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Shrinky Dinks. They're remarkable, really. $5 for ten 8x10 pages of shrikable magic. For anyone unfamiliar with shrinky-dinks, here's the story. Plastic sheets that you can color/cut any way you want, and then bake for 1-3 minutes. In the oven they reduce to about 1/3 their original size.
Here are some things that we've made recently.
The odd shapes in the middle are Star's very own designs. I think they might make nice pendants. Any takers? Oma Bonnie? We used a hole punch (regular office size) to make the holes in each of the shapes so that they can be strung.
As you can see, we traced my kids' hands and they colored them in. Star on the left and Dandelion on the right. Actually, Dandelion just scribbled all over a page and I traced her hand onto the already-there marks. Star really did color hers in, and if you look really close, you can see that she drew rings on her fingers.
Tomorrow, way too early for anyone's good, we will depart for Michigan. Our travels will involve one borrowed car, two airports, a rental car, and a vacation house. And then we'll do it all in reverse four days later. Total travel time to get there: 9 hours. I'm going with Star and Dandelion. They're champion travelers by now, besides which, 9 hours (2 to get to the airport, 2 to wait in the airport, 2 on the plane, and 3 in the rental to get to the vacation house) is nothing. It was easily 26 hours to get from St. Louis to Beirut. EASILY. That includes 5 layover hours in Heathrow. Not a barrel of laughs. But they did it, and they might have even liked it.
Star and Dandelion can't wait to see papa. Everything is better with papa.
One of our favorite public parks in Beirut has a bit of a sculpture garden along its southern ridge. We were there recently and the girls were doing their thing.
Look! I caught Dandelion mid-jump!
Star discovered the joys of jumping on this "thing" two years ago, and once Dandelion learned to jump she joined her. It's actually quite springy.
Not that I usually advocate jumping on art, but I have never seen anything wrong with this. The other sculptures in the park are equally accessible for climbing and indeed are climbed upon.
I've always wondered about the shape, and recently I figured out why it looked familiar. It looks familiar because it is familiar. Duh. It's the drawing of an elephant that has been swallowed by a snake in The Little Prince. The Prince would have been disappointed in my ability to spot snake-swallowed elephants.
I was right about the elephant-inside-a-snake thing too. If you look carefully you can just barely read HOMMAGE A ST. EXUPERY on the end where Star is jumping. I wish I could tell you more about this. Who made it? When? What else are they up to now? No idea. Maybe if I clear away some of the scrub growing around the edges I'll find more clues.
Oh, and I intend to let my kids keep on jumping. I doubt the Prince would mind.
Today, Star ought to have had a little birthday party at school, but there was much ado about nothing in Beirut today and school was canceled. But I wasn't to know that last night when I was preparing for the festivities. Star decided that bubble-blow would be a great party favor for all her little friends at school. I liked that idea, except for the fact that bubble-blow is exactly the kind of thing that gets branded all the time. You can't just get bubbles, they're going to be barbie, pooh bear, dora, or diego bubbles. That's bad. Yes, it is. I think kids ought to be free from that kind of thing, especially when they’re blowing bubbles.
So, I got out my wrapping paper and covered up the labels. I did a nice job too, see?
I've got all 25 of them ready (oh, I don't think there are that many kids in her class, but I figured better too many than too few) and waiting. Just as soon as the "mood on the ground" stabilizes and people go back to their day-in day-out, Star will have a great class party. This weekend of course, there will be two parties. Dandelion on Saturday, Star on Sunday.
At about 3:30 this afternoon I decided to drive the kids to their favorite park, and about half way there plowed into the back of a car stopped ahead of me. It was embarrassingly stupid of me. I had taken my foot off the pedal for a split second to mess with my sock, and then couldn’t find the brake pedal in time. Quite likely the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Ever. (Which I suppose is comforting. Stupid goes downhill a long way from there, but still.) It took more than an hour and a half to sort everything out, and it was an even bigger mess that it might have been because our insurance had lapsed. Yes, it had.
Star fell asleep like a little cherub, while Dandelion played contentedly in her car seat. Karim appeared at the last minute like a deus ex machina, and prevented any further bungling of things by me, and sent me home with a wave of the hand and an “I’ll take care of it.”
I swear, I’d hate this place if I didn’t love it so much. Or maybe I’d love it if I didn’t hate it the way I do.
This is the second anniversary of Hariri’s assassination. Our family has been instructed to stay home, which we are mostly doing, and it seems that no one else is. Massive demonstrations are going on down town, and I admit that I am worried about what might happen today and in the coming weeks. I’ve heard honking, yelling, sirens, etc. all morning. There is nothing quite like the threat of civil war/disturbance to nullify my interest in writing about art. It seems that everything is ok at the moment.
The girls and I made these hearts for Valentine’s Day.
Yes Kathleen, that’s the scrapbooking paper you gave me. Thanks again. Star also decided that we needed a cake (since all holidays require cake, didn’t you know that already?), so I made one with peaches and cream. If you know someone I love, kiss them for me.
Here's a picture of some of the musical toys that our kids have. I can't believe that the accordion didn't make it into this photo! I also missed the triangle. And though they aren't toys, we've also got an ok-ish keyboard and a super-duper violin in the house.
I've named and given a bit of information about each item's origin.
1. Guitar (French, real but tiny enough for a toddler to handle)
2. Thumb piano (Nairobi)
3. Double ended shaker (Nairobi)
4. Dried gourd with cowry shell shaker (Nairobi)
5. Percussion frog (Germany, missing the mallet)
6. Oud (Beirut-very cheaply made, child sized)
7. Tablah (Beirut-like the one Bonnie bought last year, but kid sized)
8. Rababa (Beirut-this one has one string, but they can have up to three)
9. Sajat (Beirut-originally a set of four, one missing, they work like castanets)
10. Plastic tambourine, maracas, and ankle bells (what remains from a bigger set that included a recorder, kazoo, other percussion instruments)
11. Wooden rattle (Germany, a baby present for Star)
12. Xylophone-piano Alligator (another cheap toy-instrument gift)
Star, shown here, painting her canvas of choice.
In other news, Matthew returned from Nairobi safe and sound 11 hours ago. He brought authetic African musical instruments with him that are too cool for words.
Beirut--Recent reports confirm that the P. Family Video Project (PFVP) has been brought to an abrupt halt. Sources close to the family have confirmed that the video camera was rendered non-operational by the youngest P., Dandelion, less than a week ago. Eyewitness accounts place the camera with the child mere seconds before it plunged downward, violently colliding with the composite-stone and marble floors of the family’s dwelling. Yet the family chose to take no immediate action, a choice that certainly did nothing to prevent tragic consequences. “I honestly didn’t think anything of it. We’ve dropped that thing a hundred times and nothing ever happened to it. I didn’t even consider that it might be broken,” the family’s disheartened matriarch confided. “Later, when the girls were finger painting, I thought it would be great to capture that moment—but the camera definitely wasn’t functioning.” It was at that point that she noticed the camera’s cracked casing, damage surely caused by the impact.
The PFVP began early in 2004 with the family’s purchase of a Sony Handy Cam. After creating the project’s first 15 DVDs, the camera began to emit a high-pitched whine, and was promptly replaced with the higher-end Panasonic ?? in October 2005. Five DVDs later, the camera was abducted from the family home on March 6, 2006. It remains at large. Since that time the PFVP has relied on the very JVC Digital Video Camera that met its demise less than a week ago.
Of course, the family has only begun to consider how they will cope with this most recent loss. “It was a good camera. Even though it was inexpensive, I was very pleased by the quality of the video output. I don’t know what we will do without it, and I’m not sure how we will replace it. All of our previous cameras were purchased in the United States. The Lebanese technology market is a joke—so we won’t buy one on location,” a family spokesperson said.
Importing a new camera is not an option and the family is not expecting to visit the US until July 2007. If they wait until then to replace the unit, it will mark an unprecedented delay in the PFVP’s production.
Inside sources have suggested that the viewers might not notice this most recent setback. “We have five DVDs waiting in the wings. We expect those disks to bridge any gap that our audiences may have perceived. By the time the as-yet unreleased disks have been distributed and viewed it is likely that we will have resolved hardware issue we now face.”
Still, the PFVP’s critics and fans alike have expressed concern about the future viability of the project. In a telephone conversation yesterday, one critic questioned the family’s commitment to the project. “At some point, you have to consider what these folks are up against. They live in a war-torn wasteland that can barely keep the power on and the sky from falling, and you wanna tell me that they’re going to find the kind of technology they need? Ok, ok, sure they can find it, but c’mon. These people are cheap. They aren’t going to shell out $200 more than they would pay at Staples.” Although prospects are grim, PFVP fans met in candle-light vigils through out the country to sing and pray. “We are here to give people hope. To tell them not to give up. PFVP is forever. It isn’t just a fad or a dream. Matthew and Mary Ann know that. They know we are counting on them, and we know they will never let us down.”
The other day I took the kids to a toy store because we were in dire need of new playdough and finger paint. Actually, we still are in need--neither was found. Well, technically I found playdough: two tubs sold with a super pasta factory. Or I could have bought a playdough sandwich making kit (with four tubs; white for bread, yellow for cheese, green for lettuce, and pink for meat) but it was frankly too gross. And I was not about to add to the amount of plastic-junk toys that we own, so we passed on playdough all together. Finger paint just wasn't there. But these were:
Crayola makes these great window/mirror markers that, according to the package, wash off skin and clothing (and of course the glass too). Magic. Since my kids inadvertently mark all kinds of things other than the intended surface, that promise was a selling point (even at nearly $1/marker). The washable thing is presently an untested feature, so I'll update this post after I've done the laundry. Meanwhile, more and more of our windows will be scribbled on.
Here's another installment extolling Beirut's artsy side. Two years ago I strollered Star to and from pre-school each day, walking a route that took us right past a little shop called Trompe L'Oeil. Looking through the big picture window on their storefront, I could see that the shop was full of children's things. Tiny stepping stools, hangers, toy boxes, book cases, kid-size table and chair sets, etc. All wood. All painted (usually with animals and plants). I loved it, but I knew it wasn't going to come cheap, so I waited. And waited. Waited some more because that is what I do. And bought!
If they had a webpage, I'd link to it, but since they don't, here's a scan of the business card they left with me. That black streak is my hand turning the card over while the scanner took it all in.
So, back to buying things. Star and Dandelion have (for about half a year now) been in a phase where just about everything has to have a nap time. Spoons, scrubbrushes, shoes. I have even been scolded for interrupting said naps unintentionally. So I requested a doll size cradle in an effort to create less trauma for my dear little mommie-daughters. The second purchase had less to do with the girls and more to do with war-induced shortages. After the summer-war, plastic storage boxes (big ones) have been hard to come by. When you find them, they're likely to be totally expensive and flimsy. Anyway, I need more even though I already have lots. They were all in use, and the only one that I could imagine repurposing to hold other stuff was the one serving as the girls' toy box. So, to free up the tub for other storage, I got the ladies a 'real' toy box. It is exactly what a toy box ought to be: huge with a lid, and hinges that prevent said lid from smashing fingers. Ah, perfection.
Terra sent us a lovely box of surprises a few months ago, which included two sets of flashcards to help kids learn numbers/counting and words/spelling. We were going through them the other day, and when we got to this one, I asked Star how many wheels the wagon had.
She said three. For a moment I had no idea what to say or how to respond. She’s right, of course. There are only three wheels in that picture. But wagons have four wheels. They just do.
Realism. It’s probably art’s most problematic ‘ism’ for exactly the reason Star illustrated. Can the flashcard picture be said to be realistic with only three wheels? It looks enough the way a wagon might from that angle, but that view of it doesn’t show all that the wagon is. It is, if anything only partially representative of a wagon’s reality. When it comes right down to it, what should realism mean?
Was it realism when Monet tried to paint light the way it actually looked? Was it realism when Courbet rejected painting’s conventional composition in favor of a more jumbled ‘real’ look? Or was it realism when artists, more than a century ago, started looking at fruit bowls and bathers from three or four different places and rendered each of those views on a single canvas. You could argue (and Star would likely agree) that they were being more real, truer to the whole reality of the depicted thing.
Instead of calling something realistic, we art-farts tend to call it ‘representational’, 'photo-real', 'hyper-real', 'naturalistic', etc., because realism means so many things that it in the end means nothing.
Josh's recent posts' conflation of art and games (a genius combination, I think) put me in mind of some of my favorite art games. I've blogged about one already, a memory game based on famous paintings from the Alte & Neue Pinakothek in Munich. This was the first art game I ever owned, and it was followed in quick succession by these:
Going clockwise from the top left, you've got a game about Renaissance paintings (thanks mom!), the collection of the Musee D'Orsay, Color (illustrated with paintings from France's major museums), and French history from pre-history to the first empire (illustrated with a wide variety of art and artifacts). These were mostly picked up in museum gift shops, and their mere existence, I think, covers a multitude of museum-gift-shop sins.
All 4 games work on the same principle: your goal is to collect all seven cards to make a set, and to complete as many of the seven sets (or families in French) as you can. This is done by asking other players for the cards you need or fishing a lucky card from the pot.
I've never won even one round of this type of game. In fact, the smallest one (about French history) made its way into our lives on the trip to Paris with Dan and Bonnie and Samantha in '03. We all played in the train on the way back to Germany, and it was shameful how poorly I did. The kids aren't quite old enough for this, which means I'm safe for the moment. Once Dandelion is old enough to not try to ingest or crumple the cards, we'll probably get a lot of use out of these, and I'll learn new lessons on facing defeat with grace.
Sadly, I don't have very many art books for children, but I do have Can You Find It, Too? (Thanks Bonnie!), which showcases some of the amazing art at the Metropolitan Museum. It works like Where's Waldo, except that it isn't Waldo and the visual style of each scene differs by centuries, continents, and media. I love the variety in this book, and the things that you search for are surprising and perfect for little kids. In one image (probably 1920s) of the seashore, packed with families, children, and dogs, you get to find among many other things, the one and only dog on a leash. In another picture from the 1700s of a busy Chinese city there are very few children, but only two women. An ancient Egyptian Hieroglyph has only one falcon, but 22 eyes and 30 feet, and your job is to find them all.
If you read the reviews at Amazon’s website, you'll see that there are some who think a few images are too violent, and they are probably right. Beheadings aren't really for little tykes. But as a mom who unconcernedly handed this book to my children, who am I to judge?
We will now depart from Impart Art's normal features to present this report on festive goings-on
Tuesday night the girls, in proper German fashion, each put a boot outside our front door. There was an old legend, I told them, that Santa had been sent on an errand to leave candy at the homes of all the good girls and boys. To let Santa know where to find you, all you have to do is put your boot out for him. So, we did. After they were in bed, I filled each boot (a rather tight squeeze) with the things you see the girls enjoying below:
I expected that the girls would forget overnight what they’d done with their boots, but they didn’t. Before enjoying their treats though, we delivered two paper Christmas trees with candy taped on them to our neighbors. We tried very hard to be silent and sneaky in the stairwell.
This year, the smallest chocolate santas were the ones made by the Kinderschokolade people, which is why they are white inside. I had to get small ones because tiny kids have tiny boots. Yes, Dandelion has her chocolate santa and Star's. Star was bored with candy by the time I got this picture. What you can't see is how Dandelion struggled to hold both santas, her marshmallow rope, and eat gummy bears out of a little sack all at once.
As you all ought to know, I have two charming kids, and to protect the innocent, we'll call the oldest child star and the youngest dandelion. On frequent occasion, my interest in art gets taken out on them. It happened again not long ago. Matthew showed me a link to a neat little webpage where you can make a simulated Pollock "drip painting" just by waving the mouse over the formerly blank canvas--err, screen. Of course, I immediately set the Jr.s down to try it. Neither one is a very good fake Pollock, but both are pretty good additions to Star and Dandelion's art escapades. Can you guess who did which painting?
(readers of character will resist the urge to cheat)
No, we aren’t really talking about cuisine or fine dining or any of the culinary arts.
But I will pass along a recipe that I include among those arts and it’s yummy and it’s relevant to my art idea today. It’s at the end of the post.
So one afternoon, I made a chocolate desert and let my daughter have one of the mixing bowls. This is one of those childhood indulgences that I thought she ought to have access to, but she soon found a different use for the chocolate.
And she isn’t alone. Lots of artists have worked with chocolate, which is a phenomenon I can’t fully explain. Among them are Janine Antoni who made this piece called Chocolate Gnaw in 1992
and Vic Muniz who I wrote about back in January for his sugar art. He’s also done marvelous things with chocolate syrup. Here’s an example from 1999
Antoni’s huge hunk of gnawed-away chocolate deserves more attention than this, and I guess Muniz’s work could also use some more explication. But I'd rather have some chocolate. If you'd like to join me, here’s the recipe that became the medium of my daughter’s creativity.
Inspirational Chocolate Dessert *
4oz. semisweet chocolate
½ cup heavy cream
3 egg yolks
5 egg whites
3 tbsp granulated sugar
Line a jelly roll pan with foil, butter it, and turn the oven on to 425 F.
Roughly chop the chocolate and melt it together with the cream in a small-ish sauce pan, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat and add the egg yolks one at a time, combining thoroughly after each one.
Return the pan to low heat for a few minutes, stirring all the while to cook the yolks.
Beat the whites with a handheld mixer for a few minutes until they are fluffy but not firm. Add the sugar, and continue beating until stiff peaks form.
Fold the chocolate and beaten egg whites together.
Spread evenly in the jelly roll pan, and bake for about 20 minutes.
Remove from oven. Cover with a tea towel, and invert on a table or countertop. Place the pan to the side, and gently loosen the foil from the cake.
Allow to cool completely.
Cut away any crust that may have formed a the edges of the cake.
Spread with something ridiculously tasty, like peanut butter cream frosting (equal volumes peanut butter and real whipped cream, blended with enough confectioners’ sugar to give it the consistency and taste of frosting).
Roll it up and serve.
*yes, I named it all by my onesie.
Ok, so I really am a nerd. I love art games, and I sort of collect them. About four years ago I got my very own, very first art game. I was for sale in the Kunsthalle Mannheim, and my sisters picked it up for me. I’m still glad that they did. It is a very simple memory game. Each pair is comprised of two selections from a single painting in either the Alte or Neue Pinakothek in Munich.
This is an example of one painting and pair set taken from it. I took this image from the handy little information booklet that came with my game. It is Johann-Freidrich Overbeck’s 1828 Italia and Germania. In this painting Overbeck indicates two opposing forces in his art experience—the Italian masters and their aesthetic, and the Germanic masters and theirs. Here, personifications of the two are seated together as friends. It is an interesting attempt to both literally and figuratively reconcile the two artistic forces.
I’ll go into greater detail abut the difference between Italian and Germanic painting in the future. Anyway, I love this memory game because of pieces like this in it. Paare contains 36 pairs that cover almost 500 years of European painting.
Here's one of my daughter's finger paintings.
It is one of my aims to be a culturally sensitive parent and another to expose my children to a wide variety of artistic expressions. What better way to introduce a child to the arts than through direct involvement making them? Enter finger paint! I love the hands-on, unmitigated access to the medium that finger painting provides. Of course, this is ideal for small children who, in any case, lack the technique for the tools formal painting requires.
So, we added finger painting to the rotation of activities that our kids enjoy. I found out pretty fast that Star didn't get a few essential things about this activity. She wasn't looking at her paper for example. "Look at what you are doing!" I told her. "You can decide where you put the colors and which colors you use. Don't look at me, look at the paper!" I was getting frustrated by this whole thing. And then it hit me. No, she doesn't have to look at the paper. No, she doesn't have to choose where the colors go or which colors she uses. Didn't we cover this in art history in the very first semester? Wasn't the whole Dada movement aimed at denying intent? Didn't the Surrealists love the unconscious because it freed them from having to mean something?
I'm not too sure that the Dada and Surrealism movements actually succeeded in creating art without meaning, or that such artists actually worked without intent. But I have revisited the rules for finger painting in my house.
