When the staff at the David Adler Cultural Center in Libertyville was asked to bring a hands-on activity to a children’s art fair in the area this summer, Julia Morrisroe, the center’s visual arts director, decided to take a three-dimensional project.
So the center created a structure nearly 6 feet tall made out of wood and chicken wire that children would transform into a fiber art sculpture.
“The original structure was very generic and I thought it could have ended up as a tree,” says Morrisroe. Little did she know that the children had another idea in mind.
“The kids used a lot of yarn on top and it looked like hair so they started calling the figure “Reggae Man,” recalls Morrisroe.
The statue adorned with dreadlocks has been returned to the Adler Center, where children will get a chance to create a companion piece of some sort for the man at the Festival of the Arts ’94 on Saturday and Sunday.
“It’s hard for little kids to make things successfully on a small scale,” she says. “They do better with bigger projects because their hands don’t yet have the dexterity they’ll have when they get older.”
Morrisroe also likes the idea that the final sculpture will be the result of many hands working together. “It’s nice to have a group project and get rid of the idea of `ownership,’ she says. “For many kids, art making is a solitary experience, but art was never meant to be that exclusive.”
Music at the festival will also create some common bonds among children as well as adults. At 4 p.m. on Saturday, older ones can join adults in a square dance.”
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Other musical activities will also get children moving to a communal beat with folk music on both afternoons and a concert of world music on Saturday night. “Although the music is not oriented toward kids, they can sing along in the afternoon,” says Tyler, “and on Saturday night most of the music is dance music from different cultures, and kids are uninhibited and just start to sway and dance to the beat.”
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David Adler Cultural Center, 1700 N. Milwaukee Ave., Libertyville: “Festival of the Arts ’94,” 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday, free; “In the Tradition: World Music Fest,” 6 p.m. Saturday, $3 donation. 708-367-0707.