Design a Theme Park
Artist: Alice Adams
Art Work: Glider Park, 1990, enameled steel and brick/site landscaping, 40' x 12' x 11'
Location: Plaza, Bathgate Industrial Complex, Business & Technology Center, Third Avenue
& 174th Street
Grades: K-3 and Special Needs
About the Art: Glider Park provides a place to sit and rest in a plaza separated from the street outside the Bathgate Industrial Complex. Two steel pavilions surround sculptures that remind us of old fashioned porch gliders. Although these sculptures do not rock back and forth the way a real glider does, their shapes give the feeling of being a place to relax. Spaces in the screening overhead were developed in response to the Tim Rollins + KOS opposite the site on the wall of CES 4. (See teachers’ guides for the Tim Rollins work elsewhere on this website.)
Questions for Discussion: What do you see? What is a glider? How does Glider Park relate to both sculpture and architecture? Discuss what a business and technology center is and reflect on the many ways the employees can use the artwork (sit in the sun, eat lunch, relax). What other uses for theme parks can you think of?
Sample Art Activity: In small groups, design a piece of playground equipment for a new theme park, or add something new to a familiar one. Think about what the people in your school would like to have in front of the school: play equipment, a place to eat lunch, etc., and how to make it a colorful and inviting environment.
Purpose: to introduce art as a part of a larger architectural setting.
Materials: craft sticks, plasticine, glue, paint, brushes, containers for paint water, scrap wood, chenille stems (pipe cleaners), pieces of cardboard boxes cut to about 9" x 12" for bases, toothpicks, wet beans.
Teaching Strategies:
- Class chooses a theme for the park in a whole class discussion.
- Read A Chair for My Mother before visiting the site as a way to heighten awareness of pieces that have personal significance.
- Collect recycled and surplus materials for building. Provide materials that allow exploring through the senses, such as cedar chips for aromas, sandpaper for touching.
- Plasticine is a good medium to act as a support for sticks.
- Consider growing real plants on the bases.
- Encourage students to think about the purpose and destination of the models by asking questions such as the following. How will you arrange the structures you invent so that people can get to it from the street? Will you have parts that go up high or are beneath the surface of the ground?
- As the children work on their constructions, observe the difference in scale—would the same size person be able to play on every child’s design?
Closure: Groups display the models on a table top, arranged as a theme park. Invite parents and caregivers and provide refreshments to celebrate the opening. This is a good display for Open House events. See Extension Activities to show what children learn from this project.
Extensions: For social studies: Study a nearby public park: why was it developed and how was the landscape designed to accommodate the public? Interview residents to find out first hand history of the neighborhood around the park. For mathematics and science: Observe local park users over a period of a week, and depending on the time of year, create graphs to show who uses the park, for how long and for what purposes. For language arts: Write in journals about the process of designing a new piece of playground equipment in a theme park. For visual arts: draw a step-by-step drawing like a storyboard of your design process.
National Art Education Learning Standards:
- Understanding and applying media, techniques and processes
- Using knowledge of structures and functions
- Reflecting upon and assessing the characteristics and merits of their work and the work of others
- Making connections between visual arts and other disciplines
