BEYE Discovery: Visiting Artist Jenny Raia: Calder Inspired Circus

Post Contributed by Jocelyne Adkins, Program Director/Educator

We were very excited to host artist and educator Jenny Raia! Ms. Raia teaches Art Education at Longfellow School, in Oak Park. This afternoon, she introduced Beye Discovery students to Alexander Calder's infamous "Calder Circus", to inspire our own version of a traveling circus. To "set the stage", we first read a book titled "Sandy's Circus" by Tanya Lee Stone and then Ms. Raia showed a short clip of Calder performing with his circus. Many of Calder's circus figures were made from wire and other repurposed materials.

* Calder was called "Sandy" by friends and family

Ms. Raia, introducing our Calder inspired circus project

For our project, Ms. Raia taught students how to create a continuous line drawing (see her lion in the photo below) and to use this line drawing as a guide to then sculpt a more dimensional form using pipe cleaners. Calder, who loved to use wire as a continuous line, often carried a ball of wire in his pocket and would effortlessly sculpt portraits of friends he chanced to meet on the street! Ms. Raia also taught students how to create paper animals from folded card stock, to produce animals that could stand on their own four feet!

Ms. Raia, demonstrating a continuous line drawing of a lion

Ms. Raia, lion head shape with striped pipe cleaners

Ms. Raia's circus elephant

Students worked with focus to create some fabulous circus animals today: Scroll below to see a horse, elephants, a monkey, and tiger. We will continue to add to our circus in the next 2 weeks, so stayed tuned for our progress in completing the "Beye Disocvery Circus"!