Meet our Artists
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Jan Elftmann | Visual Arts
Jan Elftmann | Visual Arts
Jan Elftmann is a public assemblage artist believing that art should be everywhere. A major part of her process as an artist is the treasure hunt aspect of looking, gathering, and collecting the components, but she also enjoys collaborating with her audience. What this means for her work is that the audience not only completes or continues a piece, but often initiates and determines its interdisciplinary qualities.
She works as a teaching artist for COMPAS, a curriculum writer and educator at the Science Museum of Minnesota. She has done programming for families with the Walker Art Center and Mia. She focuses on STEM and creativity in her programs by using simple machines, reclaimed materials and electricity. She believes in hands-on learning and likes to create an environment for students to have a space to explore and create. She believes that everyone learns in their own unique way. She uses multiple methods of teaching: linguistic, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic to reach students so that no one is left behind.
Jan has a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is the director and founder of the Minnesota ArtCar Parade; she is the curator of the 801 Gallery in the North Loop in Minneapolis; and she has been a major participant of the Art Shanty Projects as an artist, performer and (un)official archivist of ephemeral for them.
Workshops
Moving Art Contraption
One to two hours. Walk-up activity: two days in the classroom to do a backup with the automata.
Design and create a moving 3D work of art using a recycled box. What theme will you transform your box into? A car, a toy, an animal? The decision is yours! Draw, glue, and add objects onto your contraption! Learn about the simple machine, the wheel and axle, and add it to your contraption to pull it around.
Automata
1-2 hours
This can be a walk-up activity with an adult for younger children in a library or festival. It could also be stretched out for a week-long residency in the fall.
Create an amazing magical cardboard moving machine. Learn how to build a simple machine, the wheel and axle with a cam system, to make a character to move up and down or round and round. What is the story your character is telling us?
Drawing Machine
This could be a walk up activity with an adult for younger children in a library or festival, artful aging. Schools in the fall
Design a motorized machine that can draw and dance! Learn to strip wires, add a motor and some pencils to watch your machine create a work of art!
Residencies
5 days, one hour per day. This residency can also be done without electricity for three days.
Kinetic Robots
Design and build a sculpture of a robot with moving parts using materials recycled from home. What do you want your robot to do for you? Learn about simple machines, the wheel and axle and the lever, and add them to your creation. We will explore electricity, circuits and motors to make things move!
