Eric Carle’s “Art-Art”

While studying Eric Carle’s books, we were fortunate enough to be able to attend the Eric Carle Beyond the Books exhibit at our local art museum. Before going to the exhibit, we learned all about Eric Carle, his childhood, his history and his art. We even learned a bit about what he calls his “Art-Art” or the artwork he does outside of the realm of children’s books. There was one piece that struck me quite strongly while learning about Carle’s “Art-Art.” It was his sculptures made from painted steele that caught my eye. Here are a few of them that I photographed at the exhibit:

Here is the one that was not in the exhibit:

I was struck by the simplicity of the pieces and Carle’s use of colored sticks (?). The kids had a great time guessing what each creature was and loved reading the tag that told exactly what animal Carle had created. I immediately thought, we have to make some of those!

So I returned to school, grabbed some colored paper and created one of my own:

To create my own piece, I used black paper and cut out a basic shape of a peacocks neck/head. I used a hole punch to create its eyes. I then glued colored strips of paper between the two pieces of black paper and glued the “sculpture” to a piece of cardboard.

I used colored construction paper, but painted toothpicks or pipe cleaners would work very well for the colorful pieces that stick out of the sculpture.

I am so excited to see what my students come up with tomorrow!

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Well, I took this project to my students, but changed it a bit. The first change I made was that each student painted the square on which their sculpture was mounted black. And, instead of using colored paper, we used colored pipe cleaners. Here is what they came up with:

Other Eric Carle Posts from BMTM:

A Very Hungry Caterpillar Pinata

Very Hungry Caterpillar: A Puzzle

Eric Carle Letters

Eric Carle Inspired Seahorses

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