At the end of the show the milk will be mopped up the pollen swept into jars and the wax walls packed away like so much leftover cheddar cheese.
Marble and milk art work pollen.
One of the most popular posts here on babble dabble do has been milk painting and i can see why the process makes really wild and beautiful designs.
Laib s work is challenging to classify.
How to make rainbow milk marbled paper art.
When i originally brought milk painting to school as a science project my friend theresa suggested dipping paper in the milk to see if we could transfer the design and preserve it.
Laib performs his art privately quietly repetitively inviting the viewer in only via photographs with no words.
Some 20 minutes and three quarts of milk later the grayish marble had been transformed into a glistening white field.
This time at 10 and 11 they really understood the science behind the activity and rather than it just being a fun activity it reinforced learning.
The pollen or milk in a laib piece comes without an explanation.
It s something so universal any human being can relate to it without language or explanation.
It may be grouped with land art or process art and he shows influences of minimalism.
He recently installed a large scale pollen work at the moma in new york titled pollen from hazelnut.
I have done this milk fireworks activity with the boys a number of times but never with the extension activity of marbling the paper.
Each piece will be a very unique marbled piece of art with no two alike.
And it has nothing to do with german art or with european art.
His works are more complex than being just about nature and the natural.
Most of laib s works are composed of one or two materials which he has gathered in raw form such as milk marble rice beeswax and pollen.
He became world renowned for his milkstones a pure geometry of white marble made complete with milk as well as his vibrant installations of pollen.
The viewer is merely presented with the materials in their purest form and asked to contemplate them.
When works of art are pollen and rice and even milk.
The impermanence is intentional the artist says.
Informed by the purity and simplicity of eastern philosophies he employs natural materials most notably milk pollen beeswax rice and marble.
In fact laib spends the spring and summer months of each year gathering pollen from the meadows around his rural residence in southern germany.
Cut a piece of 8 1 2 x 11 piece of paper in quarters and place each piece face down lightly in the colored milk and let dry.