SAN DIEGO (CNS) - Downtown San Diego's New Children's Museum will reveal its latest giant object to paint Saturday as part of its 11th annual Mass Creativity Day, a community event with live performances and activities.
The museum's Paint Patio has featured the Painted Object exhibit since 1994, when a 1954 Truck was introduced. Since then, a VW Bug, Penelope the Whale, Junk Yard, Paint Farm, Go West!, and the most recent Flower Truck have been available as giant canvases for children to splash paint on.
Saturday's reveal will be the first life-size sculpture created by artists Ingram Ober and Marisol Rendón.
"The collective design process was inspiring," the artists said in a joint statement. "We created models of three to choose from, but over 150 unique designs were submitted, and the creativity was impressive. We wish we could fabricate them all."
Rendón's Wobbleland installation is currently at the museum.
Inspiration for the new painted object was crowdsourced from children participating in a Painted Object Design Challenge workshop held in the museum's makerspace, The Rosso Family Foundation Innovators LAB, during the spring.
In this workshop, participants used their imagination to draw and build a model sculpture out of recycled materials. Three concepts -- The Skate Cat, The Something, and The Loving Dragon -- were selected and a public vote was held to choose one of these concepts to be the next Painted Object, a museum statement reads.
The final, surprise reveal will kick off the family-friendly activities, which include art-making activities, food, and free admission to the museum all day. The event is the culmination of the museum's Mass Creativity program that held free art-making workshops at seven different community centers throughout San Diego County from April to June.
"The Mass Creativity program is all about engaging our community to be part of the art-making process and be able to identify with the artworks and installations at our museum," said Gabrielle Wyrick, chief curator and director of audience engagement at the museum. "Mass Creativity Day, a celebratory day of community and creativity, also seemed to be the perfect opportunity to reveal the new Painted Object, which is the result of crowdsourcing ideas directly from our young visitors and including them in the process of bringing art to life as well."
This year's theme, The Realm of Joy, was inspired by artist Wes Bruce's installation, The Wonder Sound. The participating community organizations include Barrio Logan College Institute, Casa Familiar, City Heights Weingart Library, Skyline Hills Library, The Hillcrest Youth Center by The San Diego LGBT Community Center, Solutions for Change ,and South Bay Community Services.
The event will include performances by Naruwan Taiko, Monarch School Dance, transcenDANCE, AbunDANCE with Keomi Tarver, and storytelling by Teatro Izcalli. Island Avenue in front of the museum will be closed to traffic for the festivities.
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