We knew this monthly project was coming up, because I like to look ahead at the school curriculum like that. And back in December I said to Gracie, "What artist do you want to study?" She said, "Who made Mount Rushmore?" Gutzon Borglum. Done.
Smart kid, right? I'm a proud mama!
The assignment is: Choose a famous artist or musician, research that person's life as an artist and replicate a work from that person's portfolio. This can be a big project or a small one, depending on how much work the child wants to put into it. Like all of their monthly projects, the effort and the lesson is up to the family and the interest of the child. My kid happens to like art and history.
She also likes South Dakota and knows Mount Rushmore is gem of the state. I'm proud that she recognized it as a work of art, not just a thing. It's not a painting, and when I was a kid I'm pretty sure my limited little head only thought of art as drawings and paintings rather than sculptures or monuments.
Luckily, there was a documentary on TV about Gutzon Borglum and I recorded it. This sure came in handy, as it was the main source of her research. I'm pretty sure we could have found all of the pertinent information online or in some of our South Dakota books, but it was easy to just watch the program and pause it as the narrator said interesting things. Gracie wrote notes as we watched. She noted his birth and death dates, places, where he studied, other works he did and some other information about his life. I didn't have her write about his lack of finances because that seemed a bit out of the scope of her project at a second grade level anyway.
The replica was the hard part of the project. I'm sure Gutzon didn't have it easy when he was sculpting Mount Rushmore neither, but he was older and wiser. He wasn't eight.
I did have the forsight to think ahead and have her build her mountain over a ceramic bowl though. Then we wouldn't have a 50 pound lump of dried sculputre to lug around, but a hollow one that would dry nicely and evenly. Score one for mommy thinking!
I cannot stand Playdough. Gross. That stuff stinks! I'm not having her build a Playdough mountain. We will make our own non-smelly stuff. I used pinterest and found lots of recipes for salt dough. According to a thousand web sites, it's easy, doesn't smell, dries nicely, and lasts forever. Perfect.
So, not perfect! It is easy to mix, but a mess and a half! And it doesn't dry nicely. You have to bake it. You have to bake it flat! It's great for rolled out flat Christmas ornaments and the like, not for mounds of mountainous granite with heads. Salt dough was a complete no-go!
Look what happened when we baked it! Those poor Great Faces!
I bought some modeling clay. It said on the package that it would air dry nicely. Great. Just right for us!
Wrong again. It dries all right. But it crumbled into bits! How is that drying nicely? It's drying and cracking and completely falling apart! We piled more clay onto it to make it thicker, but that just made more pieces to break off. Failure number two. Ugh.
Gracie was disappointed and the deadline was looming. We'd been working on this project for a long time thinking we had plenty of time and suddenly, it's almost due. And it's a catastrophe!
Replica numero tres: Or, number three since it's not Spanish or anything....
This time, we decided not to let it dry! That should solve the drying problems! Take it to school freshly molded! It doesn't need to be dry like a rock, it just needs to look like Mount Rushmore. Sort of. Her details were less and less pronounced with each version of the heads. They lack noses now.
She made her third and final (it was due in the morning) replica and we covered it with saran wrap. This must work! She put her report in a binder to make a booklet out of it and added some photos of Borglum's other works. She put in a couple of photos of sculptures and one of a painting that he did. No explanation about them, just printed pictures and put them in her binder. I'm sure her teacher will guess that they are examples of his other works.
At school, they set up a little art museum. I wish I could have gone to see it, but I hear it was fantastic. Each kid presented their project and all of them were set out for display. I'm glad she put her report in a binder because a poster or just a piece of paper would not have displayed as well. And her sculpture was just fine! Another girl did a sculpture too, The Statue of Liberty. I'll have to ask her mom about it and see what they used for their sculpting medium.
Next year, I hope she chooses a painting!
Good for Gracie! She did something quite unique and extraordinary. I'm proud of her. Bet she had to explain a lot about who this guy was. He's not one of the usual picks for artists.
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