You Can Wear Art On Your Head

Hats are wearable art that express who you are. Whether you’re sporting a baseball cap that supports your favorite team or a floppy cap covered in flowers, your hat says something about you—just think where would the Cat in the Hat be without his famous striped top hat!

An artist who creates hats is called a milliner, and when a milliner makes a hat, he or she has to make many important choices about style, color, and materials. If they are making the hat for a particular person they have to think about what kind of hat that person would wear and where they want to wear it.

A clown and a wizard both wear long pointy hats, but a wizard’s hat looks nothing like a clown hat. Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat wears a top hat but it’s a very different top hat then the one a magician wears. A woman may wear a wide-brimmed hat with flowers to the Kentucky Derby but a very different kind of hat to the beach.

In the Saturday Morning Art Classes at CCAD, students made hats as part of a project with the Columbus Cultural Arts Center. They looked at many examples of hats, learned about the materials used, fabrics, patterns, colors, texture—all things a designer must think about before making their creation. Then, just like professional designers, they sketched an idea for a hat to be made for a particular person. With this drawing the student had to pick the colors, patterns, shape, and style of the hat and be able to explain why their hat was perfect for the person they were making it for, and how it represented that person.

Then the students learned to cut patterns out of paper to make a demo hat (this helps the designer see if their plan will work). Finally they used their paper pattern to make the hat they designed. All of the hats were presented during the Saturday Morning Art Classes exhibition April 26, 2003.

If you would like more instruction on creating art, Saturday Morning Art Classes may be for you. This program presented by CCAD provides first graders through twelfth graders the opportunity to explore the visual arts through a variety of experiences. The campus setting lets you discover your own creative abilities, enhancing your expressive potential through a sequence of art experiences that incorporate a broad range of focused exercises using a wide variety of art materials.

For more information on programs for children and youth at CCAD click here or contact the Continuing Education office at 614.222.3248 or e-mail.