Tag: art

Tag

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“Tag! You’re it!” J taunted as she tossed a yellow feather on my bed. As much as one can “toss” a feather.

“Ugh!” I groaned as I plucked the feather from my comforter. It was the gazillionth feather I had picked up that day. They were in my kitchen, in my car, on my clothes, in J’s laundry bin. The cats were in heaven, certain there must be a bird in the house somewhere.

I had made the mistake of buying two yellow feather boas at the craft store, so J could fashion her costume for the school play. All we had to do was pull the boas out of the bag on the first day, and the feathers scattered. It reminded me of the days when dance costumes shed glitter, sequins, and feathers all over my house. I would find the remnants scattered around my house for weeks after the final recital.

I placed the yellow feather on the counter in my bathroom. In my head, I was already plotting, thinking it might find its way back to her one day when I think she needs a laugh.

If my kid is going to turn a flood of feathers into a game of tag, I’m happy to shift it back on her. A good game of tag deserves another turn

Yesteryear #atozchallenge

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This evening, I was looking through a closet to see if we had some black drawing paper. I didn’t think we actually had any, but since we have a number of art supplies acquired through a factory clearance sale, and I wasn’t exactly sure of our “inventory.”

As I looked, I came across a tattered pad of newsprint. It was an 18×24 pad, and I could picture my children much younger, lying on the floor drawing sprawling pictures. Nostalgic, I pulled out the pad, and flipped it open.

On the first page, there was a child’s drawing of an airport. Planes sat on runways. There was a plane on a flatbed trailer, and some maintenance vehicles. “What nerd drew that?” W asked, looking over my shoulder. He stepped in closer.

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I turned to the next drawing. Wind turbines, solar panels, and water wheels dotted the landscape of the large white page. I smiled at W. “There’s your answer.” Only W was constantly producing drawings that had to do with alternate energy sources, vehicles, geography, etc. And as we looked through the drawings, this pad held it all.

By the time we had flipped the last page, we were laughing at the spelling he had used in labeling various elements of the drawings, the complicated yet simplistic concepts, the lists of supplies necessary to build some of the things he had drawn, and the calculations—always in extraordinarily large numbers—he had completed.

At the same point, we realized we had stumbled upon something that C would later label “a keeper.” This pad of newsprint was truly a gift from yesteryear.

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Guerilla Art #atozchallenge

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“I’m sorry. Did you say ‘gorilla art’?” I questioned my colleague. Having read The One and Only Ivan for a class I had taught, I was imagining a gorilla creating pictures and paintings, just like the gorilla in the book.

“Not gorilla, like a monkey,” she laughed. “Guerilla art.” This was a concept I had not heard of before. So I looked it up.

According to Keri Smith, guerilla art “…is a fun and insidious way of sharing your vision with the world. It is a method of art making which entails leaving anonymous art pieces in public places. It can be done for a variety of reasons, to make a statement, to share your ideas, to send out good karma, or just for fun.”

And that conversation, just two months ago, was the beginning. My office was guerilla-art-ified the very next day with colorful pieces of multi-media art and articles taken from nature. In truth, it was very funny and quite entertaining.

Fast forward to this week. I took Thursday off to catch up on sleep and recover from too many too-short nights strung together like beads on a seemingly endless chain. Once again, my office was guerilla-art-ified, this time with art focused around the subject my hunter kitty. And his prey.

The “dead” mouse on my keyboard. Priceless.

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