“Close your eyes…now what do you see?” Think this is a breathing exercise for yoga class? Think again!  This weekend in the Center for Creative Connections, we had a Sound Design Family Workshop where children used their ears rather than their eyes to make sense of a painting. Guest teacher Frank Dufour from the University of Texas at Dallas is an expert on the science and art of sound, and he helped us “look” at art in a whole new way. We started by watching a clip of the Walt Disney classic, Fantasia. I don’t think I’ve watched this movie since I was a child, but it was fascinating to watch it again as an adult and notice how the animation brings the music to life. You really do seem to “see” sound. Now the trick was to try to reverse the process—find something beautiful to look at with our eyes and imagine the sounds it would make.

We went up to the fourth floor of the museum into the Tower Gallery where several abstract paintings are on view, and the children chose Delta Kappa by Morris Louis as their inspiration.