Customer Reviews

Kids Design Glass

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This is a great 'coffee table' book. The photography is beautiful and the subject matter is engaging. My 9 year old requested this book after seeing a copy at the Chihuly exhibit in Boston this summer.

The book is a piece of art by itself, while it still does a great job of promoting the fine art and artist that designed and crafted the kids glass art. The book includes a dvd of the making of one of the pieces and a cute comic book. The pictures are well done and contrast nicely to the actual kid drawings that inspired.

The Tacoma Museum of Glass (museumofglass dot org) has several interesting programs, which sometimes overlap. In one monthly program, they select one from drawings that children have drawn, and execute that in glass. The child and fmily are invited to see the master artisans render their art in this most marvelous of media. At the end of the day, two glass sculptures have been produced, bringing the child's art to life. The child receives one to take home, the museum keeps a replica for display. This book documents that collection of wonderful works in glass.

Whimsy comes easily to small children, the kind who draw a coyote in socks or a two-tailed snake that can smack the love out of a person. Magic comes from the glass itself - if you've ever seen glassblowers at work, you might have felt the god-like sense of creators dipping into molten lava and creating form through strength of arm. The challenge comes because chbildren have no idea of the material properties of glass, no idea of what works well or not at all in this unique medium. The artisans, either the museum's own staff or one of their visiting artists, must figure out how to recreate in molten minerals what the child imagined in crayon or marker, and they say it's often quite demanding.

This beautiful book does as much as the printed page can do in rendering the mass and 3D nature of sculpture. Although it does as well as one could hope, it scarcely captures the joy and mastery obvious in the works themselves. I had the privelege of seeing this display at the museum itself, so this acts as a lovely reminder of what I saw there. But, if your choice is seeing the work only in print versus not seeing it at all, go for the book. It's an affectionate tribute by artists at the peak of their powers to the next generation's nascent creativity.

-- wiredweird

This book is a delightful celebration of kids and their boundless imagination. It celebrates their designs as much as any art catalog honors a master's work.

Absolutely charming. Beautiful idea. It would be wonderful for more children to have this experience.