes

Woodpecker Art

This week we had a little inspiration from a woodland friend the woodpecker. We checked out a book from the library called Peck, Peck, Peck by Lucy Cousins.

Afterward, my little one made her own art with a little help using the hole punch....