Drawing on Experience

“Art in Nature, Nature in Art” is the title of Saturday’s Earth Day program at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, designed to show children and their parents what artists experienced and put into their paintings of the Old West.

From 12:30 to 2:30 p.m., educational art instructors Irene N. Rodriguez and Jack Enyart will take families through the Trails West exhibition to show them the different climates and topography that settlers experienced. Galleries displaying landscape paintings will also be toured.

“We’ll show participants the natural areas outside the building, including close observation of flowers, explaining that they are later to draw things they’ve seen,” Rodriguez said.

She does not expect Frederic Remington-level results to materialize on the clipboards she will hand out.

But she hopes to sensitize participants to the idea that in the spirit of Earth Day, they should look more closely at their natural surroundings than they usually do and learn a little about what past artists accomplished through close observation.

Rodriguez said she will tell the children and their parents, “Concentrate on a detail in nature--rocks, a flower--and draw it exactly as you see it.”

Besides drawing, families will be able to take part in a very modern environmental activity: paper recycling.

“We’re going to make paper by pulping junk mail in blenders,” Rodriguez explained.

They will spread the pulp on drying screens and press in dried leaves and grass to make the decorative material. Because the two-hour event will be over before the sheets fully dry, children will take them home to finish the project.

BE THERE

“Art in Nature, Nature in Art,” Saturday, 12:30-2:30 p.m. at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, 4700 Heritage Way, Griffith Park. $5 children, $10 adults. (323) 667-2000, Ext. 276.