Art Walk soars

Regina Budden

Mulvane Art Museum’s Art Lab rang with laughter Feb. 6 as the attendees of the First Friday Art Walk raced their newly made paper airplanes. The planes a the favorite project available to the Art Walk participants-after all, who doesn’t want to make something they can throw?

The Art Walk is a fairly new event that is mostly targeted toward children ages 5 and up, although Art Lab supervisors encourage people of all ages to come and experience the event. From 5-8 p.m. on the first Friday of each month, the Art Lab opens its doors and allows the public to come and experiment with different artistic elements. It is free and requires no prior registration.

The Art Lab, which sponsors the Art Walk, primarily subsists on donations and donated material, and is for the education of everyone interested in art basics, said Samantha Burns, a senior anthropology major at Washburn University who helped supervise the event. All of the supplies are non-toxic and washable, so the Lab is very kid-friendly, which adds to the appeal of the Art Walk.

“I think part of First Fridays is just about getting people out into the community,” said Burns.

The two main activities this time were coloring and making paper airplanes-which were then propelled across the room-and making quilt designs with pasted-together scraps of wallpaper. The quilting project is done as a supplement to the upstairs exhibit “Quilting, African American Women’s Heritage.” The goal is that the children will have been taken through the museum’s upstairs and that they will have seen the exhibit and so have something to relate the project to, said Jessica Wagner, the other Art Walk supervisor, and an undeclared major.

Carson Haldeman, 9, and Sarah Carson, 8, are cousins who frequently attend the Art Walk, and both said it isn’t anything like what they have for art in school. They jump from activity to activity, drawing moustaches on each other as they learn about contours, and tracing shadows while they learn light projections.

Benjamin and Clair Coultis, 10 and 7, respectively, also are regulars at the Art Lab. They come for the Art Walk when they can, said Benjamin, sometimes “just to do stuff.” Clair’s favorite part of the Art Walk is the opportunity to draw.

“I am very interested in art and artists,” said Clair. “That’s what I want to be when I am older.”