Sloth and Manatee

Sloth and Manatee Page

So, I don’t think I really am exactly an art teacher? I teach, and there’s art, but I think as compared to more formalized curriculum things I’m more of a co-conspirator, enabled by art supplies.

Here are two examples:

This week, one of my students took it upon himself to make a person out of cardboard. He made a face first, and then made it fold so the mouth opened and closed. Then he added a body, and then found some popsicle sticks for arms and legs. The last part of class was spent cruising around the room with his new friend. The other kids enjoyed, this also.

In my classes there is a lot of yelling, “Ms. Betsy! Ms. Betsy! Look what I made!” Or, “Ms. Betsy can I have some tape?” Or, “Ms. Betsy can you help meeeeee?”

A day after the birth of Cardboard Person, I was hanging around at the after-school Art Club at Richmond Art Center, making flip books with another kid. We started out using sticky notes for this, because those are a great way to make a flip book. Just draw, stick on another note, draw, and repeat.

Then, we got curious about flipping images back and forth. She said she had seen a thing where there’s a bird on one side and a cage on the other, and you flip it around and it looks like the bird is in the cage.

We tried this with pieces of foam board, which we mounted on a paintbrush and also a palette knife for the spinning handle part. I tried a blinking eye, and she did two birds on a branch.

We also tried flipping colors back and forth because we were curious if our eye would blend the colors together or what would happen.

All of this stuff sort of worked, or didn’t work at all, or fell apart, or whatever. But it was fabulous, because we could go, hey, now I’m curious about this or that, and then try something. That was the whole thing. There was no project, and no result, other than time spent figuring out that you have to put more tape if you want the piece of foam board to not go flying off of the palette knife when you spin it around. What a joy.

Anyway, make space to do awesome and also dumb stuff that does not work, I guess is what I am saying.

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Things Of The Week

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has made a complete digital archive of all her stuff.

This movie was made, and then shelved for horrid cynical studio bizness reasons, and now it has escaped containment and is gonna be released. Here, at last, is the Coyote vs. Acme trailer.

Here is the original piece that the movie is based on, from 1990

Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.

May you make things that don’t work, may you make more things that don’t work, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy