Life at Sea!

For the Oct. 15 Exploring Artism, The Center’s September 17 Exploring Artism focused on all types of boats and how they interact with each other on the high seas.  We returned to the Center’s Special Exhibition Spreading Canvas: Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting in order to see how boats interacted on the high seas.

First, everyone met in the Docent Room to look at pictures of different types of boats.  Participants shared stories and create our very own sea-scape.  We used sponges to cover a very large piece of paper with blue paint, then set it aside to dry so we could use it later.

After painting, we used wooden pieces to make boats.  We decorated our boats using markers and stickers. Some boats had wires and strings coming off of them so that they could catch fish while out at sea.

Then we took our boats upstairs to look at Willem Van De Velde the Younger’s Sea Battle of the Anglo-Dutch Wars.  We discussed what we saw going on in the painting.  We saw that there was a lot of smoke and flags, so we thought about what the smoke could be coming from and why the flags were important.  After that, we placed our wooden boats on top of the big blue piece of paper we had painted earlier, which had dried and been laid out on the gallery floor by our great volunteers.  While the volunteers used iPads to play ocean and cannon noises, we added cut-outs of other ships to the scene and moved our own wooden boats around.

Finally, we went back down to the Docent Room to present our boats to everyone else.  After that we cleaned up and went home!

 

The next Exploring Artism will be on November 19, 2016.