Telfair CAM: Exploring Impressionism

Telfair Museums approached us at FREN about helping them to create a new, cutting-edge exhibition for their Children’s Art Museum (CAM). This exhibition would include interactive projections, color-changing ambient lighting, fun tactile stations for children, and a massive curved LED screen as the pièce de résistance. For a theme, we decided to explore the museum’s extensive collection of American Impressionist paintings, focusing in particular on Frederick Carl Frieseke’s The Garden Umbrella.

The project began for me with an extensive amount of research and practice. We wanted the wide Landscape Gallery to be basically an extension of the painting, so I began practicing imitating Frieseke’s style, trying to reproduce it digitally, while also looking intensively at photos and images from the real-life setting of the work, Frieseke’s home in Giverny. Mimicking his short rough strokes and bright colors, I created dozens of assets from backgrounds to buildings to flowers (so many flowers) which were then complied into a massive interactive scene.

The museum also wanted some mascots to be the ‘artistic ambassadors’ for CAM, so through many iterations, I developed three child characters to fill the role. Ramona Chroma, Lionel Vector, and Shelley Shapewright represent Color, Line, and Shape respectively, three of the elements of art. They, with their pet chameleon Cammy, would guide visitors through CAM and be used in side material and media to educate kids about art. However, a change in museum administration saw the kids get phased out in favor of having Cammy be the sole mascot for the space.