In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d like to present a food-based craft you can do with your kids. This gives the Geek Mom a plethora of opportunities for teaching moments. Food-based art is nothing new. Painting with vegetables is an old activity that I remember doing years ago (many years ago…) in kindergarten. But Geek […]
Continue ReadingI’ve heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but being there is worth so many more, maybe a jillion or so. Last month I visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I’m not a fan of modern …
Continue ReadingMore skulls than your chattering teeth can imagine.
Continue ReadingIf your children are anything like mine, they get way too many toys for Christmas and birthdays. Their closets and shelves are bursting with items that they rarely play with or have forgotten in the chaos. Their GeekDad and I decided that rather then make wish lists for more toys that they don’t need, we […]
Continue Reading“Look! A bicycle chain!” “Oh, that’s an old barbecue!” We seem to have stepped right into an I Spy book, albeit one that takes recycling to a new level. “That surfboard’s made out of an ironing board!” Let me tell you, this is some excitement. This is the kind of artwork that kids – even […]
Continue ReadingThere’s something alluring about a Mini-Me. Now you can get your own hand crafted miniature likeness.
Continue ReadingThe geeks are speaking about “Geek A Week.” Cleveland artist Len Peralta’s quest to create a year-long trading-card style tribute to geekdom, which began last winter with a Jonathan Coulton card, is not only going strong 33 weeks in, but …
Continue Reading(Reposted with minor changes from Friday.) Today is the 10th of October 2010, or 10/10/10, or 101010: a binary day! Of course, it’s also a decimal day too, and one of the few that is the same no matter which …
Continue ReadingArtist Steve Bialik has completed his “Ninja Star : Wars” series, a reimagining of what Star Wars might have looked like if George Lucas hadn’t strayed quite as far from his Kurosawa inspiration, The Hidden Fortress. For $15 a pop, …
Continue ReadingFour and a half years already? Where did that time go? It seems like only yesterday that I quit my job to become a full time dad to my then one year old. Over those three and half years, we’ve …
Continue ReadingDo your kids love science? Do they love art? Are they creative? Get them involved with Charlie’s Playhouse Evolution and Art Contest. They choose a creature, change its environment and figure out what would happen with the evolution of that …
Continue ReadingOK, so the picture above (snapped with my phone camera on an early morning bike ride) is really a bridge renovation project, not a work of environmental art. But it did remind me of some great outdoor sculpture exhibits we’ve …
Continue ReadingI’m pretty good at drawing. So are my kids. But in my career as a homeschool teacher I’ve found that the things that come easiest to me are the hardest for me to teach. When things are second nature I …
Continue ReadingAt a brightly colored house on the west side of downtown Bloomington, Indiana, people are gutting stuffed bears, animating clay, and turning floor vents into fishing holes. What’s more, those responsible want to bring these activities to your town, too. …
Continue ReadingBotropolis has been busy collecting papercraft robots! They have collected fifty, yes 50, links to some very cool paper robots. I assembled the Super Robot Dog today. He is an optical illusion with the head assembled inside out. When viewed …
Continue ReadingThe iPhone is a delightfully versatile little device. It is a telephone, mobile entertainment center and, of course, digital pacifier for restless geeklings. To this end, kid-centered apps are plentiful, with each desperately vying for its own piece of real …
Continue ReadingCleveland artist Len Peralta has undertaken a challenge: Over the next year, he’s aiming to create a full set of trading cards featuring 52 influential geeks. Four weeks into the Geek A Week project, Peralta’s already captured Jonathan Coulton as …
Continue ReadingLast June and July, the artist Neill Cameron crowdsourced ideas for an alphabet of awesomeness. Between readers on his blog, his followers on Twitter, and commenters on his Facebook page, twenty-six sufficiently awesome ideas were generated, and Cameron produced some …
Continue ReadingSure, you could build a robot with things like circuit boards and solder and allen wrenches, and it could, you know, do stuff. Or, you could do what Eric Bailey does: Take some glass into your home-built-and-wired workshop and use …
Continue ReadingWe’ve posted about cool cake art on GeekDad before, and about cupcakes, and of course about games. But we’ve never posted about all three topics at once, until now. A graphic design and jewelry artist named Robin Dahlberg and several …
Continue ReadingI’ve loved fractals since I was a kid. I remember writing lots of programs to generate them when I was in high school, including (just because I could) programming my graphing calculator to display a monochromatic version of the Mandelbrot …
Continue ReadingYou know that unicorn & dragon original you picked up at the fantasy convention? Don’t throw it away, it might be worth a million bucks some day. Grand Master Frank Frazetta’s cover painting for the Lancer paperback, Conan the Conqueror …
Continue ReadingImage: John Quigley Over the years, there have been a few artists who have used Rubik’s cube as their medium and have illustrated everything from portraits to 8 bit videogames as their subject mater. The latest to be recognized for …
Continue ReadingWith this year’s event a scant month away, NYC chip collective 8bitpeoples and non-profit arts and cultural organization The Tank have at last announced a (partial) lineup for the 2009 Blip Festival. Now entering its fourth year, Blip Festival is …
Continue ReadingCheck out the awesome Lego-themed art — both street and gallery-based — by UK-born artist Jamie Ame, also known as AME72. Recently, Ame opened a solo show in Tel-Aviv’s Kishon Gallery: AME72 is a full-time artist who does street art …
Continue ReadingThe National Film Board of Canada has a busy agenda for the month of October. The agency is responsible for the release of thousands of films since its inception and it’s garnered a reputation for world-class animation production. As a …
Continue ReadingBen 10, Dora the Explorer, In the Night Garden, Power Rangers, Charlie & Lola. All great shows for the kids – entertaining, even educational at times, and we all need the little break from the 24/7 they afford us every …
Continue ReadingArt programs are a dime a dozen. Ranging from freebie apps preloaded onto computers to professional-grade design suites running several hundred dollars a copy, you have a lot to choose from. However, as ArtRage proves, you don’t have to spend …
Continue ReadingKids have always loved a cool skateboard, and many of the more artistic persuasion have sought to personalize their boards with stickers, spray paint or other artwork. There’s even a burgeoning genre of decorative art that uses skateboard decks as …
Continue ReadingSomehow I totally missed news that this was being planned. Dallas is not only getting a cool robot sculpture, it is getting three giant robot sculptures. Not quite as big as the giant Gundam in Tokyo, but still well into …
Continue Reading