Three-cornered cats

By a four year old boy.
© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Thumbprint Theater Presents...

...a live performance on the Illusion of Space Stage! Thanks to my weekend puzzling about optical illusions and opera illusions, I decided to use a theater as the way to teach about perspective. It was that or a microwave oven. Both help explain the view of a box interior. Both help kids understand drawing objects so they appear to be on the floor of the box. The theater just seems more entertaining than watching a Stouffer's Spinach Souffle go round and round for 4-5 minutes before stirring.

I hope you enjoy the shows!

Optical Star Trek Effects

Trying to teach perspective leaves me feeling trapped in an Escher drawing. I climb the stairs. I climb the walls. My students sit on chairs on the ceiling.
How do we create the illusion of space on a flat piece of paper? It's difficult to verbalize the concept at a level for elementary school students. I'm just hoping to increase their visual awareness, and my own in the effort.

This puzzle comes to mind partly because of recent visits to the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, and the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas. These gorgeous buildings with marble staircases and numerous tiers, boxes, and lofts give me the Escheritis feeling, too. The higher my heels, the more times I feel like I've gone up/over/round/round without a sense of direction. I've been lost in a couple poorly marked parking garages lately, too. Ack! Escher in a car! I sympathize with scuba divers who panic and lose track of the direction to the surface. I should mention here that I'm also hopeless looking in the mirror to use a curling iron.

Dallas Opera's most recent production, Handel's "Rodelinda," brought together incredible voices and excellent costumes, with a minimalist set. It sought to create the illusion of several different locations through silhouettes, rectangular frames of decreasing size to suggest depth, and a gosh diggity lot of sliding doors reminiscent of the original Star Trek bridge on the Enterprise. Zshooz-voop. Open. Enter. Close. Voozsh-zoop.

It was warm in the balcony, and, despite the incredible music, kind of drowsy. I admit I was sort of squinting down at the stage. I wondered when the set would become the classic optical illusion:

The next scene was Bertarido and Unulfo in the underground prison cell, suggested by two lattice grids. My brain was distracted by illusionary gray spots from another classic optical trick:


To look for more optical illusions(scroll way down to the bottom of the webpage), journey to your library's Dewey Decimals 152.148. My old buddy Escher and I are going to share a goblet and have some face-to-face time. I'll think about perspective tomorrow in the other illusion of time!

Where the Wild Things Arles

Did Maurice Sendak have Van Gogh in mind when he wrote and illustrated the classic picture book, Where the Wild Things Are? Bet so, at least off on the fringes of consciousness. The fictitious Max and the painter Vincent have almost the same bedroom. Vince painted the bedroom at Arles in a way that helps me introduce perspective to my kindergarten students. They understand the room--bed, table, chairs, mirror, pictures on the wall, floor. It just needs a nightlight and a "special bunny" stuffed animal. The strangeness of Vince's bedroom painting fits with the dream quality when "that very night in Max's room a forest grew... and grew..."



These are our first efforts imagining a connection between Max and Vincent. We hope when you find your supper waiting for you it is "still hot."

Long May It Wave

We sold the Batmobile yesterday to an auto salvage yard dealer who drove down from Ada, OK. Chris looked only slightly older than my seventeen-year-old son, but has already bought, rebuilt, and sold nineteen Nissan Z cars, and is the boss of his auto supply company. He loaded the Batmobile with amazing care and concern. The 1990 300ZX only lived with us nine months, but it will always leave an oil spot in our hearts. It was far more of a symbol of a Dream than an actual driveable vehicle. I'm thinking we should sell commemorative ribbon-shaped auto magnets...



One-point perspective is teachable in elementary art class.

Two-point is possible if the kids are older.

Three-point gives me the willies just thinking about it. My college drawing professors sent us off to the Sheldon Art Gallery and the UN-L steam energy plant to do three-point drawings, and I never fully recovered.




If you need any parts call and ask for Chris:

Dave's Auto Sales & Parts
1901 N. Broadway
Ada, OK 74820

Parts: 580 436 7149
Toll Free: 1 888 436 7149
Auto Sales: 580 436 7130
Fax: 580 436 7145
Email: dasp@davesparts.com

Chris can help you get into a Nissan Turbo that will retain its value before the 2006 Z Car Convention here in Dallas!

Meanwhile, back at the monastery...

Intriguing discussions with my 8-10 yr. old class about George Rodrigue's "Blue Dog" paintings and works by Paul Klee yesterday. The girls arrived at the conclusion that Blue Dog is the artist's representation of himself, and that he puts himself in different situations by painting Blue Dog in those symbolic scenes. Pretty abstract thinking! Later we were looking at a Paul Klee watercolor with geometric shapes and very clean pastel colors. They were able to perceive a zigzag spatial effect, so we were chatting about the difficulties we had creating the illusion of space and perspective in our group "Pet Shop" mural. Then the girls decided the Klee painting was of a "trying-on-clothes place". Took awhile for me to understand they were talking about a folding Japanese screen. Sddenly one girl announces the painting, "isn't a screen. It's an empty mind." I love that kid. She's a breath of fresh air twirling Tibetan prayer wheels, or maybe the third eye of Sponge Bob! When her mom let her pick out a print at the MOMA show in Houston to give me for Christmas, she couldn't decide whether Van Gogh's "Starry Night", or a Dali of "hallucenogenic goddesses" best fit me.

If I can't be a princess, I wouldn't mind being a goddess!