My 16-year-old son has always loved MC Escher, so this year we decided to throw him an MC Escher party for his birthday. MC Escher is a modern artist who depicts surreal scenes like stairs impossibly going up and down, or water flowing up and down at the same time. He uses a lot of salamanders and fish in his designs, and he makes tesselations (rotating shapes), which you will see below in our art projects.
MC Escher Party Invitation
First we printed this coloring page, and we pasted the colored fish (we used colored pencils) onto light blue card stock paper. We outlined the fish to make them stand out, and we wrote the party information inside the card.
MC Escher 3D Shapes
I found {aff} this book with perforated MC Escher 3D shapes. The pages are colorful and thick, and you fold each shape according to the instructions, gluing or taping the shapes together. The patterns on the shapes are from the artist’s famous paintings.
We used these 3D shapes to decorate the center of the table. I used little fish crackers as confetti. I also gathered the art supplies that we needed for our tesselations.
MC Escher Cake
I had to think long and hard about the cake, because the thought of making stairs go up and down on a cake seemed impossible. I toyed with many other ideas until I settled on this one. I found gummy fish at the store, and at that moment I knew what I wanted to do.
First I baked a rectangular chocolate cake, and I tinted the frosting blue. I used a fork to make waves. Then I placed the fish coming and going, as they would in an MC Escher painting. It came out great!
MC Escher Art Project
Here is a fun art project you can do with tessellation, where a shape is repeated over and over again, covering the entire paper:
We made modified shapes based on an equilateral triangle. We rotated the shape, using it as a stencil over and over on our paper.
Here are some of the finished tesselations:
Didn’t they come out great? My son thoroughly enjoyed his party!
Tags: art, artists, birthday parties, famous artists, Homeschooling, party, party ideas
An Escher cake? What a cool idea!
Thanks! It took me a while to come up with the idea, but it was quite easy once I knew what I wanted to do.
Such clever ideas!
Thanks! I brainstormed all the ways we could celebrate this artist, and my son and his friends had a blast!
I’d never heard of this artist but this is such a cool idea. What a unique birthday party!!!
My son Bryan has always loved this artist, ever since he saw the painting with the stairs going both up and down at the same time. It’s surreal!
This is so cool. I have seen these patterns but didn’t realize it was from one artist! Looks like a great birthday party!
I think this was my son’s favorite birthday party ever.
This was so well done, and thanks! I did not know who MC Escher was, I love the card and the cake 🙂 My artist daughter will be checking this out for sure.
I’m glad you liked it!