Car wash

At this point in winter we are all tired of sand, salt, slush, and bird poop on our vehicles, even the preschoolers!  Still in rapture from Sunday's cleansing of the Buick's exterior.  Acted out the process with the kiddies today:

• Buckle up
• Steady, smooth, and safe with that steering wheel
• Get the quarters out of your pockets
• What I really like is giving the male impulse to shoot guns a different storyline with the car wash spray wand complete with sound effects.
• Kids are fascinated by the big foam brush.  Could you give an elephant a bath with one of those?
• Trying to teach three year olds to make windshield wiper arms was hilarious.

  These people seem to have there noses pressed to the car window to watch the spray.  It's a funny impression since the 6 year old boy didn't give them noses.

 
8 year old girl knows her car wash.

 
This car looks like it has angel wings.

 
In the tunnel?

Watercolor painting with Q-tips, washable markers, soap, silver, medium, transparency film (for windshields), and crayons.  Clean machines!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Cat in the cream jar

We'd only been married a few months when my spouse went into a Doc Watson/John Fahey acoustic guitar/bluegrass phase. I was totally unprepared for this jog in the newlywedded-bliss road. Suddenly, the Charlie Daniels Band held the stage in my harvest gold apartment kitchen right next to the avocado green crockpot and the free toaster we got when we opened our account at the Savings & Loan downtown.

As if being married wasn't surreal enough, my spouse was sprawling there in the black vinyl beanbag* chair actually studying the Slim Whitman "Yodeling Cowboy" K-Tel commercials on our tiny black & white tv between the "MASH" and "Barney Miller" reruns. It was as jarring as the spilled popcorn on the Husker red shag carpet.

My spouse rushed the stage at a Charlie Daniels Band concert in the then-new Bob Devaney Center at the Nebraska State Fairgrounds. Dang, but if mosh pits had been invented back then he would have been squeezed into apple cider! ***

These days my little students are singing "Fire On the Mountain" for their spring music festival. This traditional folk fiddle song was known to me only from those Charlie Daniels** years. The devil went down to Georgia and engaged in a fiddle competition to gain a country boy's soul.

The kids sing, "Fire on the mountain, run, boys, run. Hey, get along, get along Josey. Hey, get along, get along Jim. Cat in the cream jar, run, girls, run. Hey get along, get along Josey. Hey get along, get along Jim." Two boys made this poster of the cat in the cream jar:



They sing a new-fangled verse, "Chicken in the crockpot, mulligan stew," to Skip-To-My-Lou. Thank heaven they didn't have to put the chicken in the George Foreman Grill!

*The littlest kids like to sit in the "bing-bang chair" while I tie their shoes after naptime.

**When the devil finished
Johnny said well you're pretty good old son
But just sit down in that chair right there
And let me show you how it's done
Fire on the Mountain Run boys, run
The devil's in the House of the Rising Sun
Chicken in a bread pan picken' at dough
Granny does your dog bite No child, no

***Just FYI, our sons turned out pretty normal. Only one listens to Pat Green.



Thinking now of the Marshall Tucker Band--more of a marinaded and grilled chicken tender song:

Fire on the mountain
Lightnin' in the air
gold in them hills
and it's waiting for me there

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Power Series

In the last two weeks I've had the great luck to see paintings of powerful machines. The Dallas Museum of Art is showing paintings by Charles Sheeler known as the "Power Series". Sheeler made the paintings on commission for Fortune magazine in the late 1930's to celebrate mankind's attempts to harness nature. The images are of an old-fashioned waterwheel, a coal shovel, a steam turbine, a hydroelectric power turbine, an airplane propeller, the wheels of a locomotive, and electrical power transmission towers at Boulder Dam.

Sheeler referred to himself as a "Precisionist". His paintings show no brush strokes, and are closely related to his photographs. They are completely unlike my own artistic tastes, and yet I've always been fond of them. This piece is owned by the Dallas Museum of Art, and always holds my attention:



As the daughter of engineers I visited construction sites, industrial plants, hydroelectric dams, and noteworthy architectural sites as a child. I was well aware of the construction of Interstate 80 across Nebraska. The highlight of any trip to McCook, Nebraska, with the Interstate construction detours, was a visit to the bridge over the railroad tracks at the train station. Watching trains pass beneath the bridge was as much fun for me as it was for Harry the Dirty Dog, by Gene Zion and Margaret Bloy Graham. I thank the Out of Lascaux blogger for these images of Sheeler's paintings.



Now it's time for a different Power collection, painted by a five-year-old boy. Here are two tempera paintings from Sam's "Three Machines" series. How terrific that his concepts of machines include both grid structures and radiating energy!

You're soaking in it!

Mixing liquid watercolors with Palmolive dishwashing liquid in all my art classes this week makes me wonder about Madge* the manicurist. Madge pre-soaked her customer's fingernails in Palmolive's green dishwashing detergent and advised them "Palmolive softens hands while you do the dishes." How long did she hold her client's fingers in the detergent? Minutes? Hours? Days?

We are making some lively pictures inspired by Chris Raschka's illustrations for Norton Juster's Hello, Goodbye Window, using oil pastels, and then making monoprints. Detergent is added to the paints to keep them from beading up when painted on a scrap of laminating plastic. "Monoprinting is a process whereby only one print is pulled from the printing plate. "



Kids don't care about any of this, but they really like sliding the paintbrush around on the plastic, and stirring the paint until it bubbles. After that, someone has to clean the brushes, plastic, and paint cups in the sudsy sink. That someone is me, and my hands are "a crime," as Madge would say. After the first two days of the project, my cuticle looked great, my hands were soft, and my nails were strong. Day Three in the Palmolive, though, and my hands are back to their normal crime scene. Did Madge wear rubber gloves when she washed her own dishes?



*Jan Miner won her most widespread attention in Palmolive commercials as Madge, praising the gentleness of its dish detergent to a customer surprised to find her hands soaking in it. She played the character for 27 years, 1966-1992.

Muddy Waters

Maybe you can remember how frustrating it was to use a watercolor set as a child until you mastered keeping the paints from getting muddy. You rinsed your brush, but didn't know how to get the extra water out, so your paint tray flooded; the blue got in the yellow, the black got in the red, and nothing was going right, right?

Learning to use watercolors is as difficult as learning to cut with scissors. It takes lots of practice. That's what we are working on in Art Class.

If you are going to buy a set of paints for your child, please avoid the inexpensive sets in the grocery store school supply aisle. Those paints are very chalky and your child will have a really tough time getting vibrant clear colors. If possible, get a set of Crayola® So Big® Washable Watercolors. The pans of color are larger than usual, can be replaced, and encourage practice mixing colors. The sets have splendid bright red, yellow, green, and blue. For more advanced students, please get a nice eight-color set of Prang watercolors (it should not have white). Good results build on good experiences with good materials.

Paintbrush envy

This update in the celeb gossip column--Maurice will be going back to France tomorrow because he received a recording contract! After hogging all the painting action in Intermediate Art today, Maurice, that skinny, pointy-haired paintbrush, has lit out for the falsetto big time. It's a good thing, too. Maurice's cousins here in TX, Fluffy and Muffy, were seriously miffed that Maurice was making kids forget to use big brushes for big jobs. Muffy had been handling the day-to-day paint jobs while big sister Fluffy had some R&R in Hawaii. You know--get a tan, put some space between you and the preschoolers, breathe the tempera flowing out and the watercolor flowing in. Most of the year Fluffy is in the trenches teaching small children not to use her like a mop, a toothbrush, (or a weapon), only to be cast aside unrinsed and unloved. Fluffy deserved a break, but had to rush back to entertain that pipsqueak visiting French cousin, Maurice. Muffy had hoped to be in charge much longer. Muffy is a mid-sized brush, not really ready for the big jobs, yet too pudgy for the fine details. As an apprentice to Fluffy, Muffy never gets the freebie tropical vacations, or the cutesy-wootsy preteen fan club of little Maurice. Who could blame Muffy for harboring those fantasies of plaster of Paris overshoes...

Election day at last

To coincide with the California recall, this was the beginning of the biennial Jelly Popularity Poll. Since kids age 3-8 influence the spending of billions of grocery dollars, the results should not be taken lightly. Students can vote No to jelly, or vote Yes for their favorite flavor. They may not vote for jello, non-fruit condiments, bodily fluids, or health/beauty products. If they vote for a flavor with a format choice, they may then choose between squeeze-bottle jelly, or traditional knife/jar jelly. The Supreme Court has ruled that the jelly election must include jams, preserves, chutneys, and marmalade options. Also, the Green Party has won two spots on the ballot with mint and jalapeno for the first time.

It could take up to two weeks for Al Franken and Mr. Peanut to certify the results. In the meantime, I will be reading "Bread and Jam for Frances" sixteen times, doing the voices for Father, Mother, Frances, Baby Gloria, and Albert.

Approximately 250 voters are registered, but it is unclear if this is a hot-button, get-out-the-vote issue. Some registered voters will be too busy playing with the new drinking fountain, or squirting all the liquid soap out of the restroom dispenser to state their choice. Fox News has dismissed the lead-up campaign as "just more fruits engaged in slimy behavior". The mainstream media has drowned the public in Lunchables coverage leaving it incapable of making its own sandwich, let alone its own mind.

I'll be mixing up many, many jars of liquid watercolors with glitter tempera and/or Elmers glue so we can paint with "jelly". We will squash down many pieces of irridescent, pink, and red cellophane on to the paint for "glass jars".

Do you feel under-represented in this fun? This is Texas, of course, and we can probably redraw your district. Jif and Wonderbread are calling your name...

If you would like to make the Jelly Poll a national plebiscite, or just need a Smuckerpaint recipe, please email a million dollars to nlrudr@peoplePC.com.

Oh, and it isn't really a good idea to pretend that colored chalk is eye shadow.

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