What's a good dramatic scene to recreate with pipe cleaners?
January 1, 2021 9:39 AM   Subscribe

My Girl Scout troop is doing a craft-along via video call for our next meeting. Each of the Girl Scouts will have as bag of random craft supplies on-hand; I'll pop the photo up on our call, and then they'll have an hour or so to recreate it. It's for fun and not a serious competition or anything; we did a similar meeting with cake decorating. What's a good image for them to recreate?

They'll have paint, clay, popsicle sticks, origami paper... all kinds of things. Their finished work will be 2-D or 3-D, as the spirit moves them. They're in high school. Everybody should be fully dressed in the scene (so no "Liberty Leading the People"). Most of them are pretty Internetty. Nothing that could be seen as offensive by reasonable people. Nothing political. If there are people in it, they shouldn't all be white. Funny is good.
posted by The corpse in the library to Media & Arts (18 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Van Gogh's Starry Night or Sunflowers have such strong shapes; I think they'd translate well to a variety of media, esp. macaroni.

if at all possible, it would be delightful to see the work when it is made.
posted by theora55 at 9:46 AM on January 1, 2021 [7 favorites]


A painting from his later period by Piet Mondrian would be easy and fun to reproduce. Add a Rothko to provoke a "But is it Art?" discussion.
posted by Rash at 9:59 AM on January 1, 2021


So, "Day of the Triffids" probably wouldn't work. Or would it, if they're high schoolers? Maybe "March of the Penguins?" "2001" and the layered montage the astronaut passes through.
posted by CollectiveMind at 10:16 AM on January 1, 2021


The sinking of the Titanic.

(Great question! *This* is what askmefi is for!)
Brainstorming on this has made this household laugh for many minutes.
posted by lothar at 10:23 AM on January 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


How about some photo that has the Eiffel Tower AND tourists in it? That way both the abstract and the literal thinking scouts have something comfortable as well as something to challenge them.
posted by kimberussell at 10:29 AM on January 1, 2021


Meme glyphs would be simple and hilarious in pipe cleaner, to those in the know.

My favorite painting for much of my teen years was The Scream, it’s iconic and really expresses those teen emotions.

I wish I had known about Hilma af Klint as a small art student. I made so many paintings that looked like bad studies of hers but I’d never seen any of her work until just a few years ago. She was decades ahead of her time. Huge abstract colorful pieces full of shapes and vibrancy. Some pretty good jpgs here.
posted by Mizu at 10:33 AM on January 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


The first obelisk and the pilots checking it out?
posted by janell at 10:33 AM on January 1, 2021


It violates the “not all white” rule but the first thing I thought of was the stingray photobomb
posted by ejs at 10:52 AM on January 1, 2021


The Monolith scene from "2001: A Space Odyssey"

It's got organic shapes as well a one big geometric shape, it has apes who are about to learn to use tools, it has a small bit of currency because of the person or people who built a replica in Utah that brought more questions than answers, and there's a scintilla of a chance it'll inspire someone to become a classic cinema nerd or scifi nerd.
posted by Sunburnt at 1:06 PM on January 1, 2021



posted by XMLicious at 3:04 PM on January 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


The Raft of the Medusa

A scene from the movie Black Panther.

Liberty Leading the People

The Night Watch after getting them to watch this live recreation.
posted by Jane the Brown at 3:12 PM on January 1, 2021


I feel like Picasso would be a super interesting one for attacking with random supplies - there's a really neat meta idea about interpreting interpretive art in there. And it's likely that the Van Gogh recommendation made me think of this, but Gaugin would be so gorgeous with so much room for interpretation.

Given the past year, though, and the invitation to funny... The Scream? Dogs playing poker?
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 3:13 PM on January 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


If you don't mind a pop image rather than a dramatic scene...it might be fun to do individual silhouettes and decorate them like Milton Glaser's Dylan poster.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:00 PM on January 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


This is a spurious suggestion, but we like medieval/renaissance art, so those classical scenarios of Biblical scenes would be a thing. (we're in that narrow subset who likes Biblical imagery but are not particularly devout).
posted by ovvl at 5:51 PM on January 1, 2021


Yeah! Any skin-tone-accurate depiction of Jesus might fit. I'm also thinking of skin-tone-accurate depictions of St. Augustine of Hippo, probably most widely regarded as the greatest early thinker in Christian theology, who was a North African Romanized Berber of the fourth and fifth centuries CE.
posted by XMLicious at 6:35 PM on January 1, 2021


Here's another couple of films you might mine for appropriate scenes:
  • Daughter of Dawn, a 1920 silent film with an entirely Kiowa and Comanche cast
  • The Dead Lands, a 2014 film with an entirely Māori cast, and incidentally all dialogue is also in Māori with English subtitles
I'm pretty sure I borrowed both of them as Netflix DVDs but some stills seem to be available online too.
posted by XMLicious at 6:52 PM on January 1, 2021


Response by poster: Oh, nothing religious or Biblical. It’s a diverse troop.

Yes, I will post the artwork when we’re done if they give me permission.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:26 PM on January 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


I would look at some of the group dance numbers from "World of Dance" -- it would be super fun to see a tableau of stick figure dancers all in the same pose, or in a cool arrangement of bodies from a moment of a team dance.
posted by amtho at 1:01 AM on January 2, 2021 [1 favorite]


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