LEO’S 4TH BIRTHDAY

The theme for Leonardo’s Birthday this year came as an answer to the main question I was anxious to resolve – where to celebrate it? The experience of the last year made it clear that considering the growing number and age of the guests we would not be able to do a big birthday party at home. For a while I was considering to rent a playspace like Twinkle or Legoland, but the idea of a cookie-cutter Birthday party for my little boy didn’t excite me. Neither the price for the playspace rental was attractive. (in NY 2-hour Birthday party at a playscape goes for approx $1200)

I tried to think of empty space without much obstacles for kids to run freely, a place I could decorate to my liking. I thought that renting a gallery would be ideal. But then, what should I do with the empty walls? Why, of course, putting some artwork! And whose artwork could be a better fit than of the Birthday boy? It also automatically resolved another “problem” I had – Leo has been taking art lessons for the past 2 years, and I accumulated a huge pile of his drawings and paintings, which needed to be organized and archived. Bingo! 2 birds with one stone, plus a great motivation for Leo to keep creating for his Birthday exhibition. I told him about the idea up front and got him excited. We both started to work on it – him making new paintings and canvases for the Birthday solo show, and me organizing everything around it.

We live in the upcoming artistic neighborhood of Bushwick so renting a gallery was not a problem. In fact, I got one of the most spacious ones in the famous gallery building on Bogart 56 where for one night only they would give us 3 walls to show Leo’s art and the rest of the space to use for the party. I decided to use the biggest wall to showcase all abstract paintings in 3 rows, creating a large colorful pattern. Another wall was for black & white graphics, and one more wall had mixes of canvases and pastel doodles.

For kids entertainment I created 3 stations:
1) a table with collage art – there were several black & white portraits of Leo for guests to decorate with suggested elements like gooey eyes, confetti, wooden sticks and pompons
2) area for bubble painting on a large canvas taped to the floor
3) area for paint car racing – a paper “road” taped to the floor where our little guests can race various cars dipped in finger paint

Alas, the bubble paint didn’t work out the way we planned it so we switched to plan B, which was doing a group painting using all the variety of brushes, paints and crayons we had. Both collage station and paint car racing were a blast.

When art activities were not keeping little guests occupied any more we lowered the Art Piñata loaded with candies and little toys like yo-yo, and let the untamed energy of the 4-5-year-olds out. It was much needed because the piñata was so sturdy that even Leo’s papa couldn’t break it.