30th April International Sculpture Day

30th April is International Sculpture Day. It is also my daughter's birthday and from a very young age we would be in a park or public space and she would always point out the sculptures. They fascinated her. A favourite sculpture for both of my children was the pears at the National Art Gallery in Canberra. I shouldn't be surprised then that they share a day. What does surprise me though is that I haven't written about this day on this blog before, given that I have so many books listed on my Pinterest page.

Pear—version number 2 (1973) by artist George Baldessin.

Sculpture is the art of making two or three-dimensional forms that can be representative or abstract. The artist uses shaping techniques to create a form, like firing clay, carving stone or wood, casting metal or plaster, etc. 

13 Sculptures Children Should Know introduces children to some very well-known sculptures, by sculptors such as Michelangelo, Rodin, Giacometti and Louise Bourgeois. Many of these sculptors appear in picture books suitable for young children.

Alternately, you could look at more general sculpture books such as these:

• Look! Look! Look! at Sculpture  by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace           After sneaking into a museum, three tiny mice discover that sculptures can be big or little, textured or smooth, and made with different materials. Some stand alone, others are in a group, and still others move. The mice look at the front, the back, and the sides of a slate sculpture by Barbara Hepworth. They see shapes, and shapes within shapes. They think, feel, and then create their own sculptures. 

• Scrap Metal Swan  by Joanne Linden and Estrellita Caracol

When community members work together with trucks and ships to clean up the town's riverfront, an artist and her child hammer, chisel, weld and zap the found materials into something beautiful. Young makers will find inspiration in this text for their own sculpture.

• Claymates  by Dev Petty and Lauren Eldridge

What can you do with two blobs of clay? Create something amazing! But don't leave them alone for too long. Things might get a little crazy. Watch the claymates squish, smash, and sculpt themselves into the funniest shapes they can think of.

• Reassemble by Tatsuya Tanaka

Miniature workers are busy at work, disassembling and reassembling familiar everyday objects. At first, they just look like discarded parts of something we may or may not recognize. But how about when the workers put everything together? Don't the reassembled parts resemble something else you know?

• Apart, Together by Linda Booth Sweeney and Ariel Rutland

This bold, surprising picture book demonstrates the magic of everyday transformations (and introduces cause-and-effect) .

Read about some famous pieces of sculpture here:

• David by Michaelangelo

• Leonardo da Vinci's Horse 

• Patience and Fortitude, the lion statues at the front steps of the New York Library.

• The story of The Statue of Liberty

• The Little Blue Hippo statue that is is on display at MOMA

• Degas' Little Dancer

• The rooster weather vane on Notre Dame

There are also quite a few picture book biographies too.

• Alexander Calder

• Louise Bourgeois

• Yayoi Kusama

• Ruth Asawa

of course there are other books worth sharing, but what our library has is a very good introduction to sculpture.