BYU Museum of Art

Family Arts Festival: Journey Through the Arts of Islam

This sounds boring, but we had a blast! Earlier this morning I picked up a niece and two nephews that had been left parent-less (Dad was working and Mom was at a soccer tourney with two of her boys) and we headed down to Provo for what I thought would be an hour or so of mild cultural fun. We were surprised when we left three hours later with big smiles on our faces after having had a wonderfully fun day!

BYU did the event well with an Arabic calligraphy artist, two fun kids activities, Middle Eastern music and dancing, a brilliant storyteller and a henna artists. The exhibit was beautiful and the kids, ages 2-13 really enjoyed it. Really. I thought they would just humor me, but all of them really seemed to enjoy the exposure to something so different than what we see on a regular basis. My favorite part of the exhibit was a dark lit room that held a small eye hole and then a larger viewing area from a different perspective. You look through the small eye hole and it reveals a beautiful  horse made out of different pieces of art. Through the larger viewing area you see all the pieces individually that made up the whole horse. Perspective, eh? It changes everything. 

During story time

Arabic calligraphy. They also had an artist there that 'translated' the kids names and wrote them in Arabic. Since the Arab language only has three vowel sounds, you can imagine it was tricky. And no sound for 'p'.

The recurring theme that the museum tried to convey was that Islam art revolved a lot around pattern and shape. They had a room set aside for patrons to made their own art tiles.

Maddie was such a good sport.

They invited those that made art tiles to either take them home or put them on a wall to share with others. Fisher and Maddie opted to share their art on the wall. Fisher was so proud of his tile.

They also set aside a room where you could make a postcard about your experience at the "The Beauty of Belief" exhibit.

The best part of the day was getting henna tattoos. Logan opted for a chicken (the young lady doing the work mentioned that it was the best henna request she'd ever had).

I was astounded that Logan hopped right on up to have his hand done. He and Leah have similar, cautious, personalities.