by Meredith Brustlin, CMNH Educator

This is a super cool activity that can be done with materials you have at home that you may have thrown away otherwise! 

I like this activity because it also introduces an easy way to talk to your little ones about recycling and upcycling. You could start this activity with a short discussion. What does it mean to recycle? What do we recycle in our house? 

What do you think it means to UPcycle? This word will probably be new to them! When we recycle, we take items like plastic bottles and send them to the recycling center. From there, they are melted down to become the same item again or something new and different! Did you know plastic bottles can be recycled to become fleece jackets, carpets, and sleeping bags?!

UPcycling is taking something just as it is (in our case here, a CD) and turning it into something fun and new using just our hands and our creative minds! Upcycling projects tend to become beautiful works of art. Ask your little ones if they have upcycled anything before? Or maybe projects you’ve done together as a family? Projects they may be familiar with would be things like tire swings or milk carton birdhouses. 

Enjoy exploring upcycled CD scratch art together!

Materials Needed:

• Old CDs or DVDs (it’s fine if they’re all scratched up!)
  • Check out your desk for old computer software--the CD I used was an ancient program from the digital camera I had in college!
• ACRYLIC paint! 
  • I know it’s not washable which is tough with little ones--but it does need to be acrylic for this project so it sticks to the CD. 
• Items to scratch the CD with
  • Chopsticks, forks, keys, paperclips, etc. 
• Some kind of string or ribbon if you would like to hang up your scratch art CD!

Directions:

• Invite little ones to paint their CDs! 
  • Be sure to paint on the shiny side of the CD, not the side with writing/text. 
  • It’s best to paint the CDs one color, or blocks of color. Since the idea is to create scratch art on the CDs, if you paint pictures of flowers or dogs or houses---they will look odd after you have also added scratch art to them. 
• This is the hard part--wait for the paint on the CDs to totally dry. 
  • If you have enough CDs, you can experiment with scratching them while they are still wet and then compare with the CDs you scratch when they are dry. 
• Once the CDs are dry, use the scratch tools to create designs on them!
  • Add a string or ribbon and hang your CD in a window to create a beautiful suncatcher! 

By Meredith Brustlin, CMNH Educator

Hi everyone! I have a fun springtime bunny painting project to share with you today. This is a typical example of an activity we would do at the museum as part of our Wacky Art Wednesday program.

I tend to pick activities that are process based instead of product based. This is something you could keep in mind when choosing activities to do with your young ones while you’re home, too and try to alternate some between process and product based activities. Here’s how you can tell the difference...

A product-based activity is one where you have a clear end product in mind. Activities that fall in this category are typically more “crafty”.

You (the adult) would have the pieces ready to go, and your child would go through the steps of assembling them.

There is NOTHING wrong with doing product based projects once in a while! It’s a terrific opportunity for little ones to follow directions, achieve a goal they have in mind, and usually make something very cute!

A process-based activity focuses mostly on...the process! These tend to be a bit on the messier side and align more closely with “art” rather than something that is “crafty”. An example would be something like this project where they explored painting with cleaning brushes:

It’s all about the process and the unique experience! While I think the painting above came out looking very cool--that’s not the goal. The goal is to explore and create and focus on what you’re doing and how it works, rather than the end product. These kinds of projects foster creativity, promote conversation, and also tend to take a bit more time than a product focused activity.

Our activity today - Bunny Art two ways - does a nice job combining process and product. You can either do this as a collage project with magazine strips or as a painting project - it’s up to you!

Here’s what you will need to begin:

If you’re painting...

• A piece of cardstock or construction paper
• Clothespins & cotton balls
  • This is just a unique way to paint. Clip the cotton ball onto the clothespin and use it to “dot” paint all over your paper. You could, of course, also use a paintbrush!
• Paints
• A cut-out of a bunny
  • I printed a bunny silhouette from the internet and then just cut out the silhouette part so that my paper was left with just the shape of the bunny
• A stapler or tape
• A glue stick or white glue
• A cotton ball

If you’re collaging…

• A piece of cardstock or construction paper
• Magazines cut into small strips
• A glue stick or Mod Podge
• A cut-out of a bunny
  • See note above about the bunny!
• A stapler or tape
• A cotton ball

The activity:

• Have your child paint or collage all over a piece of cardstock
• They can decorate the whole thing or just a section in the middle
• When they have finished creating and their art has dried, put the negative cut-out of the bunny on top of their paper
• Part of their art will show through behind the bunny and make a very lovely piece of art!
• Glue on the cotton ball to make the bunny’s fluffy tail!

These could be used as special springtime cards for loved ones, or used to decorate windows!

Watch the video above to see examples of both kinds of projects!

by Meredith Brustlin, CMNH Educator

The craft I have to share with you today is making a bird kite! This is a really simple activity that you can do with a handful of household items - and it will (hopefully) supply your little ones with a whole bunch of fun.

This awesome activity was found on www.krokotak.com - browse their website for a variety of other fun activities that use simple materials you can find at home, mostly paper! 

Materials Needed:

• Piece of 8.5 X 11 paper 
• 2-3 Sticky notes 
  • Or pieces of colorful scrap paper and a glue stick or tape, I like the sticky notes because they are self adhesive!
• Stapler, scissors, hole punch
• Markers, stickers, any other decorations you’d like
• String/ribbon/yarn

Instructions:

1. Fold a piece of paper in half 
2. Gently “swoop” down both sides to form the wings of your bird and attach with one staple
3. Punch a hole on the bottom for the kite string
4. Cut a sticky note to make a beak and tail feathers--feel free to add other decoration using markers
5. Add some sticker eyes
6. Attach the string - you’re ready to fly! 

Five Artists’ Perspectives
Gallery 6 Exhibition Title: Unbound
Exhibition Dates: September 20, 2019 - January 10, 2020
Reception: Friday November 1, 5-7pm, During the Dover Art Walk
List of Artists: Lindsey Boss, Corwin Levi, Conny Goelz Schmitt, Carolyn Sirois, Wen-hao Tien

About the Exhibition:

Between the covers of a book lies thrilling adventure, emotion and drama, entertainment, education, and a way of stepping into others’ lives and experiences... even if only in the mind. But what physically makes up a book, content aside? Technically: wood or fiber pulp, glue, sometimes thread, fabric or leather, and ink. Reading, for many, is not just comprehension. It’s the experience of holding an object, feeling its weight, smelling the paper, turning the pages, using a bookmark, snapping it shut. Yet, when reckoning with all the resources that it takes to create a physical book, even those who relish stepping into a library and standing in awe of the thousands of spines, can understand the logic behind digital reading tablet devices. Trading a hands-on experience for something virtual is a defining trait of the twenty-first century.

Traditional books have a lifespan, as all objects do. They age. They become yellowed, wrinkled, torn, dog-eared, stained. Some people might say “loved”. What happens to those books whose prose no longer appeals to today’s reader? Whose information is outdated? Whose manifestos are no longer inspiring? Whose points of view are intolerant; evidence of a different era? Regardless of why they were put down, the evidence of the reader’s personal relationship to the book-object is clear by its condition. As texts become digitized and archived for eternity, so that tangible history is lost, meanwhile forgotten books continue to crumble on lonely shelves.

The artists featured in Unbound find new expression from within texts. Almost mischievously, they snip, rip, mark, fill, cover up, and create artwork from the shells and guts of books. In this deconstructing and reconstructing manner, they remark on the limits of written language and convey new phrases from color, negative and positive space, and transitions between materials. Thus, in this romance with tactility, stories are born through artwork from texts that no longer speak.

Living across New England but often drawing on international backgrounds and extensive domestic travels, the patchwork of each artists’ professional and personal experience translates well to an exhibit that uses primarily collage as a tool of communication. Continuing education and visual culture research are important facets of these artists’ lives; as both teacher and student, through residencies, and academic programs.

About the Artists:

Lindsey Boss is a visual artist currently living and working in Boston, where she graduated with a BFA at Massachusetts College of Art in 2008. For the past 10 years, she has been primarily a collage artist and an avid collector of vintage books and magazines. Relying heavily on imagery from the 50s-70s, she hopes to evoke feelings of nostalgia, often mixing components of the natural world with figures, patterns, and vintage homes. Her use of negative space and often times missing body parts, is an attempt to depict dreamlike landscapes, and to leave bits and pieces of the story up to the viewer. Collage-making has been a way to process her own life and larger ideas through experimentation with the imagery and the materials themselves, in hopes to convey some form of wisdom.

lindseyboss@hotmail.com / https://www.lindseyboss.com/

Corwin Levi

Bio: Corwin Levi is a mixed-media artist, curator, illustrator, arts writer, and attorney who investigates the limits of vision, experience, and memory by constructing maps of the unknown. He has had solo shows, participated in group shows, and curated exhibits across the country, and has been reviewed in publications such as the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and on Bloomberg TV. Levi has attended over twenty different artist residencies, including the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program, Ucross Foundation for the Arts, the Millay Colony, and the Wurlitzer Foundation. He has also created public art, including a 175-foot-long mural in North Adams, Massachusetts, across from MASS MoCA. Levi has a BA from Rice University, an MFA from the Tyler School of Art, and a JD from the University of Virginia. Based in Harrisville, New Hampshire, he is a partner at the design firm Gwarlingo Studio, and draws inspiration from his travels—having lived in eighteen cities across twelve states.

corwin@radiosebastian.com / http://www.corwinlevi.com

Conny Goelz Schmitt

Statement: I create geometric collages, assemblages and sculptures with vintage book parts. My work is a never-ending story where I play with deconstruction and reconstruction, and changing dimensionality - often within one piece. On the hunt for textured surfaces and faded colors I deconstruct discarded vintage books. By means of décollage the element of chance becomes an integral part of my process. While extending the margins of my compositions I build new space, always conscious of maintaining balance and harmony within the work. Although my work seems planned and calculated it evolves organically within a rule-based system. The interplay of sizes, shapes and color leads me on a search for the perfect placement of my salvaged and manipulated material. This pursuit becomes both meditation and ritual.

Bio: Conny Goelz Schmitt is a collage artist and sculptor who spent her youth in Germany, moved to Taiwan in her twenties, and relocated to the US in 1996. Having been immersed in three very different cultures, she is drawn to hard edge painting influenced by the German “attention to detail”, the retro color palette reminiscent of Taiwan in the 80s, and the very often experimental and creative pioneering spirit of Americans. Her medium of choice is almost without exception the vintage book.

In Germany she studied Sinology and German Literature at Eberhard Karls University in Tuebingen. She was named Sculptor of the Year by Chief Curator of Boston University, Kate McNamara in CAA’s 69th Members’ Prize Show. In 2016, Paul C. Ha, Director of the List Visual Art Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, selected her work for the Best Multi Media Prize in CAA’s National Prize Show. Besides exhibiting at Kingston Gallery, Boston, MA, Coastal Contemporary Gallery, Newport, RI and Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York, NY her work has been featured at Galerie Biesenbach, Cologne (Germany), the Cultural Association of Rosa Venerini, Viterbo (Italy), The Painting Center, New York, Site: Brooklyn, New York, The Danforth Art Museum, Framingham, MA, and Touchstone Gallery in Washington, DC, among others. Conny has a studio in Beverly, Massachusetts.

connyschmitt@hotmail.com / https://connygoelzschmitt.com/

Carolyn Sirois

Statement: After we entered the Charlestown Navy Yard the gates were closed and flags were lowered. I was with my Sightings: Cognitive Mapping class from the Museum School. It was Sept 11, 2001.

Late into the night on Nov 2, 2016, I was alone watching PBS news and texting friends. Trump had just been elected President of the United States. Disbelief and shock.

A usual workday, a Tuesday in October 2018, I was on my screen with multiple windows open and on my phone keeping up with my teaching life, my private life, and the world. I was sort of managing the density and volume—but not really.

Times of ruins.

My work is a response to ruins we experience both collectively and individually. I investigate how identities are formed and morphed through the cultural and historical moments of our lives. I work with an aesthetics of ruins—eroded structures, traces and imprints of time, text under erasure—to consider what we hold onto amidst the fragments and complexities of contemporary chaos. I bundle, collage, collect, research, write, erase, excavate, construct, deconstruct and reconstruct in my art practice. I manipulate materials to present sediments of time and sediments of thinking on loss, longing, transformation and renewal.

I ask how we move forward.

Bio: Traversing worlds is what I know. I cross disciplines and shift roles between artist of mixed media works (2D and 3D), writing instructor, mum of two cool kids (college student/ college grad), and partner of supportive spouse who offers balance. Visual arts, poetry, literature, contemporary theory, writing studies, and cultural/political studies all figure into my trajectory as an artist. While working on my studio art degree from the School of Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), where I studied painting, drawing, printmaking, collage and assemblage, art history and theory, I continued to teach writing and literature courses at Northeastern University. In both environments discussions of identity, history, culture, art practices, writing practices and the web of connections between individual and collective realms were ongoing. In each environment, the importance of one’s process, and reflecting on that process was emphasized—whether exploring a range of materials/media and ideas in the studio or revising ideas and overall form/design of a written piece.

I returned to the SMFA in 2001-02 for the Fifth Year program, which culminated in Fifth Year Exhibit and Traveling Scholars awards. I am still a Lecturer of English at Northeastern University. I have also taught at the Museum School (now SMFA at Tufts), Berklee College of Music as well as the Boston Architectural Center. Over the years I have exhibited my art in Cambridge, Boston, the North Shore, the Vineyard, New Hampshire and Maine. I’m pleased to have artwork in private collections in New England, Florida, Washington D. C., Ottawa, Bangkok and Rome.

I recently received my MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design.

cmsirois31@gmail.com / https://www.carolynsirois.com/

Wen-hao Tien

Bio: Wen-hao Tien is a visual artist, educator, and Assistant Director of Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies, Regional Studies.

Wen-hao grew-up in Taiwan and later moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies. She began her academic pursues with biomedical sciences, and then to social studies and visual art. Her studio artwork focuses on language and translation, and explores culture and identity through a unique cross-cultural lens. She is also known for her contemporary Chinese calligraphy and painting.

A long time Cambridge resident, her professional background includes 15 years working at Harvard University’s Asia studies centers and a Master of Public Health degree from Columbia University. She is currently an Master of Fine Arts degree candidate at the Lesley University’s College of Art and Design.

Statement: My studio practice interprets our physical and psychological connections to the natural world through foraging, interacting, and researching. The work is created between field and studio.

Images in the exhibition are from the “Sticks Throw” series. In this work, found tree branches are collaged with pages of a visual journal. Sticks were thrown to create free-falls and from each fall landed a mysterious image, like oracle sticks. These images created by “chance”, convey personal messages as the titles would suggest. It is not something that can be achieved by arranging the sticks intentionally! As an immigrant, my inspiration is often triggered by a desire to communicate through a cross-cultural lens.

wtien@lesley.edu / https://www.wenhaotien.com/

Admission:

As always, no admission fee is required to view the art in Gallery 6. Regular admission applies for families who wish to also explore the rest of the Museum. To learn more about this art exhibition or about the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire please visit www.childrens-museum.org.

About the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire:

The not-for-profit Children’s Museum of New Hampshire is located at 6 Washington Street in Dover and offers two levels of hands-on, interactive exhibits for children from newborn to middle school. Children can explore a wide range of subjects, from dinosaurs, music and aeronautics to world cultures, art and natural history. Open year-round, the Silver LEED-certified museum specializes in creating memorable family learning experiences and works closely with schools, social service agencies and educators. The museum also hosts a variety of live performances, workshops, classes and special events for families. For more information, please call the museum at (603) 742-2002 or visit www.childrens-museum.org

Art Making Day at Children’s Museum Highlights Themes of Unity, Diversity

In the vibrant and colorful drawings created by Portsmouth, NH artist Richard Haynes, an actual rainbow of skin tones is represented and celebrated. The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire’s Gallery 6 art exhibition “Lean In,” not only features Haynes’ art, but also his message that “love” can unite us all, no matter our background. The museum’s exhibition, which has been on view all summer, will come down at the end of August, but before it does, families can join in on a day of art making on Saturday, August 24^th from 10am-2pm.

Richard Haynes will be on hand on August 24 for this special day of art making to engage with visitors, make some art and answer questions. Haynes is the Associate Director of Admissions for Diversity at UNH, and has also collaborated with many other NH cultural institutions like the Currier Museum of Art, the Black Heritage Trail of NH, and the NH State Council on the Arts to name a few.

“Haynes asks us to use the universal language of ‘Love’ to see how we can all rewrite a history that has not been fair to everyone,” shared Julia Kirchmer, CMNH’s Gallery 6 Curator. “His art invites us to learn from one another’s cultures, religions, regions, backgrounds, traditions, and customs, which inevitably makes all our lives richer and filled with more empathy and tolerance.”

Visitors to the museum on August 24^th will get to color with fine art materials, go on a scavenger hunt for a special prize, join storytimes highlighting the special themes of the day, meet the artist, and even contribute to a community art paper quilt project. All the fun is included with regular museum admission.

The “Lean In” art exhibition’s last day on view is Sunday, September 1. The museum closes September 2 through September 13^th for its annual cleaning and maintenance. If you’d like to see the art in Gallery 6, but not play in the museum or pay museum admission, that is possible if you just ask the front desk. Gallery 6 is open during regular museum hours and is supported by the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, Georgia-Pacific and the Fuller Foundation.

Next time you are in our Muse Studio, take a look above you and enjoy the colorful array of flying “birds”. South Berwick resident and artist Peter Flynn Donovan donated a flock of his birds to be enjoyed by all our visitors. In the spring of 2018, Peter was in a group art exhibition at the Portsmouth Public Library, called “Of a Feather.” His contribution to the show was a sculptural installation entitled: “Tah Dah!”

This art installation consisted of a five-foot cartoonish green duck who held in his hand an orange magician’s hat, out of which170 of these birds flew. Unfortunately, the majority of these birds were destroyed since being displayed in Portsmouth. But  thankfully the surviving birds have found a new home here at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire.

Peter is a folk artist whose work is a narrative of the personal and universal conversation of what it is to be alive. He is strongly influenced by mythology – personal, world & religious. He makes art because it is one skill he feels has contributed to the vast experience and existence of Humanity. He is inspired by other artists and creators. He is honored to participate in this challenging avocation, and to be part of an often-invisible royal lineage whom make the world a deeply richer place.

Three Explorers Utilize Photography: Capturing the Ends of the Earth and Beyond

Gallery 6 Exhibition Title: Terrestrial Portals
Exhibition Dates: January 11 - March 29, 2019
Reception: Friday February 1, 5-7pm, during the Dover Art Walk
Artists: Cassandra Klos, Justin Levesque, Michael James Murray

About the Exhibit:

The most wild frontiers can be those in which life tries the hardest. Forget about animal predators: the most awe-inspiring and powerful force is the environment itself. Three artists: Cassandra Klos, Justin Levesque, and Michael James Murray, are fascinated by the challenge and allure of such landscapes. Through photographs of vast horizons; sometimes altered, and sometimes seemingly untouched, their work chronicles the intrepid results of human exploration. Klos, Levesque, and Murray raise notions of existence, connection, and adaptation.

In this exhibition, brown and red toned Utah soil meets pure white and blue Arctic ice. 360 degree “spherescapes” of the Earth are just peculiar enough to reference other worlds. Through missions on the Mars Desert Research Station (Klos), to Iceland and the North Pole (Levesque), to our coastal Maine backyards and beyond (Murray), Terrestrial Portals takes us on a journey to both new and familiar places. Through insightful panoramas, each artist puts our imaginations to work.

These land portraits ask us to picture ourselves behind photographer’s camera. What outfit do you think you would wear on Mars? How would you keep warm and dry in negative degree temperatures? How might you respond to completely foreign surroundings? You would you learn how to use specialized technology, skills, and tools. You would acclimate. Soon, your eyes would adjust to the bright reflective sun, and you would develop the language necessary to communicate with mission control. Your livelihood would require a new normal.

The concept of solitude might come to mind as you look at these photographs. Consider how explorers leave their hometowns, family, and friends, and head for the unknown. Choice, and the possibility for return, let us call this experience “adventure”. Virtual contact helps travelers feel connected, and sharing networks allow them to shape their own narrative. Alone-ness, and consequently, space itself, have evolved literal and figurative meanings in the digital age.

The sharp detail depicted in these images shows us that on our very own Planet Earth, there are endless, beautiful vistas waiting to be found. Open your eyes wide, for Terrestrial Portals.

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No admission fee is required to view the art in Gallery 6. Regular admission applies for families who wish to also explore the rest of the Museum. To learn more about this art exhibition or about the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire please visit www.childrens-museum.org.

Artists’ Biography and Statement:

Cassandra Klos

Bio: Cassandra Klos is a Boston-based artist. Born and raised in New Hampshire, she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2014 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston at Tufts University. Her projects focus on manipulating the validity of photography and creating dual realities that breathe life into situations where visual manifestations may not be available. Her photographs have been featured in group exhibitions across the United States and in solo exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts and the Piano Craft Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts. Her work has been published in The Atlantic and The Boston Globe and her photojournalism reporting has been published in TIME Magazine and Wired. She is a Critical Mass finalist, the recipient of the Yousuf Karsh Prize in Photography, a United States Emerging Photographer Award from the Magenta Foundation, as well as a Traveling Fellowship Grant from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 2017 she continued her role as artist-in-residence of the Mars Desert Research Station and led the first mission of compiled of artists as Commander of Crew 181.

Statement: We are inundated with information about the cosmos, whether it is the appearance of water on a different planet or landing our man-made satellite on a comet. It is clear we are awed by this celestial imagery we cannot comprehend, and yet this unknown contributes to a need for exploration past our comfortable bounds. The interest of expanding the human race onto the planets around us is not a new concept, but only since the last few decades has the scientific community truly explored the idea that our neighbor planet, Mars, may be more like Earth than we ever considered.

With prototype space suits and diets consisting only of freeze-dried food, people from around the globe are dedicating weeks to months of their lives simulating the Mars environment to further the study of leaving Earth behind. To most of these pioneers, their only wish is to be a small part of the geological, biological, and psychological research that will propel us to the cosmos. Simulation sites such as NASA-funded Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HISEAS), the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), and the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) create a simulated experience that blurs the line between reality and fantasy; a realm where the air is unbreathable, contact with loved ones is limited, and the dependence and cooperation of your crewmembers becomes center focus.

Justin Levesque

Bio: Justin Levesque is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Portland, Maine. He received his BFA in Photography from the University of Southern Maine in 2010. Levesque is a Maine Arts Commission Artist Project Grant recipient (2015, 2017), and in 2015, was selected as one of thirteen emerging photographers under 30 in Maine by Maine Media Workshops + College's PhoPa Gallery. Levesque has exhibited throughout New England and nationally at Midwest Center for Photography in Wichita, KS; Terrault Contemporary in Baltimore, MD; and JanKossen Contemporary in New York City.

In 2015, he created an independent artist residency aboard an Eimskip container ship sailing from Maine to Iceland. In 2016 Levesque then installed a public art intervention in a shipping container about his residency with support from The Kindling Fund, an Andy Warhol Regional Regranting Program administered by Space Gallery.

In response to his work about Maine's emerging relationship to the North Atlantic and Arctic, he was invited to be a fellow of The Arctic Circle artist residency in Svalbard, just 10 degrees from the North Pole, in June 2017.

Statement: Justin Levesque approaches his interdisciplinary practice with a consideration for the materiality and tradition of formal photography and its relationship to consumer technologies, digital aesthetics, objects, and systems. His work forms a connected visual network that’s preoccupied with the contemporary proliferation and consumption of images, feedback, and combinatory methods of picture-making in the evolution of populist visual language online. Levesque participates, undermines, and manipulates within these forces to imagine the implications of an increasing digital experience. He confronts how their form takes shape within future, unknown possibilities and visualizes current shifts in cultural paradigm as they pertain to corporeal complexity, data as the new divine, spatial simulacrum, and the way a place thinks about another place.

Michael James Murray

Bio: Michael James Murray is known for his 360 degree spherical panoramic photographs depicting a visual journey of the perpetually changing world. He has exhibited throughout NY State. Michael’s book “Worlds Apart,” was nominated for a Lucie Award and has been collected by many institutes such as RIT, The Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, and Baylor University. His work has been collected by NYU Langone Medical Center: Center of Men’s Health and Trinity Practice. Murray’s work is included in many private collections all over the world. Born in Rochester, NY, primarily self-taught through assisting commercial photographers, to then becoming a photographer focusing on his own art form. He lives and works in Lisbon, Maine with his family.

Statement: My photography deals with the 360 degree space compressed into a spherical panorama. The lack of constraint imposed by working within a specific field of view allows me to explore in depth the relationship of objects, structures, and textures in both the natural and manmade world. I use the camera to investigate places where man and nature intersect, analyzing primeval worlds of earth and stone as well as the will imposed on them for better or worse by man.

My process emphasizes the overall atmosphere of the images, drawing greater attention to the interrelation of light, form and texture. By photographing the world this way the camera is omnipresent. Allowing for an epic narrative of the complexities and intricacies of a space whether it be the disorder of ancient ruins in Rome, the pristine skyscrapers of New York City, or densely variegated geographic formations in the American Southwest to emerge.

What I enjoy most about my process is how I make my photographs. I never use the viewfinder of the camera to compose the image. I take note of proximity of objects and structures to the camera. I’ve developed a sense of “echolocation,” I can “feel” if an object or structure in a space is too close or far away and move the camera accordingly. I endeavor to feel consumed by the space I’m in. To make one 360° spherical panoramic photograph, I require at least 30 individual images. Atop my tripod is a high resolution digital camera attached to a special mount. It ensures that each image is precisely aligned with the others surrounding it, and that each image overlaps by the same amount. This is essential for the next step in the process. Because all the images are precisely aligned and they all overlap by the same amount, I am assured that the final composite image will be free of errors and will blend seamlessly. I use specialized software to organize and process my raw images, and specialized software to assemble them into a finished image. Adobe Photoshop rounds out the process by allowing me to precisely adjust contrast, color, and tone. Recently I have incorporated a drone with a high resolution camera in order to make aerial 360° Panoramas.

About the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire

The not-for-profit Children’s Museum of New Hampshire is located at 6 Washington Street in Dover and offers two levels of hands-on, interactive exhibits for children from newborn to middle school. Children can explore a wide range of subjects, from dinosaurs, music and aeronautics to world cultures, art and natural history. Open year-round, the Silver LEED-certified museum specializes in creating memorable family learning experiences and works closely with schools, social service agencies and educators. The museum also hosts a variety of live performances, workshops, classes and special events for families. For more information, please call the museum at (603) 742-2002 or visit www.childrens-museum.org

Using “Seacoast: The Seasons of New Hampshire” Photographs by Bob McGrath - with children!

November is Family Literacy Month here at the Children's Museum of New Hampshire and we were very fortunate to get a large donation of a stunning photography book this fall, given to us by local artist (and the book’s author!) Bob McGrath. His beautiful book “Seacoast: The Seasons of New Hampshire” is a fabulous tool to use for facilitating conversations while reading with children.

Here are some ideas of how to use this lovely book with your little one:

1. This book focuses on the seasons of the year. As you flip through each season--chat about them!

• Which season is your favorite? Why?
• What is your favorite thing to do outside in (Autumn/Winter/Spring/Summer)?
• Which one of these places would you like to visit? Why?
• What items in these photographs are familiar to you? Are there any items that are new and unknown to you? Let’s chat about them!

2. Find picture books at your local library that match each of the seasons shown in this book.

• Look for scenes that are similar in the picture book and the photo book.
• Compare and contrast these images.

3.  Get artsy!

• Pick a favorite photo in the book and paint/draw/color your own masterpiece inspired by the scenery or item in the photo. When you have finished, chat about how the images are alike or different.

4.  Plan a road trip!

• Find a spot in the book that is close to where you live--or a little further away!
• Go on a road trip and find the scene in the photo shown. Take your own photos of the special spot!

More than anything else, simply looking through the book (or any other book!), chatting and spending time together reading as a family is the most beneficial thing you can do during Family Literacy Month and throughout the year.

Have a wonderful Family Literacy Month this November and enjoy this gorgeous photo book by Bob McGrath. We are so thankful for his generous donation and know it will become a beloved keepsake full of happy memories for museum families.