"Rich and Strange" by Harvey DunnDropoff points for stories
Contest starts July 1, ends July 31.› Hunter Museum of American Art, 10 Bluff View St., 10 a.m.- 5 p.m. Monday-Tuesday & Friday-Saturday; noon-5 p.m. Wednesday & Sunday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday› Creative Discovery Museum, 321 Chestnut St., 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday & Saturday, July 1 & 2› Ooltewah Market, 5829 Main St., Ooltewah, 3-6 p.m. Friday, July 8› Chattanooga Market, 1829 Carter St., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, July 10
"Buffalo Bones" by Harvey Dunn`Any budding writers in your family?
The Hunter Museum of American Art has a contest for you.
For the next four months, the Hunter has an exhibit on Harvey Dunn, a prolific illustrator in the early 20th century whose work appeared in hundreds of books and magazines, including 350 illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post. He also was a painter who often focused on the American West, where he grew up, as well as scenes from the battlefields of World War I.
"The pieces are representations of the way that Americans saw their lives at that time and the way they sort of envisioned their lives," says Cara McGowan, director of marketing and communications at the Hunter.
Because of Dunn's ability to tell a story simply through his illustrations, Hunter officials thought it would be cool to let kids try their hand at storytelling. So the museum is asking children from kindergarten through fifth grade to come in, look at five of Dunn's works (there are about 50 in the entire exhibition), then write a story about what they see in their favorite painting. Each story should be no more than 150 words.
"We hope that the kids have a chance to really allow their imaginations to get fired up, let his artwork inspire them, give them narrative power," McGowan says. "So often kids are the recipients of stories and we want to put the story creation in their hands and inspire them to better understand the interplay between the artist and the story.
"Kids intuitively understand that because they read more books with pictures in them," she says, "so it's a natural part of the lives of many kids already."
The contest, in which the Times Free Press is the contest and exhibition media partner, runs from July 1 to July 31. Entries can be emailed to contest@huntermuseum.org or they can be hand-delivered to the Hunter Museum, Creative Discovery Museum, Ooltewah Market and Chattanooga Market (see accompanying box for exact details).
Titled "Masters of the Golden Age: Harvey Dunn and his Students," the exhibition also includes about 30 works by students who studied under Dunn, who taught at several prestigious art schools during his career.