Family Activity Guide

School's out, but the learning doesn't have to stop!

We welcome families with children of all ages to explore and enjoy our room-sized installations. It is our goal for your family to have a fun experience with art! To supplement these visits, we also deliver outside opportunities for kids and students to keep on creating!

Mini-Factory is a series for little ones ages 3 to 5 with big ideas. These workshops combine children's story and play time, and each week is centered on multi-sensory themes from the everyday to learn about and explore! Mini-Factory takes places every other Saturday (the second and fourth of the month) from 10-11 am.

Upcoming Mini-Factorys
August 13: MOVEMENT
August 27: LOOK

Looking for an activity for the whole family? Delve into the galleries on a Saturday afternoon and finish off with an interactive ARTLab workshop from 1-4 pm. ARTLab is designed for visitors of all ages to play with project design and installations inspired by our exhibitions and artists. Expect to get your hands dirty and be ready for some fun collaboration! The program is FREE with admission.

Upcoming ARTLabs
August 6: Share An Imaginary Space (Factory Installed — Wendy Judge)
August 20: Light Lab (Factory Installed — Kevin Clancy)

Learn, explore and create this summer at the Mattress Factory!

RECAP// Mini-Factory: SPACE

We all respond to SPACEs in a personal way, whether at an installation art museum, the playground, a drive-in movie or the comfort of home. Certain SPACEs speak to specific senses, enhancing the experiential quality of soaking in a SPACE.

At the Mattress Factory Museum, artists respond to SPACE with creative means. Imaginations envision and transform SPACE into a surreal, provocative and intellectual forums for viewers to experience, not just observe. Participation is key to activating installation art. Perhaps some are forever changed by one experience, while others may decide to dismiss and forget.

Our curious group of young artists in Mini-Factory learned about various SPACEs. How do artists respond to making, creating and installing art for a SPACE? How does that SPACE make us feel — joyful, crowded, surprised? It is this element which brands our memory with experiences.

As Mini-Factory discovered, no SPACE is too small, too big or too ordinary for artists.

Handrail is a favorite piece which always sparks a reaction; using simplicity and wit to surprise visitors, it reminds us art can be anywhere, at anytime, in any SPACE. Wendy Judge takes an outside SPACE and brings it inside. How did she accomplish bringing a landscape inside the gallery? What outside SPACE would you bring inside? Jene Highstein's Untitled confronts the visitor. Do you feel crowded? Uncomfortable? How do we navigate these situations? Art can evoke self-awareness from many different angles.

Wrapping up our hour together, Mini-Factory participants made their own SPACE using a box, a plethora of materials and their imaginations. What SPACE would you create?

Mini-Factory is an interactive learning program for children ages 3 - 5 years old and their parents or caregivers. Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world.

Join us at 10am on June 11th for INSTALL!

RECAP // Mini-Factory: SOUND

Mini-Factory – our intrepid group of 3, 4 and 5 year olds - explored the world of SOUND at the Mattress Factory Museum.  How do artists use SOUND in their artwork?  What does the SOUND make me feel, think and imagine?   Red, by Rolf Julius, was a great starting point for our group.  Julius is an artist who pushes the boundaries of how our senses have traditionally been compartmentalized in the art world.  In Red, Julius has taken speakers, turned them upside-down, taken the grill off, and covered them with red pigment.  What happens when SOUND pipes through the red speakers? It jumps, vibrates and moves giving SOUND a visual component.

Stopping at the third floor landing, we explored another SOUND installation by Julius. Sound for Garden combines various objects such as wind chimes, factories, and city life to create a SOUND collage which compliments and accompanies the Garden Installation. The aim of this piece is to pull from two realms, SOUNDs of the past and present, guiding viewers to carefully observe their surroundings and, therefore, tune into their senses.

Once we explored galleries, it was time to put our observations to practice. Young artists listened to various sounds, including contrasting music allowing the SOUND to guide their paint brush.  We created a SOUND mural which was installed in the lobby of the Mattress Factory Museum.

Mini-Factory is an interactive learning program for children ages 3 - 5 years old and their parents or caregivers.  Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world.  Join us on April 23 for ME!

RECAP // Mini-Factory: OPPOSITES

OPPOSITES attract... curious minds willing to explore, compare and talk about their surroundings! Mini-Factory dove head first into the world of OPPOSITES using Allan Wexler's Bed Sitting Rooms for an Artist in Residence this past weekend.

Vanessa Sica + Chris Kasabach have fun with Umbrella, an upside down umbrella serving as a light inside the gallery. How many OPPOSITES can you find in that piece?

Artists use OPPOSITES to invoke laughter, wit and reflection about the function of every day objects. As viewers, we take a second look, a second thought and perhaps the sparks of creativity shake up the routine of life for even just a moment.

Visiting Gene Highstein's piece Untitled also provided our intrepid group of artists an opportunity for learning more about OPPOSITES.



How did such a big piece get inside such a small room? It looks heavy and solid, but is actually light and hollow! Using our hands to explore, our group made some excellent observations and then put it to the test; taking a rough piece of wood, we created the OPPOSITE effect with sandpaper - smooth!

Inkblot art was the perfect way to wrap up our hour together! Paint on one side of your paper and fold in half to create the OPPOSITE design.

Mini-Factory is an interactive learning program for children ages 3-5 and a parent/caregiver. Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world. Join us on January 9 for Mini-Factory: STORIES!

RECAP // Mini-Factory: FUTURE!

What does the FUTURE look like? What does it hold? Our intrepid group of young artists at the Mattress Factory explored the FUTURE through Rob Voerman's current installation Faculty,now on view through summer 2016.

Using some great children's literature as our jumping-off point, our Mini-Factory program embarked on a journey to the FUTURE with our imagination. Faculty demonstrates one point of view of what can happen when we allow ourselves to be inspired by the built environment. Rob Voerman extrapolates futuristic architecture from the Cathedral of Learning while balancing the concept of discussion and exchange of ideas. Seats and tables have been built into the fabric of the installation for viewers to linger and soak in their surroundings... inspiration takes hold. Built from recycled materials such as cardboard and stained glass, Faculty shows one artist's use of ready-made materials for construction - perhaps the wave of the FUTURE.

After exploring inside and out, we sat down to create our own rendition of FUTURE buildings. Using various recycled materials, students allowed the FUTURE to capture their imagination ... and onwards, forwards, and upwards we went ... with our eyes on the FUTURE.

Mini-Factory is an interactive learning program for children ages 3 - 5 years old and their parents or caregivers. Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world. Join us at 10am on December 12th for OPPOSITES!

RECAP // Mini-Factory: SEASONS!

What a beautiful time of year! Tje sunshine, breeze and slight chill in the air made for a perfect chance to talk about SEASONS at Mini-Factory, the Mattress Factory's program for adventurous young art explorers. Using two great installations as our focal point, we discussed the characteristics of each season such as hot versus cold, green versus brown, or growing versus hibernating.

Garden Installation by Winifred Lutz provided the perfect example for our group to discover and talk about these SEASONal traits. Leaves are just beginning to turn colors of yellow, red and brown, yet the grass is still tall and green. The breeze was chilly yet the sun was bright and sky blue - a perfect Fall day to explore these color and temperature changes through landscape art.

Rolf Julius provides a more abstract example of SEASONS with Ash located at the Mattress Factory's 1414 Monterey satellite building. Here, our group of 3 to 5 year-olds listened to a synthesis of crickets and radiator whistles pouring out of two terra cotta flower pots covered in ash. The sounds of crickets are reminiscent of warm summer nights, contrasted by the whistle of a radiator which makes us think of chilly winter days. If you could choose a sound to put in the flower pot, what would it be? A kiss! ...well that reminds us of Valentine's day when it is cold outside.

Returning to the Garden, we set out on our activity - a chameleon for all SEASONS. Each young artist was given a blank picture of a chameleon along with a basket of crayons and colored pencils. Choose where the chameleon would live in the garden, then reflect this in his colors. Would he live in a tree? ... in the grass and dirt? ... on the pile of yellow and red leaves? There were green and brown chameleons, yellow and purple chameleons ... each one was different and unique depending on the area of the garden, yet all reflected the colors of the SEASON.

Mini-Factory is an interactive learning program for children ages 3 - 5 years old and their parents or caregivers. Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world. Join us at 10am on October 24th for LIGHT.

RECAP // Mini-Factory: MOVEMENT!

MOVEMENT is all around us! We move millions of miles everyday as our planet revolves around the sun in orbit, as our cars take us to school and back, as our eyes explore the birds playing in the trees... Grass and trees sway in the breeze, legs run to catch butterflies, and a soaring baseball can break a window. Mini-Factory looked at many different types of MOVEMENT as we explored Julie Schenkelberg's piece The Color of Temperance: Embodied Energy where objects, once whole, have been broken, bent and intricately arranged to create a new story. These objects express an embodied sense of MOVEMENT, they have been removed from their original context and transformed from their original state.

Next we looked at Garden Installation by Winifred Lutz. What moves in a garden? The grass is swaying in the wind, a bird zooms through the air on his way to the other side of the neighborhood, raindrops drip drip drip from the morning storm. There is MOVEMENT everywhere we look, and so too our eyes move to follow all of this movement. 

Alternatively, Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Dots Mirrored Room provides us tons of fun MOVEMENT as we stumble around each other, moving from dot to dot reminiscent of the game, Twister. We also took time to explore our reflections; surrounded by mirrored walls provide a type of MOVEMENT which goes on forever and ever, infinity.

So why not play some MOVEMENT based games? We took colorful balloons, pumped them up and let them go ... watch how they move! Zig zag, zoom, around and around, up and down! Can we make our bodies move like that? ... you bet. We were moving all over the lobby mimicking our crazy balloons - fun! Next we paired up with our grown-ups and played Sculpture and Clay; one person starts as a lump of clay on the ground, and one person is the sculptor moving the clay into different positions until - viola! - a masterpiece.

Mini-factory is an interactive learning program for children ages 3 - 5 years old and their parents or caregivers. Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world. Join us at 10 am on September 26th for ZOOM.

RECAP // Mini-Factory: PATTERNS!

PATTERNS surround us in our world. They can be created using colors, shapes, and different sizes ... on our clothes, dinner plates and sidewalks, PATTERNS allow us to find repetition at its best. Thick, white stripes on a street indicate it is safe to cross. Rows of alternating red rectangles reach up to the sky exemplifying the craftsmanship of a multi-storied building (like the Mattress Factory!). Some artists use PATTERNS to convey feelings, set a mood, or shock our senses. Mini-Factory visited shift lens by Anne Lindberg. Using tightly pulled thread secured to each side of the room, a colorful yet surreal crisscross PATTERN is created. Light filters from the windows behind allowing colors to bend and play with your visual senses. The consensus? ... Very cool!

Yayoi Kusama uses polka-dots throughout her installations so viewers may experience her point of view - literally - and the ensuing feelings. What do you feel when walking through Infinity Dots Mirrored Room and Repetitive Vision? Calm, jolted, dizzy? The abundance of polka-dots plays a large role with how we feel in these installations.

PATTERNS also occur naturally, such as the lines in a blade of grass, the veins of a leaf and the speckles in a piece of granite. Our young artists were given magnifying glasses and asked to walk through Winifred Lutz's Garden in search of patterns. Leaves, bricks, rocks and water were inspected for naturally occurring PATTERNS - success!

Of course given the chance, these energetic artists love to create something new. Using their imagination and inspiration learning and observing PATTERNS, our young crew created their own installations with various materials such as yarn, stickers, markers, pipe cleaners and tape. There were PATTERNS of all kinds; two-toned stripes, colorful polka-dots, sparkling spirals, and more.

Mini-Factory is an interactive learning program for children ages 3-5 years old and their parents or caregivers. Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world. Join us at 10am on August 22, 2015 to explore the theme of SCIENCE.

RECAP // Mini-Factory: History!

In order for us to understand the present, we need to study the past. Mini-Factory tackled the topic of HISTORY. In essence, the past is a sequence of events which leads to the present. Our group of five-year-olds and their parents compared this idea to dominos; by standing up dominos in a line, we used our hands to make HISTORY and watch how events occur through time. Despite the challenges of keeping these skinny little rectangles vertical, our group of young artists caught on quick to the idea.

We followed up with a visit to Bill Woodrow's "Ship of Fools," an installation in the Mattress Factory's permanent collection at 1414 Monterey Street. It was so much fun to peer into this room of objects left stranded in the past. Cupboards are open, the paint is peeling, ... who lived here and used this space? What event occurred to make them leave? Even the light was left on as if the residents were in a hurry to leave. The objects give us clues about the HISTORY of this space, and the artists tells the story.

Mini-Factory is an interactive learning program for children ages three to five years old and their parents or caregivers. Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world. Join us at 10am on July 25 for FANTASY.

PREVIEW // Literacy Day @ the MF

Join us next Saturday, May 23rd for a day of exploring the wonderful world of literature! This Literacy Day will be filled with a variety of activities from story time and bookmark crafts to a book sale, and will include visits from the Land of Nod Bookmobile and Little Free Libraries. Here's what the schedule for the day looks like:

Mini-Factory: MEMORY! / 10AM-11AM

The Mini-Factory program is for children ages 3-5 and their parents or caregivers. Young children explore a variety of themes and installations at the Mattress Factory, participate in story time and work on a collaborative hands-on project.

Land of Nod Tour Bus Visit / 11AM-1PM

The Land of Nod Bookmobile is bussing into Pittsburgh! Enjoy a story time, bookmark crafts and much more. For every book purchased from The Land of Nod, Random House Children's Books will donate one to Milk + Bookies, a charitable organization that provides books to those who can't afford their own.

Little Free Libraries / 12PM-5PM

Join Brasher High School students and Repair the World: Pittsburgh in a kickoff event for their Little Free Libraries initiative. Browse the Little Free Libraries the students have created and "adopt" one for installation in your own neighborhood.

Donating five books will will get you FREE admission to the museum all day long!

RECAP // Mini-Factory: SENSES!

Our SENSES are the portal to discovering the world.  They evoke emotions which shape our experience on a sunny day, in a noisy room, or at the Mattress Factory.  Our group of young artists started their SENSES journey with a discussion and a book, Five for the Little One, during the Mini-Factory program.  After building a solid understanding of how people use their senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch, we explored Danny Bracken’s current installation.

Bracken’s piece entices us to touch the soft grass, peek at the blue light, listen to the music and look at the rainbow.  What does it smell like after a storm?  What can you see after the rain?  What do the rocks feel like when you climb a mountain?  Everything in this gallery pulls the viewer in, and demands closer observation. It is a sensory explosion.

After visiting Bracken’s exhibit, we put our SENSES to the test with some fun activities. We received discovery bags that held secret objects which could be touched, smelled, tasted and listened to, but just like our book Seven Blind Mice tells us, no looking!  We used our other SENSES to guess what the objects in the bags were. What happens when we take one of our senses away?  Does it become easier or more difficult to "see" objects?  How do our SENSES play tricks on us?  How important are our SENSES?  When we explore art, just how much do we use all of our SENSES? Visit the Mattress Factory to find out!

Mini-Factory is an interactive learning program for children ages 3-5 years old and their parents or caregivers. Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world. Join us on March 14 at 10am to learn about PLACE. Email education@mattress.org to RSVP today!

RECAP // Mini-Factory: SOUND!

Exploring SOUND at the Mattress Factory on a snowy day proved to be fun and insightful! What sounds do we hear outside? What sounds do we hear inside?  Why do artists use SOUND to create art?  Mini-Factory used these questions to jump into the art of SOUND.  By placing red pigment on top of two speakers, Rolf Julius’ Red helps the viewer see the vibrations of SOUND.

Next we explored Danny Bracken’s installation which is part of the exhibition Artists in Residence.  This piece is perfect for exploring the senses- there's grass, rocks, and even a rainbow! Yet like so many of his pieces, there is a component of music which accompanies the visual and tactile experience.  Students placed their hands over their ears to silence the SOUND in the gallery, and discused whether this made for any changes in how we approach the art. 

Wrapping up our discussion in the galleries, students were led into the Education Studio where we played musical chairs with a twist – while various types of music played our young artists painted, when the music stopped, the painting stopped.  How did the music influence your brush strokes? Your imagination?  Not only were the kids bouncing their knees to the beat, but their painting changed with the contrasting music. SOUND can be very influential in how we approach making and viewing art.

      

Mini-Factory is a FREE interactive learning program for children ages 3 - 5 years old and their parents or caregivers. There is a limited space available so RSVP to education@mattress.org. Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world.  Join us on February 28, 2015 from 10 - 11am to learn about SENSES. 

RECAP // Mini-Factory: LIGHT!

Light can influence how we feel, how we see, and how we interpret our surroundings.  No wonder artists like James Turrell have chosen to focus on LIGHT as a primary medium for creating installation art.  In a recent Mini-Factory program, our group of adventurous 3, 4 and 5 year olds entered the low-lit galleries on the second floor of 500 Sampsonia Way to explore Turrell’s work Danäe.  After a bit of trepidation, our young artists realized how easily the senses can play tricks on us – our eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness to discover a wonderful color at the back of the room – a glowing purple rectangle which appears to almost be floating on the wall. . . or is it? You will have to visit the Mattress Factory to see for yourself how Turrell uses LIGHT to play with our senses.

Another artist at the Mattress Factory, Yayoi Kusama, also combines LIGHT with other mediums like mirrors and polka dot patterns to invoke infinite possibilities to the senses. Mini-Factory participants were instantly intrigued by her installation . . .

And to bring it full circle, the Mini-Factory program always wraps up with a fun book and collaborative activity.  In our program on LIGHT the students used cellophane paper and scissors to cut out all sorts of shapes and placed them on to the lighted surface of an overhead projector (simple technology at it’s best!).  These shapes and colors were magnified on the wall, as well as our mobile pop-up space, which sparked creativity and excitement.  No doubt, sculpting with LIGHT was the highlight!

Mini-Factory is a FREE interactive learning program for children ages 3 - 5 years old and their parents or caregivers.  Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world.  Join us in the new year for a Mini-Factory program, RSVP or find out more by e-mailing education@mattress.org.

RECAP // Mini-Factory: PLACE!

In a recent Mini-Factory program we discussed the idea of PLACE … what is a place? … who fills this place? … what objects are in this place?  Sometimes looking at objects can give us clues about a place, telling us more about who lives there and what the place is used for. We can also take a walk in our neighborhood and look up, look down, look all around … a neighborhood is a PLACE too.  And that is exactly what we did in Mini-Factory as we walked to 516 Sampsonia Way to look at Chiharu Shiota's installation Trace of Memory. Shiota is an artist who entered an empty building and allowed her imagination to lead, weaving together the memories of lives and events which may have once existed in this PLACE.  Objects such as suitcases, books, chairs and a bed give us clues and guide our imaginations to create a story for this PLACE, the woven yarn visually connects these rooms and objects.  And that is what is so very unique about the Mattress Factory, it is a museum where art is created for a specific PLACE, perhaps a room, an elevator, building, or a wall.

  

After visiting Trace of Memory, Mini-Factory wrapped up with a good book and a PLACE making activity.  Every young artist was given a different color ball of yarn and allowed to weave, twist and thread it through our mobile pop-up space in the lobby.  We created a PLACE at the Mattress Factory!  The young artists chose objects to add to their space, connected by the yarn, creating their own story of a PLACE.  

Mini-Factory is a FREE interactive learning program for children ages 3 - 5 years old and their parents or caregivers.  Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world. Check out upcoming Mini-Factory dates and themes here. E-mail education@mattress.org for more information or to register for an upcoming program.