The Artpart - Summer Daze

by CAROLYN TOLPO SMITH
Sun Columnist

Summertime, when the kids are out of school, is a great time for family togetherness. Picnics and cookouts, games and beach fun are just a few familiar ways to organize family time. In fact, National Kids Day on August 3 this year gives a perfect time to celebrate and remember just how creative family time can be.

When the little darlings are running around whooping and hollering, everybody knows such fun, loud activity needs to be balanced with more serene, relaxing quiet time. On the other hand, the laze and graze mode may find equilibrium in engagement and up-and-out activity. The sense of balance works its magic as an everyday artpart as well as working a key alphabet for the language of the Arts. The book Beauty Secrets For Life, offered on the web at www.cafepress.com/artbeautyshop, invites deceptively simple and playful exploration of the artpart, dynamics such as balance and others when life and art meet.

A family trip to an art museum, such as a Honolulu experience shown here, can give balance to the summer warmth outside and the pocketbook as well. With free admission, inside the cool air conditioned galleries of the Hawaii State Art Museum (HISAM), families can roam and perhaps make sketches to share favorite pieces they have seen or visit interactive exhibits like the exploration station as shown in the Diamond Head Gallery for hands-on experiences. A game of inspect-and-detect-balance awaits whether examining multi-layered paintings and intricate sculptures or manipulating moveable shapes to weigh dark and bright colors.

The arts — music, dance, film and in this case visual arts — pronounce expression with dynamics like the sense of balance, an everyday artpart already there, noticeable and experienced by anyone, anyplace, any time – during summer daze, too!

Art by Carolyn Tolpo Smith of C. Tolpo Studio/Honolulu listed in Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Catalog of American Portraits includes Hawaii State Portrait of Governor John A. Burns. Her book objective at www.cafepress.com/artbeautyshop leads The Artpart columns since 1997. Studio: (808) 395-8455 Website: www.tolpohawaiiart.com.