Art in Action: Frida Kahlo

Books

Frida Kahlo: The Artist Who Painted Herself by Margaret Frith

Me, Frida by Amy Novesky

Frida Kahlo by Ma Isabel Sanchez Vegara

Frida by Jonah Winter

Frida: Viva La Vida! Long Live Life! by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand

Viva Frida by Yuyi Morales

This was the second Art in Action program I ran, but it has taken me this long to get it up on the blog. I'm hoping to get at least some of my backlog of posts up during the holidays when I have some time off work and storytimes!

Frida Kahlo is one of my favorite artists. She has beautiful art and an inspiring story. I'm so glad that she has become such a popular figure. It was really easy to find good books about her. My favorite of these books was Me, Frida. The illustrations are very reminiscent of Frida Kahlo's own work.

After I did this program I also discovered the wonderful Lil' Libros board books. They have a great little counting book inspired by Frida too: Counting with/Contando con Frida by Patty Rodriguez. This would be another great book to pull for a Frida Kahlo related program, especially if you anticipate having younger children there. It is a bilingual book and teaches some interesting vocabulary relevant to artists, like paint brushes and portraits, as well as the blue house, La Casa Azul, which is the name of Frida's home in Coyoacán Mexico and where the Frida Kahlo museum currently is!

For my Frida Kahlo art project examples click read more.

Art in Action: Henri Matisse

Before I started working in libraries, my background was in art and art education. I've been wanting to start a monthly art program here at the library for a while, and finally got to run my first one. I was looking for a catchy title and eventually decided to call it Art in Action! I hope the title helps emphasize the hands-on approach to learning art. Each month we will read about a different artist and then explore their style while creating our own works of art. The program is geared towards elementary and middle school students, so an older age range than would come to a typical storytime. I'm continually searching for programming that will be engaging for older kids as well.

For the first program, I wanted to do something fairly simple as far as what supplies we would need and something that could be adapted for a wide range of ages since I didn't know how many people to expect or what age group would come to the program. I chose to look at Matisse and focus on his later paper collage work. Older children could cut complex shapes, but young children could still participate by tearing paper if they weren't comfortable with scissors.

Books

*Mr. Matisse and His Cutouts by Annemarie van Haeringen

*Matisse’s Garden by Samantha Friedman

Henri’s Scissors by Jeanette Winter

A Bird or Two by Bijon Le Tord

Henri Matisse: Drawing with Scissors by Keesia Johnson

The Iridescence of Birds by Patricia MacLachlan

Books with a * are ones I read or used the most for the program, though I had all the books out and available for people to browse through for inspiration.

I was really pleased with the number of picture books available about Matisse. He made for a great first subject for my program! The first three books on this list focus exclusively on Matisse’s cut paper works, which were the works I wanted to focus on for this program. I especially like Matisse’s Garden because it has large foldout pages that show images of Matisse’s actual art and the illustrations are also cut paper, which was very inspiring for making our own collage art. A Bird or Two and Henri Matisse: Drawing with Scissors provide nice basic overviews of Matisse’s life and The Iridescence of Birds focuses on Matisse’s childhood and how his mother helped influence and inspire his creativity.

Click read more for my art project ideas and sample images.