“Star Wars” comes to Island Park

A dozen young people spent the afternoon of Apr. 16 at the Island Park library building a model of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. According to Library Director Jessica Koenig model building expert Joey Rudolph, an artist who grew up in Island Park, taught the group how to customize their model in order to make it look more like the "bucket of bolts" which is referred to in the Star Wars movie.

Librarian Maureen Glueckert said the library tied the model building to two showings of the new Star Wars movie, “The Force Awakens”.

[Rudolph] has made a lot of what the kids would call dioramas, like we used to do in a shoebox,” Glueckert explained, “He has one in a suitcase, he did one that looks like a book with miniatures inside. His is a different take on model building and what you can do with it.

An actual ship would have soot, dirt, and dings on it if it had been flown through space on numerous missions, Rudolph told the model builders. He showed the young artists how to customize their ships using markers, emery boards, and pastels.

Some kids wanted the models to stay spotless, but by the end of the day they all started to mark them up, and were very satisfied with the results.