If you’ve been to Studio 10 lately, you may have noticed a very different project taking place.  You’ll find a carpeted area for working, a few tables covered in canvas for supplies and logs for sitting. Our more traditional materials of paper, glue sticks and scissors have been replaced with rocks, stumps, branches, acorns, pinecones and shells.  Inspired by the work of guest artist, Zach Pine, this month’s project offers our visitors an opportunity to build, stack, balance and play with entirely natural materials.

Bruce Simon, the Director of Programs and Education, brought Zach Pine in to talk to our education staff about the benefits of working with nature.  The concept for this project was to provide natural materials in an indoor setting for our visitors to build with and play with and leave for others to enjoy and reuse.  This is unlike any other project we’ve done in the space, so we had a lot of questions on how it would actually work. 

We began by collecting materials around our site.  We weren’t sure what would be inspiring to kids at this point, but there was a lot of debris around after the recent storms and our exhibits crew began saving clippings for us.  The discovery guides started gathering pine cones, Eucalyptus buttons, and leaves while they did their rounds in Look-out Cove.  We also received a terrific donation of rocks from American Soil in San Rafael.  

The thing that was most surprising to us is that kids ‘got it’ immediately.  Kids like to build stuff.  It’s a natural drive; they do it all the time.  Providing materials and a place for building is all many kids need to get started.  Others are a little timid about moving the pieces around, but after a little bit of mediation they often jump right in as w...

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