HIGH ART : Kid-Designed Kites, Other Lofty Ideas Are Right Up There in ‘Flights of Fancy’ Exhibit

There are as many ways to view a piece of art as there are viewers, but visitors to the Children’s Museum at La Habra’s “Flights of Fancy” exhibit seem to have reached a consensus. When taking in this display, the position of choice is flat on your back, preferably with a light breeze overhead.

At least that was the view of a dozen 5- and 6-year-olds who stopped by the gallery on a recent weekday morning. Acting on docent Jane Ivory’s suggestion, the youngsters happily flopped onto the wooden floor to gaze at some of the 300 handmade kites, balloons, windsocks and other wind-blown crafts created for the exhibit by children in nine La Habra area elementary schools. “Flights of Fancy” remains on view in the museum’s changing gallery through June 12.

Although you don’t often see youngsters lolling about on the gallery floors, given this museum’s policy of hands-on learning, it’s not so surprising. On any given day, kids can be found in all sorts of unmuseum-like poses here, whether modeling a pair of mammoth fireman’s boots in the theater room, straining at the pedals of an “energy cycle” in the science room or leaning in to pat a taxidermied musk ox in the animal walk.

In fact, says the museum’s curator of education, Carrie Wictor, by ignoring convention, kids who take “Flights of Fancy” lying down are helping to demonstrate the display’s free-spirited theme.

“Think about what it is to be small and have to spend most of your time looking up at things,” Wictor said. “Usually, they’re seeing mostly stern faces looking down and saying ‘no.’ . . . What a relief it must be to look up here and see all these amazing things and imagine what it would be like to be a kite up in the sky, bound by nothing more than a string.”

The museum’s gallery usually features interactive exhibits created by Wictor and the museum staff, but once a year the space is thrown open to works by local schoolchildren as part of the Children’s Arts Festival. A highlight of the festival (see accompanying schedule of events) is a free one-day public celebration at the museum featuring continuous performances and visual art workshops. This year’s Children’s Arts Festival Day is Saturday.

Themes for the children’s exhibit change yearly, Wictor said. Last year, students were asked to illustrate seven specific topics to tie in with the “Paintbrush Diplomacy” traveling exhibit of international children’s art.

In contrast, Wictor said, “Flights of Fancy” allows youngsters more freedom in their creative expression, something she says is often in short supply.

“There’s almost an overwhelming amount of structure in kids’ supposed free time and play time,” Wictor said. “Anything that lets them cut loose in a creative manner like this has got to be good for their brains.”

Second-graders at Ladera Palma School took the exhibit’s breezy theme literally. Working with strips of bright construction paper, the children curled them and arranged several together to resemble wind-blown clouds. Kindergartners at the same school created rainbow-hued butterflies using what could be called, for a lack of a technical term, the paint-smooshing method (paint dribbled in the middle of a page, which is then folded and pressed).

Not surprisingly, kites put in a strong showing at “Flights of Fancy.” Imperial Middle School sixth-graders Jorge Sanchez and Eduardo Aviles, for example, created tricolored sectioned “dragon kites,” then decorated them with, respectively, detailed drawings of a fearsome dragon and an Egyptian mummy.

In addition to the children’s works, the museum has brought in more than a dozen professionally made kites, ranging from a simple Jamaican tissue kite to an elaborate stunt kite with a Mylar tail that stretches the length of one wall.

Should all this airborne art inspire visitors to stake out their own patches of sky, the museum offers daily drop-in workshops in which they can create a variety of airborne crafts. Kids can also take home a small booklet on kite construction and kite-flying safety.