Are you a do-it-yourselfer, or are you afraid to do it yourself, but wish you weren't? Come to the Exploratorium this summer to try the stuff you might not do by yourself at home. Whether you're skilled at soldering or still scared of your toolkit, don't miss Oops! A Make-Break Fest.
That's "oops" as in making things, breaking things, and even putting things back together again. It is a series of summer funshops for the "maker" in all of us. Oops! A Make-Break Fest is free with admission to the Exploratorium.
At Oops!, experience many kinds of interactions as you try and make stuff -- solders, screws, burns, pours, pushes and pulls, stitches, grinds, each one contributing to a distinct sense of accomplishment. Unless it breaks. Or especially if it breaks. Where else will you experience the unadulterated fun and emotion, the thrill and the challenge of stripping a car to its bare bones, or make home-made scientific toys? Better yet, if you can dream it, the Exploratorium will help you make it.
Simultaneous to Oops!, the Exploratorium presents a new work by Scotsman and artist Aeneas Wilder, who has spent the past five years erecting towering sculptures of fragile bits of wood without any nails or adhesive and then kicking them apart. It seems like an exercise in futility, but it's actually a powerful lesson in making and breaking and impermanence. The public can observe Wilder, known for transient artworks that are architectural-like structures, stacked and balanced, but never fastened, create Untitled No. 128 out of wood. In the Exploratorium's Seeing Gallery, Wilder makes Untitled No. 128 from July 17-July 27. The new work will then be on view from July 27-September 3, 2007.
The public can catch Wilder building his sculpture, laboriously adding to it day by day, through the ten-day building process. On Labor Day, September 3 at 4pm, the Exploratorium will break the sculpture, watching the piece that represents copious hours of labor and focused attention fall to the floor, reduced to the materials it originated from. This work is included in the price of admission to the Exploratorium. -- www.exploratorium.edu
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