Art Aviators at Home: Welcome spring with this hands-on lesson designed for families to creatively collaborate at home! Art Aviators is an educational initiative designed for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and other exceptionalities.  

There are butterflies in the museum! In our current featured exhibition, Breaking Boundaries: The Vision of Jacqueline B. Holmes artist Damien Hirst shows some springtime critters in his artwork Psalm Print: Domino Confido. The bright butterflies are arranged in circles to form an even and symmetrical pattern. The artist even added sparkly diamond dust to accent his work!

Butterflies are pollinators, and without them we would not have spring flowers and vegetables. Today, we have an activity to celebrate the bounty of spring! Vegetable painting is a fun activity the whole family can enjoy together. Take a photo of your artwork and tag us at @mocajax on Instagram or @MOCA Jacksonville on Facebook and post with the hashtag #mocajax, and we will share your artwork online!

Vegetable Stamping

Materials

• Hard vegetables like celery, carrots, potatoes, or bell pepper
• Shallow tray or heavy duty paper plate
• Acrylic or tempera paint
• Paper
• Optional: paint brushes

Instructions

• Prepare vegetables for stamping.
• Cut celery stalks close to their base.
• Cut carrots into pieces that fit well into your artist's hand.
• Potatoes can be cut in half or carved into different shapes.
• Cut bell pepper in half.
• Pour a thin layer of paint onto the tray or plate.
• Press the vegetable pieces into the paint and stamp onto the paper. Continue to stamp with different vegetables or different colors of paint.

bonus activity

After painting, cut the paint-saturated part of the vegetables off. The remaining pieces can now be put in dishes or jars with water and placed in a sunny spot. Watch your art tools sprout after just a few days!

Targeted Therapeutic Outcomes

• Increase creativity, imagination, and abstract thinking through the art-making process.
• Increase sensory awareness by introducing new sensory input.
• Increase self-expression by offering a free-form art experience.
• Decrease sensory-related anxiety by providing mediation between the art material and the child's hand.
• Increase focus by offering a highly reinforcing activity.
• Increase visual-spatial awareness through intentional manipulation of a three dimensional objects on a designated space.

This program is supported in part by the Winfield A. Gartner Memorial Fund for Children's Programs.