Design tools and toys

About forty years ago my dad gave me this little plastic set of triangle tiles in a box three by three-and-a-half inches. I used a color spectrum set of fine-point felt markers and a package of graph paper from the Ben Franklin 5 & 10 to experiment with four-cornered design. Other times I just doodled while lounging in the backyard treehouse.

Now there's a more sophisticated way to explore quilt-making online. The International Quilt Study Center's Making a Quilt program lets you play around for hours with six basic quilt patterns and endless variations of shading, fabrics, numbers of blocks, and pattern variations. It's fun, but you can't hear the cicadas. You can't feel your skin against the sun-baked boards, or smell the mildewed rope of the bucket dumb waiter. You haven't heard the colored plastic triangles being shifted and rotated in the clear plastic framework. Ants aren't crawling into the oozing sap of the weeping willow tree.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Marc Simont

Thank heaven my detective case of the chinaberry tree reminded me of a favorite read-aloud picture book and a favorite illustrator. Marc Simont illustrated the 1957 Caldecott Medal book by Janice May Udry, A Tree is Nice.

Simont also illustrated one of my eldest's favorites, Karla Kuskin's The Philharmonic Gets Dressed. That delightful book forever altered my music appreciation and symphony experiences! I can't help wondering which member of the DSO is wearing the red long underwear.

Trees are nice. Reading favorite books in a treehouse is very nice, too.




© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Cross stitch and gingham

Last time in Lincoln I slept on the pillowcase I made in the mid-Sixties. It's a bit threadbare, but the embroidery is stonger than the gingham. I remember it being a difficult project, so I must not have been very old. Later I made cross stitch pillowcases as gifts, stitching my friends' names on their cases.

Cross stitch requires perserverance and patience for the student and the teacher. I'm beginning to understand those Quaker samplers! Embroidery is also a very calming, focusing practice for students. Our kids need projects that counter balance all the point/shoot/instant/gratification/flashing/images of our current technology and culture.

With my ET tremor it takes perserverance to thread needles for the kids. Fortunately, they are doing most of their current embroidery project with their classroom teacher. The boys are every bit as into it as the girls, and they need the fine motor skill development. They are making lovely pictures, not simple cross stitch. If your child doesn't want to sit in a treehouse and embroider this summer, maybe they need their own special shady corner of the garage to paint scale models.

Learning to separate two strands from the six-strand embroidery floss was a personal goal as satisfying as learning to shuffle cards, roast the perfect marshmallow, use a key to open a lock, cut paper snowflakes and hearts, play jacks, ride a bike, tell time, tie a square knot, address an envelope, or scoop ice cream. I was on top of the world when I learned to make Jello Instant Pudding in a double boiler, and to open a can of tuna. Making french toast and grilled cheese sandwiches for my family gave me enormous satisfaction. I was proud to learn to whistle, light a match, identify butterflies, prune a rosebush, and jiggle the handle on the toilet so the water would stop running! Reeling in a fish was the best of all.

My sons loved learning to make smoothies, boil spaghetti, and make hot garlic bread. Their fingers learned to string beads and twist rubber bands to tie-dye t-shirts. They enjoyed taking photos with disposable cameras. They worked together to make Wally, our family papier mache alligator.

Our kids need to know personal satisfaction deeper than levels of video games and plastic soccer trophies. None of these accomplishments require sign-up fees. They don't take much electricity or transportation. They don't involve costumes or uniforms. Some of those childhood accomplishments nurture life-long interests.

It's hailing like crazy here in Plano. I'm so grateful I learned to sit and watch a storm by the front door with my dad. What a gift that my family applauded my first unburnt french toast! How funny to sleep on my forty-year-old cross stitch!

Sweet dreams!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Sweetgum WoHeLo

Growing up in Nebraska, I didn't learn about sweetgum trees. School teachers and Blue Bird leaders helped me learn about maples, pin oaks, locusts, pines, balsams, Bradford pears, crabapples, willows, forsithias, pussywillows, lilacs, and cedars.

Nature-walking again with the elementary class. The students have magnifying glasses this time. We find some sweetgum fruits. They look like medieval maces. Camp Fire Girl leaders back in Nebraska would have a heyday spray-painting these splendid natural specimens before gluing them onto styrofoam wreath forms. Forget the acorns and fluffy sycamore balls, the Quaker Oats and Baskin Robbins containers and Contac paper. This is true craft nirvana!

I'm grateful for the awareness of nature I gained in my Blue Bird and Camp Fire Girl years. It's good to know when to sit upon your own sit-upon, when to put on insect repellent, and when to put our head between our knees to keep from fainting. It's fun to remember our group leader's awe-inspiring talent for twisting apples apart during long hikes.

Just wishing I could remember all the different beads:

Brown--Outdoors
Red--Sports and Games
Red/white/blue--Citizenship
Yellow--
Green--
Blue--
Orange--

These last four were for Creative Arts, Science, Business, and Home.

Chemists have found that the seeds of the sweetgum fruit — also called “gumballs” — contain significant amounts of shikimic acid, the starting material used to produce the main antiviral agent in a much-heralded drug for fighting bird flu. The finding could help increase the global supply of the drug, which is now in short supply, they say. Their study will be presented March 29th in Atlanta at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Trees and Valley

Looking forward to the next exhibit at Valley House Gallery, opening Friday, October sixth. The show will be recent paintings by Mary Vernon. Her works are painterly oil and paper on masonite collage paintings. I hope to attend the Artist Talk Saturday morning at eleven.



After another visit to the Dallas Arboretum, I am ready to announce my favorites of the Ultimate Tree Houses. The designs are great for families, and will be in place until the end of 2006.

FlutterBy was designed by a team from HDR, Inc. The large wings seem to sail through the trees. The structure at the base is reminiscent of a boat's prow. What a dream to sail in a ship of wings!




Framework, but Kippen Schect and Jonathan Wood, is a lovely design for contemplation and meditation. The view through a series of frames changes with the viewer's position. It's a lovely explanation of perspective for young people, but very difficult to photograph with its alternations of bright light and dark shadows.



Leaves Imagination does not impress on first approach, but deserves attention. Designed by HNTB, its curved forms of pale green mesh reminded me of four leaves curled into cocoon shapes. Within the curved forms hang leaf decorations made by school students, that shimmer and sway like an inside out Christmas tree. There's a wonderful sense of safety and potential for magic, of being inside a place where a lowly caterpillar might become a radiant butterfly.



Ultimate Blooms is a big hit with the preschool set for burning off steam in a shady spot. Designed by Sebo Shim and R. Kelly Giddens of The Beck Group, it features elevated wood pathways between and through three large latticed tulip forms. Although "treehouse" creates the expectation for structures requiring ladders and ropes, the Arboretum's Tree Houses are all structures at the bases of trees.



Although difficult to find, Reynaldo Herreros' Tree House, is interesting, mainly because it is under the branches of a 220 year old bois d'arc (Osage orange) tree. The trunk must be over twelve feet in circumference. I think it would be a lovely place if a little fishing stream were nearby instead of traffic on Garland Road.



Most of the Ultimate Tree Houses are north of the main entrance to the Arboretum. Perhaps the most magical house, Casa Musgo, is south, at the far end of the Arboretum's Fern Dell. If your children are likely to get worn out, start your visit there. Or maybe spread a blanket, and let the whole family doze or watch the migrating monarchs overhead.

Elizabeth Smidt's design is a perfect place for fairies and elves. If you stepped inside and found Snow White tidying up for the Seven Dwarfs and singing duets with a bluebird it would seem completely believable. The octagonal house is covered in spagnum moss and sprayed with mist. Ivies and plants grow from the moss, and hanging prisms and crystals at each corner of the roof add to the magical light effects. The morning I was there, glittering dewy spider webs added to the charm.



Pick a cool day, and head to the Arboretum. You don't have to go with kids! Adults need magic, too.

Can you email me now?

I've just wasted another hour trying to track down the early Sixties Yogi Bear episode when a mad scientist visits Jellystone in a small trailer and switches Yogi's brain with a chicken's. Metal colanders always make me think of the Yogi brain trade. This is the only Yogi cartoon that made any impact on me, although I vaguely remember the picnic baskets.

I must have been six or seven at the time, so about the age when kids started hearing lectures about not getting into cars with strangers. We had an incredibly secure childhood in a neighborhood where we couldn't make much of a move without being in view of a mommy looking out her kitchen window, so we were able to run and play all over the block, and ride bikes all around the neighborhood. We kids made our own entertainment most of the time, and participated in far fewer adult-organized activities than kids do now.

I somehow equated the warnings about strangers in cars with the Yogi cartoon. Get in a car with a stranger, and that mad little scientist will put a colander on your head, hook up some wires, and swap your brain! Come to think of it, maybe that cartoon is where our president got all his ideas about scientists!




I don't really believe Al Gore invented the internet, of course, but a bit of Yankee ingenuity has improved my son's access to email. Son Two is spending the summer doing an internship in a sweltering foreign country without air conditioning (and I don't mean St. Louis). Al Gore is probably doing his global warming slide shows somewhere in a/c comfort.

The sweltering summer interns have rigged up wires from a USB port through a metal sieve which they dangle out the window of their apartment. This soup-cans-and-string contraption somehow sucks internet vibes out of thin air, or at least picks up signals from WiFi or routers in other apartments in the building.

Communication sure has come a long way since I used to sit in the treehouse writing notes and lowering them in a bucket on a rope to my siblings. There was a nice breeze up there most of the time, and the wood was satisfyingly warm. It was very safe, and I never clucked.

Save the rain forest so I can run away from home

Jane Craighead George's classic children's book My Side of the Mountain has fueled many daydreams well past my Wonder Years. Spring break ended, and I wanted to go live in a hollow tree and live off the land instead of going back to work. I would need Sam Gribley's librarian to help me research falconry, that's for sure!

I'm using Jan Brett's gorgeous new picture book, The Umbrella, in most of my classes this week. A red-eyed green tree frog makes a good introduction to complementary color schemes. While a boy climbs up a gigantic fig tree in the cloud forest, an assortment of animals pile into his leaf umbrella, reusing Brett's Mitten formula. I'm having trouble reading about the kinkajou. Half the time "kinkajou" comes out "cockatoo", and the other half it comes out "Pikachu".


My condominium complex is embroiled in its latest brouhaha (not a rain forest animal, but possibly an itchy tropical rash). The fight is about a tree, and whether to cut it down or save it. It's a nice tree, but not big enough to live inside when I run away from home.

An artist needs three things

On this day in 1930, William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying was published. Faulkner said that of all his books, he liked As I Lay Dying the best. He also said, "A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others."

My email from The Writer's Almanac supplied that quote. I'm always teaching kids about these three things, things remembered, things seen, and things imagined. We play with different combinations of the three in all our creations. The elementary art class that has been the most involved in creating our treehouse installation made sketches of that installation today. They were making drawings of what they saw, which was something they had imagined and brainstormed and created. By sketching the treehouse they were enhancing their memory of the creative process and of the creative product. I sincerely hope they were envisioning future creations!

Do you remember learning to braid? The writer or artist is braiding experience, observation, and imagination at all times. Did Neanderthals know how to braid? When did Homo Sapiens learn? Learning to braid is a braid! What leap in thinking led a person to cross the reeds or hair just so to make a braid? Did that person already have a spoken language? How did that person visualize this advance? Did the next generation imagine how to make rope? Did the next imagine spinning wool? Knitting? Crochet? Good grief. Did a Neanderthal macrame a plant hanger for her apartment/cave? Did her mate observe spiderwebs before creating the first fishing net or hammock?

What about the storytellers? When did they begin to braid the retelling of the day's mammoth hunt with comparisons to other remembered hunts,or embellish it with remembered sounds and inflections, and imagined powerful nature spirits?

That's a mighty happy fish!

One on-going job of an art teacher is helping children learn to respect and enjoy other people's artwork. By the time preschoolers are ready for an art class, they've usually learned to appreciate an object without immediately putting it in their mouths. They've rarely learned to appreciate it without touching or climbing on it, though. As my blog today is about self-control, I will exercise restraint and refrain from making any comparisons to grown men at this time.

We have an ever-changing display of student art at school. Large group collaborations like murals stay on display the longest, since they don't belong to any one student. You saw the seven foot long shark named Larry that we made this summer. Larry swims in the lobby these days, and is in perpetual danger of having his teeth pulled out by children who are at their own wiggly/lost tooth phase.

By happy chance, I was doing a silly cowgirl imitation when I took the new students on a tour of the school last month. At each piece of art I would put my hands on my hips, lean way back, and drawl, "Now that's a mighty fine _______ (shark, camel, jungle mural...)." Pretty soon they were all imitating me, saying, "Why that's a mighty tall beanstalk," or, "Say, that's a mighty colorful zebra," with their hands on their hips. The great thing was, when the kids were mighty-fining, they weren't touching the art. Dang! Why didn't this rodeo clown figure that out a dozen years ago?

My elementary students are collaborating on a treehouse installation. So far our tree is full of squirrels and girls, a ladder, and a bucket on a rope. Soon we will add a tire swing, birdhouses, and birdfeeders. I was very afraid kids would actually try to climb the tree or the ladder made out of toilet paper tubes. Back to teaching a refresher course in mighty-fine!


Seems to me that men should be able to hook their thumbs in their belts, pretend to be Wild Bill Hickok, and drawl the observation, "That's a mighty bodacious female." After all, when we art teachers went to see The Motorcycle Diaries, we were able to put our hands on our cheeks, appreciate Gael Garcia Bernal, and gasp, "That's a mighty superior specimen of a man!," and "That's a mighty lucky hammock!"

http://www.motorcyclediaries.net/

Swiss Family Robinson

I want to live in a tree. Don't know exactly why I chose to teach line control, opposites, and gluing techniques to my preschool students with a project about treehouses. I suspect it was one of those Memory Lane moments. A treehouse is a magical opportunity for quiet, space, solitude, relaxation, imagination, simplification, and observation. I need those opportunities in my life, and I suspect most artists do.
An 8-year-old's treehouse has mosquito netting and bean bag chairs:

This preschooler made a very sturdy old tree with a squirrel running up the trunk:

I spent two wonderful childhood summers reading about archaeological excavations, writing letters to pen pals, and embroidering pillowcases with lazy daisies, French knots, and chain stitch. Artists need times and spaces when the fresh breeze can really blow around in their heads without meeting people or demands on their time.

Artists need to watch lines of ants travel a tree branch. They need to invent fabulous contraptions for their treehouses, or just move with the tree as it sways in the wind. Artists need to climb up high to look out over their whole neighborhood from a different viewpoint. They need to communicate with the rest of the world in unusual ways, maybe sending notes down to ground level in a bucket, or flashing coded messages with a mirror. Artists need to soar above the ground on a tire swing at sunset when the insects are droning, but before the mosquitoes really start biting.
Climb up the stairs or enjoy the tire swing:

Look for the housekeeper, the six detectives, and the eight construction workers in this picture by a kindergarten student:


Artists need sun-warmed, shade-dappled places to dream. Every child has an artist within. Please allow some treehouse time in your child's week.

Gnarly troll houses

gnarly adj 1. very good, excellent; COOL. ("That trick on your skateboard was gnarly!") 2. used to describe something that looks painful or dangerous. ("That was a gnarly car wreck.") 3. gross, disgusting. ("Check out that gnarly old homeless dude.")
Online Slang Dictionary

gnarly Original from 70's surfspeak - to describe waves that are violently breaking without the form that would render them more rideable. Can also describe less than ideal females.

"I'm bailing on this session-waves are too gnarly"
"I had to ditch her friend, she was lookin' gnarly"

UrbanDictionary.com

gnarl - "contort, twist," 1814, a back-formation from gnarled, which appears only in Shakespeare ("Measure for Measure," 1603) but was picked up 19c. by romantic poets and brought into currency. It is probably a variant of M.E. knar "knot in wood" (1382), originally "a rock, a stone," of uncertain origin. Gnarly first attested 1829; picked up 1970s as surfer slang to describe a dangerous wave; it had spread in teen slang by 1980s, where it meant both "excellent" and "disgusting."
Online Etymology Dictionary

My favorite dictionary is the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language that my Uncle Milt and Aunt Margie gave me for high school graduation in 1973. Its red binding is really showing the wear, and sometimes it is a bit out-dated, but the thumbnail illustrations are still intriguing, and the page lay-out has enough white space to keep it visually restful. The entries invite browsing, and send me off on see also references to other words for perusing. To a word-lover, it is a ten-minute vacation, the equivalent of a power nap or hot shower.

I have a friend who reads phonebooks, and finds the same intrigue, edification, and relaxation. Other friends browse cookbooks. To each her own reference book.

American Heritage indicates that gnarl can mean to snarl or growl, as well as a protruding knot on a tree. Gnarled can mean misshapen, "crabbed in temperment", or "rugged in appearance".

How are you doing, darling? You seem somewhat crabbed in temperment....

It's so nice of you to ask, honey. I'm having difficulty refraining from browsing gnash, gneiss, and gnu, and thence to wildebeest or schist. I am worried that I might be gnathic, and maybe related to a jaw.

We are making quite delightful troll houses. They resemble tree stumps. I will get some photogs on the Itty Bitty Art Projects blog soon. We did papier mache with Ross Art Paste and covered our houses in crumpled and torn brown paper bags for a tree bark texture. [This is going better than the year we made the rock'n'roll trolls on stage at the Fairyland Bandstand complete with teeny tiny disco balls.]



Papier mache always brings out both the "excellent; cool" and "disgusting" comments. This time the soggy, sagging forms will also fit the contorted, twisted, misshapen connotations of "gnarly".



One of these summers we will finally create chia trolls. The time frame limitations have yet to be surmounted. I want to make clay trolls, dry them, fire them, and still have time to sprout the grass seed hair...It just doesn't work in two weeks.

Going to climb the rope ladder into my treehouse now for some reading time. I will lower a bucket for provisions and bug repellent.