families

at school this week we drew family portraits. (someone's guess as to what a family portrait might be was "a family sitting on a porch".)

such a miraculous thing to see how what they make of a direct prompt. these sorts of things are usually not my thing, i don't like to guide the Littles through tasks where they make something recognizable. but in this circumstance, owing to a larger project in the near future, it had to be done (to my dislike.) but! beautiful things happened, and i silently cheered on those who put down abstracted shapes and broken lines to represent family members because of the way those people felt and seemed.

so we have energies and personalities translated into lines and colors. something adults pay tuition and hard sweat to learn, or to reconnect with, struggling all the while. but those under five years old? for them it just flows.

new year at the end of the year

the new school year rang in. a while ago. somehow, despite leaving a clean and orderly classroom, major gutting and revamping had to be undertaken. perhaps it is because i entered halfway through the last school year and wandered into someone else's space. organized- fairly,  clean - sort of, but mine? not. and having a week to decide how to a handle an 8 by 10 room, one third of it cabinets and counters, it was amazing how much was pulled from the guts of the tiny cupboards to be piled neatly and put back in. quite an undertaking.

but then the year folded in on itself as if the slow swoon and dive of summer never happened. and we are swiftly back to the old ways of the world. and familiarity in this sense was not so bad as 'coming back to work' can sound.

new year, the same old (and dirtier) smock.
making the same old play dough.

and coming back into the evidence of the hands of the very small. and if such honesty and fearlessness is not humbling, then i am at loss with that word. 

ends

it's strange to think how the end of a school year could have so much impact on a person who is not a student.(myself.) there is, of course, that caveat of teaching that is a magnet for people- put up with 9 months of teaching and be rewarded with three months time off. seems fine. except that the natural swing and bang of the seasons seems to thrust back at us. in June we are aligned with a buoyant and luminous sense of swelling. the natural world is expanding, greening up and unfolding. what a time to feel doors latching and settling into a thump of silence. surely this is not the time for closure. and, accordingly, as our school year has 5 days left, the little sparks and snaps above the heads of the very small light little fires of impatience and mania all over. noses bleed, fingers break, clothes are changed and changed again. the students here haven't yet fully conformed to the routine of the adult world and it is apparent that they struggle with this idea of Ending when the best time of year is Beginning. it is a colorful and innocent kind of insanity. torn paper everywhere.and then the green and hazy curtain of a long summer. what luxuries are these.

some views

the strange world of Montessori materials...

 

 

...and the less predictable but far more profound world of the mind of a Montessori student

she can finish things

because of frequent occurrences of this...

  

and with regards to this (thanks smockshop!)

here are... results! it has happened, handicrafts. for real.

 

 

 

 

(with the obvious help of a professional photographer, a high-tech camera and an aesthetically pleasing backdrop...)

bring it on flying tempera!

bring it on small boogery hands!

bring it on juice stains!

bring it on school-dog-constantly-rolling-in-dead-maggoty-fox-kit!

my smock and is totally ready!

on softness

   

getting back into the swing of the Collecting. this is an unofficial and ongoing project that documents nothing whatsoever, and everything at once. at times it is sheaf of tickets and lists fastened into the sketchbook, at other times something more deliberate and opaque.

reading this lately and it's been changing me in delightful and deep ways.

Judith Lasater is interested in living through a yoga practice whose sanskrit yoga is meant to convey a 'sense of wholeness,' and not, necessarily, the bodywork we associate with the word. as this alternate definition of yoga is unpacked, Lasater has neat spaces carved out around unruly words like "discipline," and "detachment," which are words that tend to me make squeamish. however, as with the ayurvedic equation of seeking balance by adding to life instead of restraining it, Lasater navigates through the weedy rushes of the concepts with similarly holistic ideas. part of what appeals to me about her direction is the simple comfort of knowing there are others in the world whose fiercest Life intentions become bedraggled, dull and ragged when they are all in flight together. this kind of knotwork, she says, can be resolved through ideas of detachment and discipline.

discipline, she opines, embodies intention and commitment, no necessarily accomplishment. "practice is discipline in action...discipline is doing what is possible with consistency..." and is not necessarily task-oriented behavior.

the room is a bell to me when i read this in failing twilight last evening, every object is resonant with the simplicity of this revelation.

she continues, "when you notice that you are pushing yourself to complete a task, soften and be merciful with yourself."

soften? and be merciful?? with yourself???

this must be that kind of Buddhist detachment that gets swung around in misty philosophical conversations, the idea of viewing yourself, momentarily, from the third person. observing yourself by yourself. for if it is possible to be soft and merciful with yourself, then it follows that such constraint and heavy loads are strapped to our bent backs, for back of a better phrase, on purpose.

on a totally different note, the kids at my school are learning about aboriginal artwork and the concept of self-portraiture. particularly, they are learning about a departure from realism and representationalism- painting the way things feel not the way they appear. to manifest this in person, they are being traced, life-size, on a butcher paper and painted in. clearly this does not present the problem that arises in adults- struggling to relinquish control over aesthetics and to engage in a purely sensory experience of art-making.

 

   

before the discussion about representation in art-making constraint abounded. a glut of self-doubt prevailed. there was discomfort with the medium, the tools and yawning chasm of between the imagined (an idea in the head) and the realized (that idea projected onto the page). but when it was made clear that the goal was simply enjoying the markmaking it was universal epiphany. a crackling and brilliant thing. i think this is the kind of merciful softness we strive to pull around us when we approach the abyss, seemingly the results are ravishing.

                : :

is this where we live, in this place, at this moment, with the air so light and wild?

                      --A.D

rabbits

rabbit rabbit rabbit!

  

(rabbit)

happy first of May!

Joe, one of our three classroom bunnies, apparently knew today was a day to pose coyly in the art room - after shocking me slightly upon arriving, still bleary with sleep, when i came into the rouse the lights and put down the chairs.

important sister birthdays and other things to be grateful for- like buds and rainclouds which we are not usually so fortunate to see in the mountains.

 

   

(Daryl choosing the most attractive prop to stand next to, clearly indicating the subject of this picture- the slow patch of thrilling green  in the aspen glades up high that has made it to us at last! leaves all round to follow i hope) 

some fits of green on the morning walk replete with glacier lilies (too shy to make it into the camera) whose startling  fragility and brightness thicken the floors of newly thawed hillsides and are gone within a week. you have to be out, always out, with your eyes open because mountain spring will melt fast down into summer if you aren't.

decrees

 

courtesy of school, forty six students and four adults were funneled into the salt lake valley to visit this gem. such a maniacal collection of fussy cataloguing, bone chips, various bits of easily-overlook-able debris labeled with the neat proclamations of age and worth make me giddy at any rate. but this. this floored me.

thanks to thoughtful grant writing and a turn out of chad punching Salt Lake Locals (who do, as it turns out, have opinions about the health of local museums) the natural history museum was moved from a stuffy mausoleum of a place to a new beautiful location that was built to blend in almost perfectly with the sand stone bluffs of the foothills.

the above photograph is an aerial view of a simulated sandstorm. it whirls, day in and day out, the sand below changing and drifting in a tiny mimicry of the real and roaring thing. the plexiglass window, perfect for squashing a nose against, is roughly three feet across and lit from above. of all the muddy, slimy, tactile, shiny and speaking exhibits the small ones visited (they are at the oldest six) the blowing sand enthralled them the very most.

to try to assign any mouthful to the visual order and impact of a natural history museum -- that of sandwiching eons of time into neatly labeled glass cubes-- and this natural history museum in particular, is somewhat bootless. but to try to reign in the gesture of such a place is more manageable.

there is, i think, a reason humans of all ages ogle and become giddy in these buildings that house physical records of dirt, slime, bones, rocks and mud. perhaps it is the relief of knowing that some white-coated and sagely collection of scientists have made visual order of our natural world when that task is otherwise so hugely daunting. or maybe it is our preoccupation with condensation and distillation; that the novelty of such a compression of time and space thrill the pleasure nerves we are such slaves to.

for me it is, as usual, the exaltation of the mundane. for only very infrequently does a case containing neatly numbered and labeled rocks of all the same size, shape and color lift the hair on anyone's neck. but somehow, a museum demands that we evaluate the placement of the exhibit. it is the age old question asked of artists and art critics- Duchamp most famously- why does an object become suddenly important when it is on stage? the exhibition space and the object have a babbling silent dialogue with one another as to who bolsters the existence of the other and it is over this dialogue that we, the viewers, float to ask ourselves why we are looking at a case of rocks with anything other than a flitting gaze. this is the magic of museums! and surely clenching a fist around any cupful of dirt in the outside world should kindle a similar luminous light if only we knew where the pullstrings were.

this kind of ranting make one hungry to go load up arms in the library with the opinions of various people on the subject

Edwin Teale (any, all) on the intimate lives of quiet things (mainly insects, trees and rocks)

Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood) on the epiphanies of the wild (silver eels migrations across meadows, the new found sight of previously blind cataract patients, etc.)

James Putnam (Art and Artifact) on the question of museum and display as art object

Candy Jernigan (Evidence) on showcasing the every day

France Morin (Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings and Songs) on the economy of the visual in the metaphorical and literal sense

Anne Carson (Nox, Plainwater, Autobiography of Red, Decreation,)  on the saintliness of any and all things

Gregory Blackstock (any collections) the autistic visual cataloguer who draws, from memory, collections of various kinds

i could go on and on. but it is important to be steeped in these variations on the plain. it is this kind of ritual for the sacred that has sustained humanity since the beginning. we could be so lucky to learn to fine tune our eyes to the every day, even in the smallest ways.

 

novelties

spent Friday rummaging in my new crazy cupboard. there was an infinite project of sorting to undertake: poms poms from glitter beads, pipe cleaners from ribbon, craft feathers from popsicle sticks, etc. etc. and all under the maddening, inescapable and oddly itchy presence of years worth of spilled glitter. below, a few good finds:

 

**

** to be clear, for those of you not born in the dusty and brown-paper lined decades of yore, the above rectangle gridded and labeled with the strange "date due" was an actual card that got stamped (by human locomotion, with a large rubber dating stamp that had a profoundly satisfying sound when fiercely clomped onto paper) and manually tucked into an oaktag envelope on the back of library books to let that patron know when her library materials were expected back because other, eager, book-reading patrons were often eager to have their go at reading them. now you knowwwww.

balms

kinds of domesticity evolve and shift in the winter months. at this point the cold, flat days, sometimes drifted over with the threats of snow, other times pierced with the glass shard cold of clear-skied sun become monotonous no matter how dutifully one tries to find divine meaning in examining Light.

little miracles of plain things have kindled little bonfires in our small house and plain though they may be, they have helped immeasurably.

**

** training our kefir grains to fizzle and thrive in the cloudy gravenstein juice we so love. turns out, the chalky, sweet juice is never happier than when plunked into a large jar of the stuff. after 24 hours (versus 48 for the water and fruit concoction) the juice is fiercely carbonated from the hard working kefir grains and undeniably boozy. yip yip!

a few bits of the weekend

two good thing at the weekend's onset.

the inadvertent placement of a bit of the big dipper from washing up tempera paint.

a proper car-snack of little italian rolls, heritage white cheddar, a pixie mandarin and a few tissue thin slices of heady, rosemary rubbed spanish ham.

may errands to find dress up clothes, make dates and commit to various Big Deal kind of propositions. fuel is necessary in this case no?

good work

the new change has turned out to be fully fleshed, luminous and brilliant. so often, such shifts in routine, lifestyle or space seem to be brittle on the onset. there is a kind of disbelief that breeds tentative movements and a kind of contrived preciousness in handling. i am pleased to learn, as i get up each day to stoop down to ruffle tiny braids and straighten snowclothes, that working with the very small to entrust the language of visual aptitude has been only the best of new things.

this monday i set about organizing cabinets (the wealth of strange craft materials is astounding), making up fresh playdough (flour + salt + water + liquid watercolor), making a frenchpress of coffee and experimenting with my rather rusty dusty fingerpainting skills.

it is an interesting way of walking the land to look backwards for those tactile crafts and explorations that have stuck with us for so long. for instance, i have the fondest memories of oil pastel and black tempera scratchboard, homemade silly putty, gloop (that strange neither-solid-nor-liquid concoction of cornstarch and water), life size traceable self portraits, the hovery, bleedy hues of rainbow craft tissue...and now my objective after i make coffee and fold my creaking self into tiny chairs every morning is to pass that tactile joy on to the iPad, minivan theatre system, Go-gurt, and tiny rhinestone emblazoned Toms generation.

and they make beautiful things, nevertheless.