Put on your rain jacket and play with the power of water!
This exhibit features two water works tables full of activities designed so all ages can join in the fun. Use cranks and levers to control water, or use the open-ended building station to divert water every which way. Use the laws of physics and the force of water pressure to send balls high into the air and into pipes lining the ceiling. Watch the balls come back down through a swirling vortex of water. Let water inspire your inquiry and experimentation.
Change of Clothes: Between water play, painting, and sand exploration, there’s a high potential for messy fun throughout our building-bring a change of clothes and also a fresh mask in case yours gets wet in the Go With the Flow exhibit area.
Where?
Third Floor
Access Info
• Each water table features wheelchair accessible play stations;
• Water play toys include accessible toys for children and adults with limited fine motor skills;
• This exhibit can get noisy! Headphones are available at the Front Desk.
Mural by Rachel Gloria Adams
Gallery made possible by a generous gift from The Hagerty Family
Rachel Gloria Adams mural made possible by a generous gift from Coulombe Family Foundation
Rachel Gloria Adams in front of one of the murals she designed at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine. Photo: Ryan Adams.
Rachel Gloria Adams is a textile designer, painter, and muralist living in Portland, Maine. A graduate of the Maine College of Art, Rachel has worked as an arts organizer and educator and has exhibited her artwork throughout New England. With her husband, Ryan, Rachel has worked on the Piece Together Project, creating murals throughout Portland’s East Bayside neighborhood that represent and honor members of the community.
Rachel Gloria Adams designed two murals for the Museum & Theatre, representing more than 100 linear feet of exhibit gallery walls. One of the geometric designs backs the Go With the Flow exhibit; the other backs the Ramp Up exhibit on the third floor science center of the new facility.
“My inspiration for becoming an artist started as a child because my mother was an artist and an art teacher. Other kids would go to the beach and play games. We would take plaster of paris, make fossils, and take them home and paint them!
“My husband Ryan is a full-time muralist and I’ve always helped him out. He says my superpower is color palettes and the ability to see several steps ahead and how it all comes together.
“These two murals in the Museum & Theatre are solely my design and so they’re my first mural projects, in that sense.
“The inspiration for the geometric line drawings were the activities occurring in the gallery spaces. So curvy water designs are featured in the Go With the Flow exhibit. Upward turning designs in the Ramp Up mural were inspired by the air flows used to propel the balls. In both cases, the pathways that the balls would take through channels and arches played an important role.
“These mural designs were drawn to scale, projected onto the wall, drawn onto the wall, and then painted with Latex paint. The scale shift is insane. The editing process is different. You can’t ‘hide’ at that scale. I have seen my work at wallpaper scale before, but this is really different.
“This project is amazing. I love the space. I’m so excited to be a part of such a grand project. And I absolutely can’t wait to bring my kids here and their friends. My children have proclaimed these as ‘their murals,’ by the way!”