Flat Stanley hangs out at the beach in CA

Hi kids ! It's Flat Stanley. I had a great time out on the Left Coast, soaking up the sun and hanging out on the beach.

Here I am in Santa Monica, sunbathing with some real California girls...







I went surfing ...




and met a lifeguard.



Ayn's friends Jonathan and Elise took me to the Santa Monica Pier



The water's beautiful and the seagulls are large !



I got some kicks on Route 66...



and almost got in trouble !



but the nice police woman just wanted to take a picture with me !

Joey and Paul C's Flat Stanley at the Ice Hotel in Quebec City

Flat Stanley and Joey sliding inside the Ice Hotel















To learn more about this annual, ephemeral creation in snow and ice, connect to http://www.icehotel-canada.com/hotel.php?action=nouveautes&langue=fr

2 Flat Stanleys from Southern Germany visit us in Paris

Lorenz and Marc from the Realschule in Friedrichshafen-Ailingen, Southern Germany sent their Flat Stanleys to visit Alexandre here in Paris.

Sunday, April 10th we took them to the Musée en Herbe to see the Keith Haring exhibit and do a kids' workshop afterwards.

Here they are heading up to the exhibit with Alexandre and Paul...



Alexandre wearing funky, Haring-style glasses



Alexandre, Paul and Victoria



Taking a rest on a Haring chair







A copy of Haring's NYC mural



A new take on the dollar bill



Haring relooked a Junior race car from the "24 heures du Mans" race



An Aki Kuroda mural just outside the museum



With Ayn at the Palais Royal gardens



Views of the Palais-Royal gardens







Guys playing "boules" or "pétanque"







The famous (or infamous, for some) columns by Daniel Buren at Palais-Royal







The bejeweled metro entrance at Palais-Royal



Outside the Comédie-Française theater, listening to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons"






We made it to the Louvre. Here's I.M. Pei's famous pyramid entrance...




Tony Cragg's giant "Versus" sculpture greets visitors to the Louvre



Some more of Cragg's sculptures...










Heading off for a stroll through the Tuileries gardens. Ahead is the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel du Louvre




A view of the Eiffel Tower !





a slightly better view of it...



And here's the best shot !






A glance back at the Louvre from the Tuileries...



Here we are at the Opéra

Manet et Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe

Taking advantage of the fact that Musée d'Orsay is currently hosting a fabulous retrospective of Manet's work, "Manet : Inventeur du Moderne", we spent the day discovering some of this painter's most famous works.

The first painting we took a close look at was "Déjeuner sur l'herbe" :



We learned how many other artists were inspired by this painting and then did their own versions of it :


Claude Monet, in 1865-1866


Pablo Picassso, in 1961



Alain Jacquet, in 1964


Jean-Vincent Sénac even created a coloring book with a creative, transformative take on Manet's painting :

The first page


Second page


Final page


We added our colors to Sénac's rendition :






Next, we learned the term "anachronism" and saw some artistic versions of it :








Using Manet's "Déjeuner sur l'herbe" as a base, we tried our hand at an anachronistic collage version :











Then, for fun, we struck a pose and became actors in Manet's luncheon scene :












And then we had our own Luncheon on the Grass...





Afterwards, we drew sketches on wax paper




















And "painted" with colored wax shavings for an ephemeral work











At last, we made souvenir books of our week together, gluing in images of our favorite works of art from the various artists we "met" each day.