The Work of Art

The amount of work that goes into creating good art is undervalued.  I think the overall problem is the artistic process is misunderstood.  We talk about "talent" and having "a gift" as if people in creative fields just come by what they do magically.

Talent is a starting point, not an end in itself.  The gift is an opportunity, not a finished product.  Even if you start at a more advanced place than others, that simply raises the bar for what you can or should do.

My parents are artists.  They ran a gallery for 40 years.  They often apologized to us when we were growing up that they should have realized you have to be rich first and then open a gallery, and that it doesn't work the other way around.  We never lacked for anything, so whatever depths their financial struggles sunk to we remained largely unaware of them.  We admired them for doing what they found interesting, even though it was often hard, and we learned many valuable things.

We saw, up close, the time and effort and thought that goes into creating art.  There are many drawings abandoned along the way before one finds its way to completion.  There is the challenge of having to work when time allows rather than when inspiration hits.  Most people when they create art do it alone.  You can't usually get help with it and still claim it to be yours.  There is trial and error and frustration, but eventually beauty.  When a piece of art (or music, or writing) is just right it's as if it was always meant to be.  After untold hours of preparation and toil the result can look effortless.

Unfortunately to too many without direct experience in creative fields, they believe it really is.

I've been watching my daughter, Mona, this week with great interest.  Mona is many things, and one of those things happens to be an artist.  All of my kids have a decent degree of talent when it comes to art.  Mona is the one at this time willing to struggle for it.

Paper turtle Mona made at six

She has been building "creations" now for years and they are ever evolving and improving.  She's gone from simple paper cutouts to hand colored tape to duct tape and recently to using wire as a foundation so that she can expand the limits of what her creations can be.  They are detailed and thoughtful.  There are many prototypes and pieces abandoned and begun again until they are right.

At seven she was coloring tape and giving things more structure

Then she discovered duct tape and combined it with paper.

And things began to appear like the Cup O' Snakes.  (Because why not?)

And sometimes she still goes back to paper.

Her latest school project is a presentation on bats that she's doing with a friend.  In class the two of them work on research and writing.  At home, Mona has been working on models.  She's been working hard.

Summer Time

I know all the logical arguments about why there is no justification for summer vacation anymore.  My children aren't needed out in the farm fields and the break in their formal education takes a toll by fall.  I suppose that all makes sense.  But I'm not one who obsesses over my children's academic lives, and our own work schedule is not jeopardized by the kids being home, so I can afford to get behind the concept of a real summer break.

I believe in the value of giant swaths of free time.  Creativity doesn't readily conform to a schedule.  There are projects I don't even start if I know I can't have several hours to alternately concentrate and let my mind drift.

And I believe one of the greatest gifts of childhood, if you are lucky enough to get it, is the chance to be free of certain responsibilities and come up with things to do on your own.  I like being able to grant that to my kids on a grand scale in the summer.  With a few exceptions, their time in summer is their own.

We don't have bedtimes during summer vacation.  The kids sleep in as long as they want to.  There are no rules about the TV.  The only rule about the computer at the moment is they have to use it in the dining room just so they don't get holed up in some dark corner of their room on a beautiful day.  If they use their own money they can flag down the ice cream cart whenever it comes by.  They can play outside until the sun goes down.  Friends from the neighborhood are welcome.  Quinn can't bike outside alone if a grownup isn't home, but otherwise they can bike wherever.  We keep track of them in a general sort of way, but our house with the trampoline the giant box of legos and the big supply of sidewalk chalk tends to be where lots of kids want to congregate, so we don't have to look far.

Quinn still has a couple of piano lessons to prepare for over the summer, and the girls still have violin, but that's about it.  We do a family word of the day for spelling practice, and as school gets closer we'll buckle down and review math again.  When their rooms get too messy we stand over them and make them clear a reasonable path.  But for the most part not much is expected of them.  They can decide what to do.

And what have they done with their time so far?

Things Mona Makes

I love my Mona.  She's an interesting little artist, that girl.

Mona's recently started using wire on the interior of her paper creations.  I discovered her unwittingly destroying a perfectly good pair of scissors while cutting lengths of some floral wire she came across, so I gave her some needle nose pliers with a wire cutter to better do the job.  She now starts her creations with a wire skeleton of sorts, then molds paper around that, then completes it with a skin of colored duct tape.

Unfortunately, my photographs don't do her work justice.  When you can hold them in your hands and turn them they are really remarkable.  In pictures they just look sort of distorted and flat, but at least you can get an idea of what her work is like.  She just dashes these things off like it's nothing.  I wish I could salvage more of them to save for posterity, but she makes them to be used as toys and they end up getting pretty battered.  I still regret not saving her lobster from a couple of years ago because all I have of it now are the pictures.  This photo is from two years ago when she just started working in duct tape, but is that not an impressive lobster for a seven-year-old?

Anyway, lately Mona's been into dinosaurs and birds.  Here is her recent collection dinosaurs:

Odds, Ends, and a Hopeless Challenge (Babble)

Did you have a good Thanksgiving?  I hope so.  We had a lovely time here with friends over and lots of food and it was great.

But first thing the next morning I drove to Detroit to visit my parents.  My dad has been back in the hospital, and it was hard to decide what to do.  I felt I should go out there but didn’t know if bringing the kids would be too much, and I didn’t want to be apart from them during Thanksgiving (or a birthday).  I finally decided it made more sense to go alone right after turkey day.

I always try to take a picture of my kids right before I leave for a trip by myself, and this was Friday’s:

They are all in the glow of the computer because Mona didn’t want to stop the game she was in the middle of, so rather than have her quit I had Quinn and Aden pose on either side and told Mona she had to look at me when I counted to three.


Anyway, my dad’s health problems are posing all kinds of difficulties for my parents at the moment, mostly because his mobility is limited.  But we played Scrabble and I read to him a little, showed him photos of the kids and pictures of our new porch, and talked about our new dog.  It was a nice visit.

However, I’m still feeling out of sorts after the long drive there and back and frazzled about Mona’s upcoming party and a concert I have to play this week and about a million other things that are making it hard to focus on one coherent blog post, so here is a hodgepodge of things for your consideration.

Let’s start with a couple of Mona Creations.  The first is a Firebird that I actually convinced her to let me keep so it doesn’t get destroyed.  She offered me shared custody for about a week, but then recently told me I could just have it.

Then there is this Squid, which is just cool.  My kid can make a squid.  I am beyond proud.

Next, the dog went to the groomer and came back looking like a different (if equally cute) dog.  It’s hard to get a good picture of the dog because he just comes out a black blur most of the time.  I got the most satisfying crazy happy greeting from the dog when I returned from Detroit.  It’s ridiculous how much I love this dog after only two weeks.

And now a challenge!  My dad asked me when I was visiting if I would please go out into the library and get his Escher book.  It was in the shelves on the wall on the right side of the room.  Which looks like this:

Yeah.

My dad said it wouldn’t be hard because it was all in alphabetical order.  I don’t know what alphabet he’s using but it’s not one with which I’m familiar.  So the book on Escher is supposedly in this section, so if you spot it let me know:

And that’s about all I have time for because I am already late for a rehearsal.  Take care and enjoy your leftovers!

Rock On, Lobster (Babble)

I could probably just write a whole blog devoted to Mona’s paper creations.  There are too many to show on any given day to have room to write about anything else, but I need to share this lobster.

Yes, I’m an overly proud mom seeing what her kids do through some kind of mom-goggles, but is that not seriously a cool lobster?  That’s darned good for a seven year old.  I’m impressed she can construct a lobster on a whim with no help from anyone.  It’s made entirely out of red duct tape because she wanted it to be waterproof.  Plus she writes on it with regular markers which she can wipe off if she wants to later.

Of all three of my kids, Mona is the only one who I don’t think tests accurately.  Aden scores about where I would expect her to score on things like the ‘MAP’ and other standardized tests the school has the kids do.  She shows signs of being like I was in school, where tests reveal potential in all areas that doesn’t always get realized along the channels teachers are hoping for.  She’s smart, but only interested in doing what she wants to do.  Quinn is already reading and adding numbers in columns and he’s not even going to be in full day kindergarten until fall of 2012, so he will test fine when he gets there.  He’s smart in a way that will be easy for a test to measure because he has an excellent memory and an orderly mind.

Mona is brilliant in unconventional ways.  If there were a standardized test that asked children to build an entire zoo out of scraps of paper and some chewing gum she would leave her classmates and most of the school district in the dust.  On normal tests she scores very middle of the pack, even though hers are the kinds of skills that got the Apollo 13 astronauts home alive.  But schools don’t administer MacGyver exams.

I’m not worried about Mona, because I know whatever she chooses to tackle she will do well.  I wonder more about what kind of institutions and educational or work environments might miss out on seeing what she has to offer because the tools used to measure her abilities may not capture what she knows.  She is creative and funny and makes awesome pancakes.