Mesa museum bridges creativity and play

Love of art may one day lead you to the National Gallery or even the Louvre.

But it didn’t start there. Chances are your love of art started with your own handprint turkey paintings and the squiggly drawings that covered the refrigerators of your youth.

To kids, art is a contact sport — paints and crayons and carpets beware! — long before it ever becomes culture. The Arizona Museum for Youth understands this and seeks to bridge creative play and artistic appreciation.

“If you’re a child zero to 5, touching, throwing and playing with something is an important part of appreciating it,” says the museum’s Latonya Jordan-Smith. We’re sitting in the middle of ArtVille, the museum’s toddler-scaled city, where little ones harvest hard plastic food, “cook” it in dwarfish kitchen, or retire to the tiny rec room for a little reading. When it all gets too suburban, there’s a crafts room, a fake car, and a cool slide to take the edge off. The museum is split between full-contact ArtVille and the galleries across the lobby. “Younger kids love it here,” Smith says, of ArtVille, “and the older kids come here after the galleries to let off steam.”

The gallery spaces show a keen sense for what kids and tweens would like: brightly adorned paintings and innovative sculptures presented with social consciousness, aesthetic whimsy, and an “I-can-do-that!” quotient. The “Full Circle” exhibit features fun “found object” sculptures — like Ramona Otto’s “Watch Dog” series of mutts crafted from old timepieces — coupled with do-it-yourself art stations and subtle lessons on recycling. In the museum’s “Dia de los Muertos” exhibit, jolly skeleton sculptures surround patron Janet Lewis, of Mesa, as she helps granddaughter, Avery, create her own ex votos, a tribute to the dead. It’s a clever way to knock the foreign taboos off the Day of the Dead, and have a little fun at the same time. “We’re museum members,” Lewis says. “We come here a lot, because there’s always something new for (the kids) to do.” The Arizona Museum for Youth programs for kids of every age.

And, sooner or later, all of them end up in ArtVille.

“Most parents and grandparents will bring their kids here last,” guide Melissa Neimann chuckles, watching a hepped-up 3-year-old bang his way through the plastic kitchen. “They always say, 'Oh, he’ll get some good sleep tonight.’ ”    

The Arizona Museum for Youth is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. It is located at 35 N. Robson, Mesa. Admission is free for members, and $5.50 for nonmembers over 1 year old. For more information, give them a call at (480) 644-2467, or www.arizonamuseumforyouth.com.