Art Excursion

I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh.  So, it's always a joy to go back to the campus and look around with my kids.

This week I decided that since we were going to the public library that is essentially on campus, we might as well check out Pitt's art gallery.  The Frick Fine Arts building is home of a few Art departments at Pitt.  I remember taking a history of architecture class there.... I have almost ZERO memory of the ridiculous facts that I stuffed away and regurgitated from my short term memory in that class.  Now that I homeschool, a few of those facts might be nice to have.

My homeschoolers were genuinely impressed by the first collection we saw.  It was a collection of stick figure art (artist Gertrude Quastler)... even a stick figure sculpture.  Any kid knows how to draw stick figures.  It's our first (and probably still my) ONLY way to draw people.  Afrikah makes stick figures all the time.  Seeing an "artist" whose stick figure work was on public display made her especially happy!

We then saw some severely less interesting art.  Probably the only interest was "who is that?"  And when they got the answer, "How?!"   But we walked through the extensive collection of Europeanized biblical art portraits anyway.

After we came out the building, the kids ran around the fountain outside.

Then Hizki grabbed my camera to do some photography.  He started reading the plaque and snapping pics of a war monument. Afrikah decided to jump in.

We had a great time exploring the art gallery.  Afrikah loves art, and loves creating things.  Who knows, maybe introducing her to the art of others will inspire our little artist to step out and create new ideas without inhibition.