growing a Juniper

Today was the last day of school for my kindergartener, soon to be first grader. Time passed with imperceptible growth - until I remember back to just nine months ago when she began the school year. Kids continue to grow, no matter where they are, but I'm acutely thankful that she had a kind and loving teacher who made the process a positive one.

Last year I gave the girls' teachers botanical paintings - a fitting symbol of the growth they had nurtured in Juniper and Olive during the year. Juniper and I collaborated on this year's painting together. Now that's a clear marker of growth in my budding artist (and her mother, who successfully relinquished a bit of control on an art project).

art from strangers

I glanced sideways out of the corner of my eye. He seemed to be sketching my baby and I - the stranger alongside us at the counter. I tried not to appear too obvious as I held a bit more still. But then a request from one of my children had me on the move again.

A few minutes later the stranger smiled and handed me a simple sketch. A random act of kindness coupled with a random act of art.

For someone quite self-conscious of her own drawing abilities, this was an excellent lesson as to the delight that can ensue from the uninhibited sharing of talents.

 Like this one.

the human element of art

We mustered up enough courage to take our children to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this weekend. There were moments when it felt like a foolhardy endeavor of the highest order:

I glance over and notice the 5-year-old standing where some shaky film footage is being projected onto a white wall. Then I realize she is poised with her pencil millimeters from the wall. I dash over and (I think) barely avoid disaster as I pull the pencil from her hand and move her back a few feet. Fast forward two minutes. The 3-year-old is now standing at exactly the same spot with an eraser in her hand.

Apparently I wasn't quite quick enough - she was trying to mitigate her sister's overzealous involvement with the exhibit.

Then there was the rest of the visit, filled with the enthusiasm of the 3-year-old moving from room to room proclaiming what she saw in the art, which was so very open to interpretation. Or with her older sister intently sketching the paintings on the wall (which was why she had that dratted pencil in the first place).

The children drank in their surroundings. Their excitement was contagious. Dare I confess that I am not particularly fond of modern art? I am one of those unenlightened people who looks at a painting of squares and paint splotches and says, "my five-year-old could do that." But that day my children helped me feel the paintings.

Confined to one room for a bit while my baby nursed, I was particularly taken with a painting by Mark Rothko. My children and others moved in and out of the space in front of it. The combination of painting and the people interacting with it created a constantly changing work of art.

After they could no longer stand to be mere observers of art, we headed over to Golden Gate Park. In addition to your typical playground structures, there was a climbing wall in the shape of an ocean wave and sculptures of various beach wildlife. Again, art unfolded before my eyes.

 

24 kindergarteners and some circles

 With my oldest entering kindergarten this past year, I've been reintroduced to the world of school fundraisers. I told my husband, as the flyers came home for fundraiser after fundraiser, that I would prefer to simply donate a share of the amount of money the school needed rather than feel obligated to buy overpriced chocolates, buy popcorn and soda for a class gift basket and then bid on it, go to the school "carnival" and yield to my daughter's pleadings for paying for cotton candy and a cake walk, or pay my daughter for running around in a circle half a dozen times. I'm feeling rather Scrooge-ish as I type this. Perhaps I don't yet understand the community that is built from fundraising in this way.

But when my daughter's teacher asked me to head up the class art project for the upcoming school art auction, my interest was piqued. I scoured the internet for ideas on what 24 kindergarteners could put together that would command lucrative bids from other members of our community. Kandinsky's Squares with Concentric Circles kept popping up. It seemed plausible and my daughter's teacher liked the idea, so I ran with it.

Squares with Concentric Circles. Wassily Kandinsky.

Past endeavors I had read about had the children use pastels or paint on cardstock squares, then assemble them into a cohesive picture on paper. I really wanted the kids to be able to work with canvas, though, so I prepped a few yards of canvas with gesso and cut it down into dozens of 7" x 7" squares.

The day of the painting session, I introduced the artist to the children. I read some of his inspiring quotes regarding how he felt his art captured emotion. I gave a quick refresher on color mixing (we only gave the children red, yellow and blue to work with). I put on some inspiring music. Then the painting began.

I came home with 24 beautifully unique squares. Over the next few weeks I went through the process of turning them into a cohesive work of art. I trimmed down the squares to 6" x 6" and arranged them on a 2' x 3' canvas. I attached them with a layer of gesso. A few coats of varnish helped complete their unification.

 

My 3-year-old helped to document the process. Along with about 50 unnecessary closeups of my (and the baby's) behind. (Orange juice and Trader Joe's soup cartons were among the many household items carted out to help press down the canvas as it dried.)

I attached a card to the back of the canvas explaining a bit about the finished piece. But it didn't do justice to the excitement I had felt from the kids as they painted.

 How wonderful to be part of their creative process. And what a beautiful creation it was!

visual obsessions: maynard dixon

We were living in Indiana when my brother-in-law sent us a book of Maynard Dixon paintings. Ohhh, how those colors and shapes invigorated and tormented me. There are hues that exist in the west, you see, where there is no humidity to diffuse the color, that never showed up in seven years of midwestern sky. Sometimes I would look through the book and think the clouds were borderline cartoonish, nigh unto absurd. And the swaths of rock on sky, the miniscule scale of humanity -- these paintings seemed like a dream of a place, the painter just a few steps beyond melodramatic.

But I don't think I've gone one day in the past year and a half without being floored by the clouds around here. They really are cartoonishly spectacular. Bold. Intense. Frothy.

Driving home the other night there was a swell that rolled right off the foothills, bending and bowling just like a horizontal twister.

Just, as a matter of fact, like this.

Maynard really did know what he was doing.

fairy rings again

 

What wedding gift do you give to someone who has everything? (Or two someones, that is.) Why symbolism, of course! And some original art. This was my second painting of a ring of giant redwoods (aka fairy ring).

An excerpt from my blog post about my first Fairy Ring painting:

Also referred to as a Family Circle, these tree formations occur when a redwood starts sprouting new trees, a method of asexual reproduction. When the central "parent" tree dies and eventually rots away, the only indication that it ever existed is a ring of giant redwoods, empty in the center.

I could easily get carried away in the symbolism of such a phenomenon - parents leaving behind a strong circle of children, interconnected by the source of their existence (perhaps in some families the only thing they have in common, but a strong binding nevertheless), providing support and shelter to each other.

When writing in the card to the bride and groom, we left out the part about asexual reproduction.

classic book and a Christmas gift

My little brother's favorite book growing up was Where the Wild Things Are.

His most requested bedtime book, he would usually "read" it to us instead of the other way around, reciting it perfectly from memory with intonations in all the right places.

Sent to bed without his supper, Max embarked on an adventure, arriving at the place where the wild things are. I can't think of many things more adorable than a three-year-old who can't say his R's properly quoting the part where the wild things "woared their tewible woars, and gnashed their tewible teeth, and wolled their tewible eyes and showed their tewible claws." But Max kept his cool and soon was made king of all wild things.

"And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!"He took poetic license with the blank pages after the wild rumpus began, chanting, "rumpus, rumpus, rumpus, rumpus..." as he turned the pages.

My little brother grew up and got married this summer.

On the brink of the grand adventure of marriage, trying so hard to be grown up, but really not any more grown up than before you came to that point. I think of Max. In the midst of the wild rumpus, he cried "Now stop!" and sent the wild things off to bed without their supper. Funny the things we do that we think make us grown up.

"[But] Max, the king of all wild things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all... so he gave up being king of where the wild things." And upon returning to the night of his very own room, he found his mother had relented and brought him his dinner after all.

Sometimes the grand adventure of life is grandest of all when we give to and accept simple kindnesses from those we love most.

Geoffrey, hold on to the best childlike qualities as you embark on your life as a grown up with your beautiful wife. I hope this drawing reminds you to be eager to learn, trusting, loving without holding back, excited for the simple things in life, and willing to compromise and share (with only a reminder or two).

painting art

A few years back while in Bordeaux, France, I snapped a photo of a pigeon sitting atop the head of a statue. Though I felt almost sacrilegious doing so (the statue was part of a cathedral's exterior) it made a striking subject for a watercolor: the absurd combination of a bird unabashedly resting upon such a solemn scene.

And those folds of cloth. Irresistible.

As an art student I initially was required to draw others' art. Translating a 3-dimensional piece of art onto a piece of paper was an interesting exercise.

around the house: bonations, if you please

Some new decor has cropped up around the house since that girl of ours started horseback riding lessons. In the bathroom, the kitchen, the hallway, her room -- everywhere we turn there is a sign or box encouraging any and all to join in her cause.

[Please make donations . . . for a dream horse.]

[Lucie's mony for biying a Horse. Pleas keep out. Theanck you. bonate mony if you Pleas.]

[Small donasus to Help Lulu by a Horse.]

[for Lucie's berem Horse bonat Here].

[for Lucie's dberem Horse dbonat Here.]

I am happy to report that the whole family has been thoroughly supportive, bonating up a storm (voluntarily or vicariously through the medium of a scavenging five year-old sister). After nearly an hour counting the other night (mainly pennies), she was thrilled to find herself already over the $10 mark.

Keep it up, my girl. It's only a matter of time.

art from before

I have never been one to hang on to the past. In fact, perhaps I cast it aside all too easily, eager to forget the painful phases of learning and growing I've gone through. I prefer to think of myself as always having been at the level of competence and accomplishment in which I find myself most recently. My mom, however, treasures artifacts from her children's youth: photos of me as an awkward child hang on the walls; some of the silly nicknacks I used to collect, rescued from the trash by my mom, now reside on shelves about the house; my children play with my old stuffed animals; and my art from age twelve and on is in most every room.

While I was still uncomfortably close to my teenage and young adult years, these things were a bit embarrassing to encounter. But as an adult, comfortable in my own skin, I don't mind these earlier incarnations of my artistic interests. During our recent trip to my parents' house, I snapped some photos of them.

I am currently in the process of scanning every drawing my older daughter has ever created. What fun, how satisfying it is to see her progress. These creations are parts of her and will help to document who she is, even in 25 years.