Over the past weekend, The Bucknell Art Galleries participated in Lewisburg’s annual Ice Festivial. The Ice Festival is a community gathering that offers unique winter activities like a chili cook off, polar bear plunge, and ice sculpting. This year, Bucknell Art Galleries offered children’s ice painting as an activity in the children section. The children section, located in the local park next to the Bull Run, was filled with activities and fun games for families of all ages. The Ice Painting activity was based on a simple idea; ice cubes were infu
sed with an array of food coloring in order for children to paint any type of picture they desired. Ice cube trays were filled with every color of the ranbow and each ice cube had a popsicle stick intact to provide a handle for the children to grip on.
The Ice Painting activity was highly successful. This is evident by the happiness that the children expressed and the number of children that attended the activity. Providing a children’s activity was atypical; The Bucknell Art Galleries’ usual targeted audience are college students and the adults from the nearby communities. Reaching out to children was new and so, we were breaking new grounds by attracting younger participants. Children proudly painted family members, “Angry Bird”, pets, and flowers that they took home to hang up.
The Ice Festival was on a very cold Saturday. It was so cold that the some colors did not show on the paper because these colors were frozen within in the ice cube. Thus, children that attended the later shifts could not utilize the light colors. The dark colors like green and brown were the coloring options. Facing these barriers, the children painted subject matter that incorporated these darker colors within them. Trees and dogs were a c
onstant theme for many. Throughout the day, children were just enthusiastic about the fun paints and this happiness made the cold weather a bit more bearable for the volunteers working the table.
Furthermore, this activity ran out of supplies before the ending time. This activity was suppose to be open from 11-2 but too many young artists came up to the table to create masterpieces. Although this was untimely for the kids that came too late, this reaction to our activity indeed highlights the fact that it was popular and successful.
