By Urban Gateways teaching artist Nicole Beck
A super fun (and educational) 1-hour workshop for Family Night at St. Paul Lutheran based on the book “Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs.” Because the book poses the question “where does our food come from?”, I opted to spend the supply allotment on fresh vegetables, fruits, legumes & pastas with which to create art. I stopped at Stanley’s and bought artichoke, acorn squash, cabbage, leek, apple, mushrooms, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, green pepper & asparagus. I drew out the charcoal drawing of an animated Chicago skyline was drawn out quickly before arriving & then laid it out. Parents and kids were then introduced to the halved and sliced veggies and asked to coat the profiles with tempera to create block prints on the drawing to emulate food falling from the sky. Some kids took oil pastels and drew pizza slices & hotdogs (just to round out the diet!). [I helped] another group to create collages with dried beans, lentils, peas and all sorts of specialty pastas.
Check out photos below, and learn more about Urban Gateways workshops here!