Collage Photographs

As mentioned in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts blog, admission is free to everyone the third Saturdays of the month. Along with the free admission, there are arts and crafts activities available for everyone to participate and create on the third Saturdays of every month from 1-4. For January, we were able to mimic the art styles of the artist who created the moving film digital art pieces. You can see this exhibit for yourself in the museum. It is an amazing collection of moving digital art that has hundreds of layers of film.

This event is found behind the ACME lab at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Its easy to miss if there is not a giant line of people waiting to enter the arts and crafts room. When I got there, I had to wait in line for 30 minutes just to get a spot in the arts and crafts room. It was definitely worth the wait though! While you are waiting, the ACME lab is all around you in the line and has posters to read and look at. There are books for kids to read, as well as a huge magnetic wall to move around gigantic magnetic images to create your own art. This helps keep kids entertained while you wait in line.

After you get to the arts and crafts room, it is very crowded! The activities are kid friendly, and so everything there is kid sized. Adults can still fit, but the focus is on the kids. The collage photographs event is meant to mimic the artist who created the digital art. Everyone receives a giant white piece of cardboard paper and gets shown to a table and chair in the room.

Chances are, it will be very packed when you go. I had to wait 30 minutes for a spot for two, and we had to squish in a corner. I recommend getting there very early before 1 to ensure you get a good seat and don’t have to wait very long to participate. We were in the arts and crafts room for about 40 minutes, and when we left, they line was still pretty long.

Once we were seated, there was a ton of old black and white images ready to be cut up. Buckets of scissors and glue are also available to help you create your own collage photograph. Because we got there around 2:30, a lot of the images were already cut up. We got the end up bucket of black and white images, buy in a way, this made it easier to create the collage. Most of the papers were already cut up, and so we had to be creative.

The museum people tasked us to create nature scenes just like the artist, but out of the black and white images. It was super fun! With the scraps, it was easier to see the colors and shapes of the images, rather than the actual images itself.

I highly recommend this event to anyone and especially families with kids! It was a blast and a fun way to learn and appreciate modern art. Be sure to get there early though if you don’t like to wait in lines!