This course inspires young artists to be simultaneously observant and creative.  Together, we explore the natural areas on the museum grounds—including the formal garden, pond, trails, and pinetum—and look at the natural world through an artist’s eyes.  When we return to the studio from our excursions, we create sculptures, drawings, collages, and paintings inspired by the natural materials collected on our nature-walks.

• Explore four biomes on the NCMA grounds: the Pinetum, the Formal Garden, the Canyon, and the Tuliptree Trail. 

• Learn techniques for illustrating the natural world in watercolor, art pencils, and charcoal.

Sculpture

• Follow in the footsteps of Alexander Calder and the NCMA’s indoor and outdoor sculpture collections, devising our own responses to the challenge of working in three dimensions.
• Learn how to shape diverse materials with tools and the natural abilities of our hands: bending, attaching, fixing, removing, cutting and incising to create individually expressive artworks.   
• Work with everything from clay and wire to styrofoam and natural materials such as stone, leaves, wood and the wind.