Children make art from agricultural products during Saturday’s Poplar Head Farmers Market

What do you get when you mix pieces of cotton, shredded denim, recyled newsprint and red construction paper with water?

If you attended Saturday’s Poplar Head Farmers Market, you witnessed children making works of art from those ingredients.

Beverly Leach, are educator at the Wiregrass Museum of Art, brought a blender, plenty of water a lot of agricultural-related materials and mixed them with a lot of imagination to help the children create their one-of-a-kind pieces of art.

“I just thought making paper at the (Poplar Head) Farmers Market would be good,” Mrs. Leach said as she explained the purpose behind the project.

“Cotton is grown in this region. It’s a great way to tie art with agriculture. Paper-making fits in well with that idea.

“Cotton is a plant. Most kids have seen the cotton plants growing in the area. Most of them have seen denim jeans. What we’re doing is really disguised education. They don’t know they are learning, but they are.”

Mrs. Leach says the Saturday morning program is a perfect connector with the message of with the Wiregrass Museum of Art.

“One of the missions of the museum is education,” Mrs. Leach added. “As we do the art projects, we have discussions with the kids. We use programs like this to tie the museum into the various parts of the community.

“In this project, we’re also incorporating good citizenship. We’re using recycled goods to make the art.”

As the young participants watched, Mrs. Leach and her team of three volunteers prepared the various items that would be needed for Saturday’s project. The whirring of the blender gave rise to some of the items that would be needed. Shredded strips of blue denim, mixed with water, turned into the blue “paint” the children would use to work on their project. Next up would be a concoction made from water and red construction paper. Once thoroughly mixed in the blender, the young artists had the red “paint” they would use.

Mixed in with the “paints” were various flower petals to add an extra touch of color to the pieces of art that were being created.

“The flower petals that we use make good decoration for the paper,” Mrs. Leach said. “We also have vendors at the market that are selling flowers. Using flowers in our project is another way of tying what we are doing with Farmers Market.”

The foundation of the project, however, was the hand-made paper that was used as the canvas. For this, Mrs. Leach and her helpers used shredded cotton and recycled newprint. Once pressed and dried, the young artists had their own canvas to use. At that point, all that was left was for their imaginations to kick into high gear.

A steady stream of young visitors kept Mrs. Leach and her three volunteers busy. In addition to creating their owns works of art, the children were also treated to have art applied to their faces.

“It’s been fun,” Mrs. Leach said of the museum’s participation in the Poplar Head Farmers Market. “It’s a lot like playing (on a Saturday morning). At the same time, we are showing the children that art is a process. It’s not just something hanging on the wall.”

Mrs. Leach credited much of the success of the art projects to the work of her volunteers.

“We couldn’t do this without the help of our wonderful volunteers,” Mrs. leach said. “Without them, the children wouldn’t have the cool face painting or the art projects. We rely on the helping hands that we can get.”