The Art of Noise

Thanks for your enthusiasm in sending Pamela some ATCs! She will really enjoy this. School, unfortunately, doesn't prepare you for the art world...I suppose math, science and language arts are pretty important:-P. But in remembering my own school days, I was always looking for the right answer and not so much what I thought about things. I'm learning that now, and art really helps with that. Again, I had art teachers who wanted the perfect work of art, not necessarily something that conveyed feeling, but that looked right.

Last night, I stayed up too late taking Pamela around and showing her our prints of paintings. My favorite artist is Marc Chagall. We have "I and the Village" hanging over Pamela's piano. I asked her "how does this make you feel?" and she was stumped. I said, you don't know how it makes you feel? So we worked on that. And that's the thing. It's all about how it makes you feel and not whether it's right or wrong. Math has right and wrong answers and there are rules to grammar and science, but to teach creative thinking...I think that's art (and philosophy, but I hate philosophy because I can't seem to take a stand on anything anyway, and philosophy just makes me more confused).

Here's the most recent ATC I made for Pamela. She wants to know why I keep using these girls. I just like them, plus they're in B&W so I can use my watercolor pencils and my new blender pen to give them some color, which I love doing. I was not happy about the way the glitter stuck all over the place on this card, but Pamela likes it.

We're all about the art in our house now. I see the difference in Seth's paintings and drawing from Pamela's when she was his age and I know a lot of it is my fault. What's funny is that for most things, Seth wants them perfect (i.e. he'd rather be naked than just a tiny bit dirty or wet, if the lego figures don't look exactly like the box he won't play with them) but when it comes to art, he goes wild. Here's a couple examples:

This one is currently on our easel. I guess it's a work in progress.This one was one he did at school. I love the use of color and the fact that he covers the whole page.

This is longer than I had intended, so I guess I'll cut off now:). I walked 5.25 miles yesterday! My motivation is lagging right now (I'm worried about Toby, I'll have to talk about that tomorrow) but I only read my textbooks while on the treadmill so I have to get on the treadmill:)