Outdoor Process Art for Kids Using Colored Salt

We were inspired to create this salt art activity for kids after a recent visit to our local museum where an amazing salt installment by Motoi Yamamoto was on display! This cool process art project is so easy to set up and provides hours of creativity for children!

Follow our Art for Kids Pinterest board!

*This article was originally posted on July 15, 2013 and has since been updated.

A recent trip to our local art museum has inspired such a fun art project for kids…using salt! Keep reading to find out what we made and to learn more about the amazing artist, Motoi Yamaoto.

“Drawing a labyrinth with salt is like following a trace of my memory. Memories seem to change and vanish as time goes by; however, what I seek is to capture a frozen moment that cannot be attained through pictures or writings. What I look for at the end of the act of drawing could be a feeling of touching a precious memory.” – Motoi Yamamoto

Seeing the Works of Motoi Yamamoto

My five year old, Lucy, and I just recently went to our local art museum to see their latest exhibit, “Return to the Sea”, Saltworks by Motoi Yamamoto. I can’t even fully describe what an amazing thing his art was to see.

Motoi is a contemporary Japanese artist who has recently been creating installations made entirely from salt. In the Japanese culture, salt is a symbol of purification and mourning. Working with salt has helped Motoi work through the death of his sister and help to heal his grief.

This particular piece covered almost the entire gallery floor and used about 300 pounds of salt! The patterns of this installation was very lace-like. In a video shown at the museum, the artist explains that each little bubble-like shape in the lace pattern represents a small memory, and all the little memories come together to form the finished piece.

As amazing as this art is in itself, what even touched me more was how he involves the communities where he displays his saltworks. While the artist is creating his installation, the public is invited to watch and interact with him. And, during the closing of the exhibition, visitors are invited to participate in the dismantling of the salt artwork. They help to scoop the salt up into bags and bottles and then take a community walk to the sea where the salt is released into the ocean. We cannot wait to take part in this! This post contains some affiliate links to Amazon.

Creating Our Own Salt Art

Materials for Creating Outdoor Salt Art for Kids

Salt
Squeeze bottles
Food coloring (optional)
A large, outdoor surface for creating (like a porch, patio, or driveway)

How to Create Art with Salt

We were very inspired to begin making our own creations with salt once we were home. Because the sensory experience is so important to the artist, I first started out with a salt sensory tray invitation for the kids. They spent lots of time exploring the salt in our regular and mini sized salt trays.

A few days later we were ready to start our own salt art on a larger scale! We really wanted to try to draw with salt just like the artist. Luckily I had a couple of squeeze bottles on hand. We filled them with salt and found the biggest canvas we could~ our porch! We all headed outside and began to ‘draw’ with the salt-filled bottles. It was actually quite calming moving the bottles around as the salt slowly poured out.

Lucy began by drawing curvy lines with the salt.

I drew lines on our porch with salt.

Even my two-year old participated! He loved making little piles of salt!

Later we thought it would be fun to try drawing with colored salt. To make our colored salt, we filled some plastic cups with salt and added a few drops of food coloring to each one. It took quite a bit of stirring to get the color to distribute evenly. We then let it dry overnight.

The next day we filled our squeeze bottles with the colored salt. It was a bit more difficult drawing with it, as it didn’t flow quite as smoothly as the plain, white salt. However, with a bit of patience, we still managed to create some colorful salt art! (You could probably do this using colored sand in place of the salt.)

Since we had sketched Yamamoto’s patterns in our sketchbook at the museum, we thought it would be fun to make our colored salt art similar to his.

Lucy and I worked together to create some colored salt art on the front porch.

Here’s a closeup of the patterns we created.

We were having so much fun we had to try a few other canvases! Creating salt art on our wooden deck created an interesting effect.

If you’d rather try something on a smaller scale, drawing with salt would make a great invitation to create! All you need is a tray (like this one) and a container of salt. I left this out one morning for the kids to create with.

Learning about the art and inspiration of Motoi Yamamoto has been an amazing experience. Lucy was especially taken with how the artist used his artwork to express his emotions. I think she will remember this for quite a long time!

Learn More about Motoi Yamamoto

I would like to invite you to take a moment and check out the links below to learn more about this amazing artist. I hope you find some inspiration from him as well!

Here are some amazing sites with videos and photographs of other salt installations by the artist, Motoi Yamamoto: