Episode 3: "Flight of the Kitty Hawk" & "Rocket to the Stars"

One of the more interesting things about this month-long artist in residence was challenge I faced creating things I've never created before. A good example was this week's sculptures, a rendition of the Wright Brothers' plane, and a fairly tall rocket.

The third grade had chosen the Kitty Hawk as their entry for the themed project. My approach to making the armature was to simplify, there was just no way to create all the details of the actual plane in a reasonable amount of time. This piece was also designed to be suspended from the ceiling. That presented a special challenge during construction, which, as you can see from the top photo, was addressed by hanging the sculpture from 2 x 4's taped to stacked tables. I just didn't feel comfortable suspending a heavy, wet paper laden sculpture-in-progress from the drop ceiling in the art room. This system worked pretty well except the stacked tables weren't really tall enough, and the occasionally someone would bump their head on a board. Although it looked like a fairly easy piece to do, the third grade found it challenging to cover all the surfaces of the wings in their allotted time periods.

Thank you to the teachers: Julie Gedemer, Mary Harterink, Missy Toeg, Teri Manowski and Jill Shultis.

"Flight of the Kitty Hawk" part 2

"Rocket to the Stars"