Drawing

Susan Leopold frequently cuts up photographs of familiar places and reassembles them to create a new mood. In this activity, continue to explore and transform familiar spaces with your students by employing a similar technique.
Find a place in your community that interests your students (indoors or outdoors). Ask your students to make a drawing of this place using pencils, crayons, markers, or paint. Once they are finished, make two photocopies of their artwork and then ask them cut their actual picture and one of the copies into many randomly shaped pieces. Next, ask them to reassemble all the pieces into a collage of the same subject with an altered mood or perspective. Exhibit the two works, the photocopy of the original and the new collage, next to each and compare!

Architecture and Model Making

A way to combine the Pre-Visit Activity 1 (Familiar Spaces) with Pre-Visit Activity 2 (Fantastical Places) through an art project is to create a visual representation of a fantastical architectural space. Older students may like to emulate the style and materials used to construct professional architectural models (such as mat board, foam-core, cardboard, plexi-glass, etc) or, for a more fantastical twist, employ alternative materials (leaves/twigs, noodles, ham, toothpaste, recycled goods, etc). Younger students may prefer to use material such as Play-Dough, Model Magic, or air drying clay to create their fantastical spaces.

Pinhole Camera

Susan Leopold uses lenses and photographs to create her mixed-up miniature worlds. These pieces look similar to photos taken with a pinhole camera.
A pinhole camera is a hand-made camera that uses basic photographic elements inherent in all cameras. Like the human eye, a small hole focuses an image onto a surface. In the case of a pinhole camera, this surface happens to be light-sensitive paper or film! The images produced by these cameras are sometimes a bit grainy because, unlike a common camera, there are no devices to focus the image or zoom. Pinhole cameras can be made in many different ways, most of which require you to develop the photographic paper. However, the following links illustrate how to make a pinhole camera using a roll of 110 film, a few strips of cardboard and aluminum, and your local film developer!

• easy instructions
• Pinhole Spy (interactive website!)

Ask your students to use their pinhole camera take photographs of a space in their school from many angles, pointing out the similarities between the images they are producing and the lens boxes (miniatures) of Susan Leopold. Allow your class to use one roll together or to make their own individual cameras.

If you would like develop the film or photo-paper with your class, the following websites explain how to build the pinhole camera and develop the film.

• Pinhole1
• Pinhole2

And for the physics side of it:

• The Pinhole Camera

Education home
Leopold home
Kidspace home