Andy Goldsworthy for Kids – Autumn Leaf Mandala Art

Welcome back to Kids Get Arty – our bi-monthly challenge, where we pick and artist, discuss his work and then have a go at something inspired by that artist. This is the 4th challenge. And this time we decided to take a look at British artist, Andy Goldsworthy. Mainly because it is Autumn and I really wanted to make use of the oh so pretty Autumn colours of our leaves. There is an AMAZING read leafed tree at Red Ted’s school and there is a lovely little yellow leaf tree on our road.

Here are some previous Great Artists Projects that we did with kids:

  

• Exploring KLIMT with Kids, shapes, layering & potato printing
• David Hockney Art for Kids, Memories and Photo Montage
• Banksy, Street Art – Stencils and Spray Paint

Exploring Art: Andy Goldsworthy

Back to Andy Goldsworthy. Andy Goldsworthy is a key artists in the “Land Art” movement – creating temporary art by working with nature. Many of his creations are made solely by using his bare hands, teeth and any “natural” tools that he happens to find. His art is often temporary, so photography plays a key role in his artwork – capturing the art, before it decays, falls apart or floats away.

We have a beautiful book called “Natural, Simple Land Art through The Seasons”, by Marc Pouyet. It features art by Robert Smithson, Nils Udo and Andy Goldsworthy. Sadly, I couldn’t work out which images belong to which artists. But the book is beautiful and if you like land art I highly recommend it. We had a lovely browse through the book. Red Ted really enjoyed the artwork created with stones, whilst Pip Squeak loved the flowers and I loved the leaves. We then googled some images on Andy Goldsworthy.

This one was Red Ted’s favourite piece by Andy Goldsworthy:

“Broken Stones“, scratched with another pebble.

Red Ted said “Yes yes, Mummy, let’s make this one”. “I love the stones Mummy”. “How did he do that”. We didn’t have enough stones and certainly no broken ones.. we ahem, had a bunch of leaves. So I steered him towards this:

I asked Red Ted what he thought it was made of and how Andy Goldsworth did it. I asked him whether he liked it (yes), how it made him feel and why he thought there was a “hole in the middle”.

Red Ted was also fascinated by Goldsworthy’s arches – “Mummy, how did you DO that?” – I tried to explain the science behind it. And think I failed. I think we will have to do a little project on tension at some point (or maybe I can get Science Sparks to do it?!).

We then had a look at the shortened “River’s and Tides” film. It was wonderful as it really showed the transient nature of Goldsworthy’s art and how fragile it. Take a look:

Red Ted loved the stick structure falling apart. Well, I don’t know about love, but it was fascinating. He also loved the creation of ice structures and should we have a cold winter, it is another thing that I would like to look at with him.

Our Kid’s Land Art inspired by Andy Goldsworthy

Then we grabbed our leaves and headed to our neighbour’s house (she has a nicer patio). And got creating. We cheated a little. I made some papier mache paste (from just flour and water, so nice and natural), to help stick the leaves down a little, as I knew with 3 children jumping about and a light wind, we may not get very far.

We needed to slow the decaying and destruction process down.

I showed the children all the autumn leaves that we had collected. We had some firey red leaves, stunning yellow leaves and some green leaves too.

And asked them which colour we should start with.

They picked some gorgeous firey red leaves to start their nature art with.

As per Andy Goldsworthy, I put down a circle of paste and the children started adding the red leaves.

Red Ted then wanted to add a yellow leaf layer on the inside.

So we did.

Our neighbour’s boy found some purple leaves in his garden and brought them over. We added them to the outside.

After MUCH debating.. we  then all agreed on adding some green leaves in the middle (I wanted to keep it free, but Red Ted wanted to fill it up, so we did).

And done.

The kids LOVED it. My neighbour LOVED it. Her husband LOVED it. It was just so pretty!

Though we used the paper mache paste (you can see all the jumping around above) – you can of course do this nature leaf activity anywhere, any time (and without actually sticking anything down)! Just let nature take over after a little while!

I hope you enjoyed this easy and simple exploration of Andy Goldsworthy’s art and easy activity for preschoolers and kids of any age! Please do have a go and share your leaf mandalas and nature art with me!

More GREAT ARTISTS PROJECTS here: