Fabulous Cities

May I gush about another wonderful children's book writer and illustrator? Oh heck, you can't stop me.

The late Simms Taback wrote and illustrated books full of humor and charm complete with quirky colorful folky and funny illustrations. All of them are incredibly clever and, though silly, are amazingly beautiful and contain details that make me want to look at them again and again.

My favorite is his Caldecott winner, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat, a retelling of a classic Jewish story of a poor man who has an old ripped coat and continually cuts it down so he still can use it. First it becomes a jacket and then gets cropped into a vest. By the end it's only a button and soon even that is lost. But the story leaves you with a moral about creativity and resourcefulness and seeing the glass half full.

OK, OK, you say. Get on with it, Paula! What did YOU make from this book? Me? Nothing. But the kids in my Pre-K group made some lovely crazy buildings and cities. What might be difficult to see in the scan of this wonderful spread from the book is the quirky details. Simms added crazy photos of people making all sorts of faces in the windows of the city. He also put in pieces of material and newspaper clippings made to look like old Yiddish (Jewish) papers.

A trip to the city for our hero!'

Together we read the book and looked at the pictures. 

The Picasso's Basement PreK artists used cut and torn paper to make their wacky buildings. They clipped pictures out of magazines to fill  the windows with faces. I told them to feel free to add any kind of details with markers and scissors. One resourceful artist even added a button she found on the floor which was very much in the spirit of the book! 

Well done, artists!

We Built This City On Rock and Roll...and we Recycled Too!

Mutant Schnauzer Attacks City!

OK. Not really. This is, of course a teaser about the latest Picasso's Basement project.

In all my time of teaching Picasso's Basement classes the most popular project ever was my Russian Byzantine Architecture  project when the artists created a Byzantine inspired cathedral out of recycled food boxes, cups, plastic and styrofoam. It has been the most requested project by all the artists here. They worked together to form one big building which now sits in my art studio. It taught them a little bit about Russia, architecture, recycling, and mostly teamwork. 

And so it begins....

I wanted them to learn more about all styles of architecture and since we are so close to New York City I knew the kids would really get excited about this. 

I started by saving all sorts of interesting boxes, cans, tubes and containers. I painted them white and tossed them in a giant crate. The students have to pick through to find what they think will work to help them best represent the buildings' architectural elelments. 

There will be more to come of this project in the next couple of weeks as I have two groups of artists working on this, each group working for 2 weeks. 

Taking a break. After all, the Empire State Building
wasn't built in a day!

Hard at work on the Guggenheim Museum

So far the students have learned about many kinds of architecture including:

• Art Deco (Empire State and Chrysler Buildings)
• Renaissance Revival (Flat Iron Building)
• Beaux-Art (Washington Square Arch, Main Branch of the NYPublic Library)
• Gothic (St. Patrick's Cathedral)
• Post Modern (the Lipstick Building)

Plus they have mastered how be inspired without creating an exact replica and, most importantly how to make the most out of an empty fruit container!

So stay tuned please! There will be much more to come!

Oh, and don't forget to vote for Picasso's Basement at

 Circle of Moms Top 25 Creative Mom Blogs. 

2 days of voting to go!