Was I There?

Drawing With Children

On summer or weekend days, right after breakfast, we have "art time."  Nothing elaborate, just an immense box of markers and artist-quality sketchbooks.  Sometimes we glue.  Sometimes we paint.  But mostly we keep it pretty simple.

This was Josephine's favorite style of art this summer-- fill the whole page with color. She now has whole sketchbooks of these strange quilts of color, although now she is moving on to more representational drawing.  Eyeballs are predominant in her art; with Theo, it was twig-like hands with thousands of fingers.

I think there is something to just letting them be, putting the materials before them without any timidity or judgement.  

(My own art teacher mom banned coloring books for me-- something about not having to deal with someone else's notion of what things looked like.  Plus, we played that Harry Chapin song over and over again about some little boy who was punished for not coloring the flowers properly like the teacher wanted.)

And yet....I came across the greatest book in a used bookstore last spring-- Drawing With Children by Mona Brookes.  It reminded me of one of Mom's favorites-- Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain-- that she used with her students.

Drawing With Children is wonderful in that it breaks down seeing and drawing into small exercises that come off more as play than instruction.  Theo and I are already cobbling together these lessons and my goal is to somehow, even with Josephine, balance the freedom with the practice of art.  

In the end, for all of us, I think it is about seeing, noticing what is around you in the world.  And in that my children are often better than I am, fascinated by the most ordinary of things.

the matryoshkas are coming...

This is the prototype of my Russian nesting doll tile series.  Whatever you call it-- "babushka" or "matryoshka"--images of these dolls seem to be very popular right now.  

I've always thought the dolls a bit sugary, but as I was thinking of winter and how the dolls seem to be in keeping with the frosty season, I thought it would be a good challenge to do my own interpretation.

So here are some newly carved ones with the color underglaze and slips handpainted in.  It is somewhat complicated to do (you have to have a very steady hand), but then again imagine painting the dolls themselves, all those little rose designs getting smaller and smaller.

What I want my matryoshka to be is comforting.  I like the idea of them cuddled up (maybe that's why they seem wintery to me), hugging quail, kittens or little bunnies.

I'll show you what they look like after the glaze fire.

the countertop made me cry...

When the drywall guy was packing up, after another endless phase of our current house renovation that has been going on since March, he said how amazed he was at how well we were doing.  I stopped stunned in my tracks-- for I had been leading the small pinball children through the mess upstairs for their nightly bath.  I asked him what he meant.  He shrugged and said, "You know-- living in the midst of all this--" (and here he gestured to the unfinished floors, stairs, the dusty air, the other men working outside).  Then he leaned closer and whispered, "You know, I've witnessed traumatic things... TRAUMATIC!"

When Gus then told me that the guy had been talking about how difficult house morph is on relationships, I carried a nugget of pride around in me for a few weeks.  "Well," I thought.  "We really haven't done so bad.  Sure, it's been stressful.  But at least I haven't cried."

Then came the cement countertop.

The second to last week in September, we poured it.  Okay, we hired professionals to pour it, right over our existing cement countertop to the north (which Gus and I had done ourselves, and which had turned out like a sweater knitted by a chimp)...

and the new countertop to the west.

These cement guys were awesome.  They worked at it all day, hyped up on Red Bull and snuff.  And I love the leader in the white shirt, Jim (not his real name), who stayed until past six the first night, "getting the feathering tight." This is cement dude lingo.

Gus and I did tests, and stained the countertop a deep brown.  

It came out beautifully.  Like burnished leather.  Soft as silk.

But then after much research, we put on a ecofriendly sealer, which did not cure.  So we spent several weeks maniacally wiping up even the tiniest splash of water, which would instantly leave a white stain that would fade somewhat, but not go away.  In no time at all, the countertop was ruined.

Why am I going on and on about the countertop?  Well, because it finally made me cry, particularly when Gus spent a whole day scraping the sealant off, and it turned into a patchy, gritty mess.  It had been so beautiful and, even though I know it is a countertop, it was hard to see it ruined.

The nugget of pride has dissolved.  We are no longer "green"-- having now used polyurethane on the west side.  Jim is coming tomorrow night to try to redo the disaster on the north side.  And I have to say, even when that burly, wonderfully boisterous grown man saw the damage on Saturday, he too looked like he was ready to cry.  And it was traumatic, TRAUMATIC!

Ex Libris, Old Friends...

scene from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte/ illustration by the marvelous artist, Fritz Eichenberg

Today was a good day.  I started off by calling my faraway Scottish artist pal, Julie Robertson, who was still in her dressing gown (despite it being 3 in the afternoon, Glasgow time!).  Julie was working on several books she has written and is sending off to publishers.  When she visited in July, Julie was toting around several wonderfully written and illustrated children's book "dummies."  She so so inspirational to me, I'm sure I will be mentioning her more in coming days.  I only hope Julie Robertson doesn't forget us when she is famous.

And now the pathetic confession:  Gus and I actually hired a babysitter to wrangle the children this afternoon without naps so we could spend the time putting up the bookcases in our livingroom and wrest those old tomes out of the garage and put them back on the shelves.

Oh, what a dusty tour I took down memory lane!  There were  picture books from childhood, and paperbacks from teenage years that I keep because I can remember where and when I read them.  There were books from college and graduate schools; art books my mom gave me, or educational books from the "original" Josephine; other, random books my teachers gave me or that they wrote themselves.  There were handmade books my students made me, beautifully illustrated and very witty.  And there were books that I have because someone died-- in particular all those Gogol novels I have yet to crack.

"Gogol, Gogol, Gogol, what's up with all the GOGOL!" A dear friend shouted at me as she was helping me arrange all these books the last time I unpacked them.  I actually inherited the Gogols from my outrageous junior-high social studies teacher who was an alcoholic and who collected fine books, none I could afford at his estate auction.  So maybe those Gogols are a way of keeping Mr. W. alive a bit-- how he swashbuckled through life!--- and maybe they represent all those things I mean to do some day.

 

Chicken Portraits Tiles....the debut

The chicken portrait tiles that I was working on this spring, right before the OPA show and my descent into bad health, are....DONE!  Don't they have personality?

I was originally inspired by another one of Josephine's favorite books, Tillie Lays an Egg, by Terry Golson.

Of course, I then had to wrap up this portrait,which looks like Tilly's speckled twin, and send it off to Terry as a "thank you."

Needless to say, the package arrived safely, and Terry wrote about it on her own HenBlog, which is part of the HenCam. (Which as I've said before, you should really check out.)