Art tasting

The end of the semester means service projects come to fruition in Honors classes. I've been kept hopping by documentary filmmakers and student researchers all swirling around the topic of public art. My freshman class used a mural painted by a student as a thesis project in their residence hall as a jumping-off point for a public education campaign and opinion polling about campus art in general.



We gathered the night before the event for all the prep. An essential element to any campus event, I've discovered, is the banner -- projected onto a bedsheet to trace the outline, then painted on by enthusiastic student artists.




Our concept was to exchange homebaked treats for responses to a quick 1-minute survey. The idea came about when my initial questionnaire of class skills revealed that eight of fourteen class members were bakers.




Even the best ideas need a helping hand. A class member's mom contributed these unsolicited and totally awesome cakepops in our theme colors.




Theme, you ask? Yes indeed. I don't consider a project really graspable or executable until we have a name that provides the core idea and the driving force. A student came up with SweetARTS, and two others designed this incredible logo, playing off the iconic SweeTarts brand.




We passed out specially-designed informational flyers with surveys attached at various locations on campus associated with public art -- the university's art gallery, the sports complex that houses mascot statuary, the library whose walls are lined with donated collections, near prominent outdoor sculptures -- and asked recipients to come to Alumni Circle, the campus's historic heart and the site of a much-ballyhooed but unfortunately abandoned public art installation a few years ago, to submit them.




The surveys (approved by our institutional review board) used pictures to assess the respondent's familiarity with outdoor sculpture on campus, and asked a few questions about the value and priority the respondent would place on campus art collections.




We were hoping to collect 100 surveys during the three hours of our public event. Community members stuffed this box with 316.




Respondents also were invited to paint or leave handprints on a temporary art wall at the Alumni Circle site.




It seems strangely appropriate that two random passersby snuck into our group photo. After all, our project was all about getting people walking through campus thinking about the art around them, and amplifying their voices. Kudos to the SweetARTS team for an amazing project!

You can follow the project results by liking our SweetARTS page on Facebook. There we'll share the full project report, including the research students did into public art and campus examples, and the results from our SweetARTS mini-survey, as well as a focus group and survey on the large mural installed as a student thesis project in the Honors residence hall last year and on opinions about the place of art within the Honors living-learning community.

NWA

In this state, that stands for Northwest Arkansas.  We planned a brief two-night trip up there during spring break week to see the new, highly acclaimed Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and to let the kids have the fun of a hotel stay.  Then flooding rain was forecast for the first part of the week, with several inches possible at our destination, making us wonder if it was going to happen. We ended up having to drive in some uniformly soggy, foggy, ugly weather on the day we traveled, but the kids had an amazing time and we were introduced to a beautiful destination in the state -- so it was all worth it.



We like to stay at the Embassy Suites when we can because (a) suite, hooray, kids have their own room, and (b) the breakfast is a destination in itself. Archer calls it the Em Bass Ee Suites, emphasis on the "bass" like the fish.




Our first swim of the warm season! The kids got right back in the swing of the water, and take a look at my newly svelte husband!




The museum doesn't open until 11 am (which I personally think is a huge missed opportunity -- we got there right when the doors opened and there was such a huge crowd that the upper parking lot was already full), so we visited the Wal-Mart Visitor Center on Bentonville's charming town square beforehand. Here the kids are posing by a coin-operated ride-on toy modeled on Sam Walton's famously unpretentious Ford pickup truck (the original is inside the Visitor Center exhibition space).




Waiting for lunch at the museum's beautiful Eleven cafe. When Archer trails his finger over something like this, these days it's because he is tracing the path of a pretend marble using the real world as a Marble Blast Gold level. "I just like to put a marble on that," he explains.




The museum was glorious. I can't wait to go back and explore it at my leisure. Here Cady Gray is recording her impressions of Adolph Gottlieb's "Trinity" in her museum guidebook.




Glow Bowl and Lazer Tag at Fast Lane, a giant arcade complex, rounded out the day perfectly.




And after all the weather drama, the drive home was a spectacular riot of spring sunshine, wildflowers, and burgeoning green. We'll definitely go back soon!

Look I made a hat

One of my favorite songs from any genre is "Finishing The Hat" from Sunday in the Park with George. I don't know that there's a better description of the process and the pride of creation. The smallest detail involves a constant passage from the world of the artist into the world of the artwork -- a submission to the reality of that created world. And then when it is done, the accomplishment is immense not because of the magnitude of what has been created, but because of the power exerted and the change from nothing to something: "Look, I made a hat where there never was a hat."

What attracts the artist is control. When circumstances take control away from you in the real world, when you are blocked or limited by location or by other people, you take control in the arena that is yours alone. But Sondheim is saying that it's not about being the king of that world; it's about creating an environment where the world exerts its own logic and brings its power to bear on you, where you obey the forces that are bringing it into being.

I've come late to the addictive power of the maker. Writing is something I've done all my life, and I've felt that sense of being able to craft words and phrases that are more than the sum of their parts. But to make something come alive for multiple senses -- for sight and touch, for warmth and movement -- you need to create in the physical world. That's something I didn't start doing until a few years ago. The transformation is both laborious and intoxicating. Which is exactly how Sondheim describes it.

Creation awaits me this weekend, and I'm afraid and excited, the way I always am before starting a project that will have a bunch of challenges, probably some setbacks, and could go horribly wrong. I love the pride that comes from the improbable existence of a finished object. But even more, I think, I love knowing what goes into them -- their story, their birth pangs. "Look, I made a hat" requires and includes the whole song that comes before: "Reaching through the world of the hat like a window/Back to this one from that."

In the details

Fall's arrival draws my eyes upwards to the shape of treetops against the deepening blue of the sky.  And invariably I think of a day in art class in seventh or eighth grade, and a watercolor still life assignment.  The subject was an arrangement of budding branches in a vase.  I spent the first few class periods working on the shape of the vase and the precise curvature and proportion of the branches.

Then came the moment to turn to the minuscule reddish-pink flowers on the branches.  And that's when I made a decision that I still think about to this day.  I felt that no one could be expected to actually paint those tiny petals individually.  I was sure I would not be blamed for merely suggesting the flowers, rather than specifying any detail.

So I washed a kind of general pink haze around those carefully delineated branches.  And then I went on to wash some blue and green behind that as a sort of paint backdrop.

It was a terrible copout, and an even worse picture.  I got a bad grade.  I can still see how awful it looked -- like I'd just given up.  Which is what I did.

Looking at those trees today, with each leaf of tens of thousands sharply evident against the sky as if pasted on by collage-style, I perceive that these details, at every scale, are a key to the meaning of life.  And I see my knitting and crocheting work as a remedy for my former negligence.  Stitch by stitch is how we have to go.  There's no way to take a short-cut or fake your way to the end; every thing you do, good ideas and bad, careful decisions and careless, become details in the finished object.  They might be details you treasure or ones you wish you could forget.  Leaf by leaf, petal by petal, stitch by stitch -- the edges clear, the individuality unmistakeable, the whole constructed thereof.

Interactivity

Cady Gray came into the living room where her dad and I were watching Project Runway, bearing a gift. "I figured out how to use those big pieces of paper," she told me -- referring to large newsprint sheets that had cushioned our Ikea furniture this summer, and were so unblemished and smooth that I put them in her room for arts-and-crafts purposes.

She flourished a large origami star from behind her back.  "It was rectangular, so I had to give it a little trim to make it square," she pointed out.  Then, without warning, as if she had just thought of it: "I'm going to color it."

Fifteen minutes later she was back.  "This side -- colored," she demonstrated.  "This side blank.  You can color this side.  You can use my coloring as a guide if you want.  Or you can use your own creativity."

"Interactive.  I like it!" I praised her.

"Yes.  You can participate!" she enthused. "Here, I'll sign it right under this flap.  And I'll leave a space.  If you color it, you can sign it, too."

The more I think about it, the more my praise doesn't seem empty. It's a generous gesture to open up a space where another person can be a part of your creation.  For Cady Gray, audience participation or partnership isn't just a nice extra.  It's an essential part of the joy she gets from creating.

I think I've molded her in that direction, too.  Whenever she asked me to come to her room to see a building she'd made or a Tinkertoy gadget she'd invented, I would make a suggestion or ask if I could explore.  Her self-appointed role as a gracious host led her to agree enthusiastically and integrate my contribution into her description or construction.

It's a short step from that kind of interactivity to sharing the stage and the credit for creative expression.  I love this impulse in my daughter.  She's both confident of her own artistic worth and eager to pass along the praise to others, even to the point of encouraging them by leaving them a blank space to fill with their own ideas.  If she becomes a teacher, as is her childhood desire, this attitude will serve her well.  But it's wonderful -- both functional and beautiful -- no matter what kind of work she ends up doing.

Robot

Why does this drawing delight me so?

I came home this evening to find it stacked on the kitchen counter with other papers the kids had brought home from school.  When I asked Cady Gray what it was, she told me it was a robot.  "It's holding two diamonds, which is where it gets its power.  It's powering up," she explained.  The ovoid appendages near the legs are airplanes which it can send off to carry messages.  The gauge in the middle is a power meter.  "And it can hold other things when it's not charging itself," she clarified.

Something about this drawing makes me giddy.  The roundness, maybe -- the way the robot's instruments are distributed on its circular body.  Or the imagination of diamonds connected by wires to the head, combined with the recognizable conventionality of the squarish, mechanical robot face.  Most of all, it's that childhood habit of addition and accretion: having decided to draw a robot, the various features of that robot can be increased without limit, just be adding detail after detail.  And of course, every attachment has a Cady Gray-ish idea behind it, as if they were symbols in a code that she carries around in her head.

I tried to explain to her why I loved her robot so much; I praised her imagination and attention to specifics and inclusion of detail and story.  But really, I love it because it seems the perfect record of something surprising I never knew she was holding within -- the spontaneous yet meticulous emergence of some remote possibility she was nevertheless destined to enact.

Happy birthday to me

Not only does my husband cook my favorite foods and get me amazing, thoughtful gifts on my birthday, but he always makes sure the kids have a chance to make me cards.  Today I woke up to the oversized cards they made with markers and art paper after their early breakfast.

Here's Cady Gray's card.  I could tell she lavished attention on the poetic cover ...




... then ran out of time for the inside.




Archer, on the other hand, takes delight in addressing me by my first name ...




... then praises me for occasionally acting like a mom (that's my office room number and a Wii remote in the pictures) ...






... and gave me a math-themed birthday cake! Look at that elegant candle!




I love my kids, and they loved me back all day long. Best birthday ever!

Words and pictures by

Cady Gray brought home a few pages of writing about her number one favorite subject -- Pokémon. Here they are, complete with illustrations.



I like to watch Pokémon. I have the Deluxe Pokémon handbook. Pokémon are fun to have, and their battles are exciting to watch! (P.S. I'm going to be a Pokéball for halloween.)




A Pokéball is Red and white a Great Ball is blue and white a Ultra ball is yellow and white and a Master ball is Purple




and white and each one has a button. Pokémon games are my favorite!

It's the arts

Noel is in Austin appearing on a Flow Conference panel on television criticism. Luckily Conway put on an arts festival for the amusement of my children!




Up top, Archer colored the A in ArtsFest for Archer. Here Cady Gray colors the R because ... it's the next letter, I guess.




They say autistic kids lack mirror neurons, but Archer has never seen a dance performance that he didn't immediately want to imitate. He followed these dancers' every move ...




... even when it took him down to the ground.




And of course, they were proud of Mom's yarn bombing. (Front page worthy yarn bombing, actually!)




Cady Gray really wanted to scrutinize the yarn-bombing centerpiece: this Honda motorcycle completely covered with knit and crochet. (Even the stand anchoring it in place had a comprehensive cozy.)




It was the kind of morning, with the kind of kids, that makes Morton Brown's brilliant mural Aurora Rising seem like sober realism.

Blammo

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Tonight a dozen or so local knitters, crocheters, and allies, aged 20 to 70, covered a downtown park in yarn.




I made this wrap for one of the pillars that holds up the bandstand. 64 inches long.




The shiny reddish purple crochet pelt is also my creation. Trust me, you're glad it's out of focus.




Some of the donated material was absolutely gorgeous. Look, this lamp cozy has cables! Cables!




My student Kate made a tree scarf. The woman in the background watched us for several minutes with her car door open, asking questions and preventing other cars from getting in that parking space.




The Sensible Seamstress sent this piece all the way from Kansas City, where even the crocheted trees are up to date.




Sewing the pieces on was a little like lacing a corset. What was stunning was watching these flat strips and squares conform to the shape of the environment, transforming that shape with color and texture.




Poles of all kinds disappeared underneath big crochet and knit stitches. Bare metal started to look barren in comparison.




Maybe next year we can cover the caboose.




After a while, even my seaming started to look like part of the art.




Donations from different crafters created fortuitous juxtapositions of color, shape, and texture.




Ariel M got so into it. I think she might go yarn bombing on her own next weekend.




She made this beautiful, welcoming armrest cover. Isn't it the perfect accompaniment to a set-a-spell by the fountain?




We worked through sunset and into the gathering darkness.




Soon you couldn't even see the green fringed skirt you just sewed on a lamppost.




A woman showed up about 75 minutes into the event with this enormous afghan, the perfect size for wrapping around an entire bench.




Just as we were tying off the last stitches, the piece de resistance rolled up: a crochet covered motorcycle. Wait 'till the ArtsFest attendees get a load of this.




Those who stayed to the very end. Yarn bombers forever!