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DPP5-

(today's art probably should be called crafts)

Our last art class of the year. I don't believe in magic, not in the mysterious supernatural sense of the word. But no doubt, art class has been a special place this year. For a few minutes, for a couple of times a week, our kids become creators.

On this night, we ushered in three groups. I knew that the project might go quickly. But our first table-full, girls only, worked deliberately and made every minute last. The second group, the older boys, wrestled their way in the door. I rarely think that they are going to enjoy the project ahead of them. And yet, evening after evening, they surprise us. They settle in and do the project, usually with their own unique style and twist. Yeah, sure, some of them humor us, but we see others really striving to do good work. None of those guys want to take their work home, but they sure scramble to see it hung up in the room.

The last group, the little boys, they are a work themselves. They have a lot to say. (understatement!) We wait for them to stop talking. No one wants to sit next to one kid, with good reason- he's known to lash out, very unpredictably. Tonight he doesn't get his own pair of scissors. We shuffle seats around and create spaces. The little boys, they don't listen to instructions much. They are do-ers. They do. Their trees might be called... abstract.

Over the last year, we've made collages and self-portraits. We've drawn all kinds of animals and buildings and scenes in nature. We've drawn with crayons and pencils and markers and painted with acrylics and tempera and watercolors. We have used white paper and colored paper and newspaper and magazines. We've done a LOT of projects. Without hesitation, I know that we would all say that we are still learning how to do this time well. We are still learning, period. And although we have had ups and downs with these kids this year, days when we are excited to come back and days when we almost crawl home, all of us want to keep on.
(maybe without hot glue...)
(maybe without glue sticks...)
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For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
    at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
-Psalm 92:4

I think, I hope, that He is glad, too.

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"Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul."
Wassily Kandinsky, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" (1911)

Our apologies, Wassily Kandinsky. I'm pretty sure that when we introduced your artwork, Squares with Concentric Circles, we didn't pronounce your name correctly. I ignorantly guessed you might have hailed from Poland. Yet lo, I later discover that you were Russian, though you lived in Germany for a time and eventually became a French citizen. I wonder what you, considered among the first of the great abstract artists, would think of our table of youth, trying to imitate your works. I think, maybe, you would be amused as they consider the colors and cut out shapes and match layer on layer. I think, maybe, you would turn on the music and turn up the volume and encourage our kids to look even more deeply, at their work and at themselves. I think, maybe, you would remind them that their work is not just mere passing time, but is really creating. I think, maybe, at the end of the time, you would laugh and shake your head and praise and encourage them, just like we do.

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El auto retrato.
The self portrait.

The instructions give us a guide. Fold the paper into halves to find the center. First draw the forehead, then an arch down the paper to create the chin. Next follows the eyes and the nose. Step by step, add ears and lips and neck and shoulders. Finally design your hairstyle on top.

But what do we look like? How do we see ourselves?

Our kids, who often tend to copy the model we give them, set out on their own today. Not a single person shared colors or even shapes from the example. Pencil lines, later darkened by Sharpie, mark out the faces. Watercolor paints fill in the spaces. Colors bleed and seep and run dark into light.

Boys sketch the figures with their features, long faces, short hair. Some have eyes, small and squinty. Others make pupils that stare at you. A few create a gaze that peers deep into the distance. Mouths curl in crooked scowls, seldom a smile to be seen.  Their hair forms universally short, sometimes even spiky. A few add ball caps on an angle and initials to boast where their allegiances might lie. Occasionally a mustache and beard shows up, even though such probably won't be seen on the artists' own faces for years into the future. Our few girls work more slowly, determined to create true likeness. They sketch and erase and then try again. Their hair hangs long and wavy. One adds jewelry to her ears.

But the colors. Perhaps it is the colors that say the most. We wonder why he chooses a gray-green pallor, this beautiful Mexican boy with perfect coffee melanin. We smile at the always present red and white and green of their patria. The girls pick bright pinks and deep purples and sunflower yellows. We worry about the reemergence of blacks and dark grays, palettes that had faded in the past year but have slowly and steadily returned.

We hang their works up on the line across the wall and we recognize the faces of our young friends. Yet we also acknowledge that these simple portraits are a small window into so much more. When given the task of identifying the future king, the Lord told Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” We pray, give us the same ability, so see and to love these kids as the Lord himself does.

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As each one began to fill the white sheet with sharpie sketch, we shook the rainbow hues out of the plastic container. What is it about that waxy scent that immediately conjures up years past? We spread the crayolas across the table and memories surface, of childhood school supplies when every point is shiny new, of my own little people gathered around the dining room table listening to the history reading for the day. We hope for those same feelings of safety and comfort in this place, where everyday hard is left outside the door. We hope for a place where kids come in and learn and create. We hope for a place where kids are simply kids, full of promise and confident in who He has made each one to be. On this day, the project was all silliness, but to see the smiles burst out at the surprise of the folds, that was all light.

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My teammate first saw the idea on the Internet. To be clear, he gets lots of ideas on the Internet. If we were counting, I'd guess that the majority of time when he sticks his phone in front of us and says, "Watch THIS!," we nod and then wait and then laugh out loud, loudly. Sometimes we say, "We could do that!," but really it might be a Pinterest Fail just waiting to happen. But sometimes we say, "WOW! That's cool! We should do that here."

This time, Ryan really made it happen.

You think potholes are bad where you live? Sure, they probably are, for a season. But those of you living in the States, if you complain, the city will mostly likely send a crew out to fix them and then you forget that they ever were. That doesn't happen here. Potholes, or rather- avoiding potholes, become part of the daily obstacle course of life. Another teammate (and lest we be accused of cultural insensitivity- he's Mexican), tired of the jarring hits on his car, decided we could start filling the potholes in the neighborhood. And last summer, that's what we did. With the help of crews from our short-term summer teams, we hit the streets and mixed up concrete and starting filling holes.

Then sometime in the winter, we saw the video. It showed examples of folks in other places topping off pothole repairs with mosaic art. That was a natural for this place.

We started making art with our neighborhood kids a year ago. In that time they have created drawings and paintings and self-portraits and collages of all sorts. This time, we are taking their art to the street; really, laying the art into the street and capping off the pothole repairs with the mosaic tiles. Over the course of this summer, we have laid down tiles with Esperanza and Gozo and Amor, literally bringing hope and joy and love into our neighborhood roads. Our kids and volunteers have designed flowers and ice cream cones and animals and abstract colorful designs. We are patching our streets with beauty. 

Street art doesn't last. It's temporal. Cars drive over our art and the tiles crack and will eventually disintegrate. And maybe, then, we'll do it again all over again. But no matter, the message we keep is from Him who is eternal, the Creator of all things who made us in His image to create. We can tell our kids that He too is making all things new and that our Jesus, he does not disappoint. And whether in the street or anywhere else, that is the most beautiful message of all.

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Sometimes art class gets a little out of hand...

(And then I notice, I think I am mellowing. Slowly. Because really, I hate mixing all the colors into green-gray-purple ooze. And really, why would you want paint all over your hands? But really, is this the big thing today? Soap and paper towels are cheap, but smiles are priceless.)

Grace. More grace.

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In the frantic pace of life, we need to slow down and simply observe natural forces around us and create out of that experience. What makes us truly human may not be how fast we are able to accomplish a task but what we experience fully, carefully, and quietly in the process.
- Makoto Fujimura

Knowing the excitement and anticipation and even the element of anxiety my artist friend experiences on showing her works makes it easy to stop and ask the other artists about their art. One explained the time, the hours, it requires to dye and shape and felt wool pieces that somehow adhere to other fabrics to create unexpected beauty. Another told of his evolution as an artist, the journey from realizing his abstract techniques might actually be on the edge of obsessive compulsive. A young man sat against the wall of the building and recalled the wonder of his finishing his very first painting. We are all made in the image of our Creator, made to create.

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“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

- Pablo Picasso

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The best part about teaching the art class is watching the kids create.
The second best part is that I can too.

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Bound No'th Blues
Goin' down de road, Lord,
Goin' down de road.
Down de road, Lord,
Way, way down de road.
Got to find somebody
To help me carry this load.
Road's in front o' me,
Nothin' to do but walk.
Road's in front o' me,
Walk... and walk... and walk.
I'd like to meet a good friend
To come along an' talk.
Road, road, road, O!
Road, road... road... road, road!
Road, road, road, O!
On de No'thern road.
These Mississippi towns ain't
Fit for a hoppin' toad.
- Langston Hughes

(artwork from Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, #40 The Immigrants Arrived in Great Number, One Way Ticket at MOMA)

So much of this artwork reminded me of where I live...

344/365 or DPP 10

Afternoon painting pottery with the high school group- my turn comes next week...

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How beautiful the feet that carry 

This gospel of peace 

To the fields of injustice 

And the valleys of need— 

To be a voice of hope and healing, 

To answer the cries 

Of the hungry and helpless 

With the mercy of Christ. 

- "Compassion Hymn" by Keith & Kristyn Getty and Stuart Townsend

Blessed and encouraged by a weekend spent sharing and hearing of all our God is doing in and through His people. Thankful for the steadfast love and mercy of our Lord. Grateful for the generosity, faithfulness, and hospitality of the folks at Christ Community Church in Frisco.

(photo from the Texas Sculpture Garden, Frisco, TX)

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All things are from God; and above all, reason and imagination and the great gifts of the mind. They are good in themselves; and we must not altogether forget their origin even in their perversion.

- G.K. Chesterton in The Dagger with Wings

The Tip of the Pen

"I believe that we are all created in the image of God, and that we don't only bear is image in the way we think, in the way we act, in the emotions that we have, but in our desire to create. 

I believe that the things God impresses upon us, and the things that we are passionate about, are the things He was first passionate about. So I see this passion in me is the most intimate way I know God."
 - Jake Weidmann in "The Tip of the Pen"
(discovered in The Rabbit Room)

This video is so very much worth 4:43 of your time!

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I have just a couple of things that were my grandparents, and I treasure them. The desk, where I sit almost every morning and read and study and pray, that was my grandma's. I don't remember not knowing that desk. It was my favorite place in her house when I was growing up. I hid Bic felt tip pens and gumball machine treats in the secret pull-out boxes. I wrote notes on my grandma's bridge pads. The doors of the bookshelves on the desk still rattle every morning when I really get to scribbling in my notebook, a sound that transports me to the same rattle when my sister and I would run across the living room or slam the front screen door too hard.

I also have one painting that came from my grandparents. Today it hangs in my bedroom. I don't remember it from childhood at all. It surfaced as an dusty unframed canvas discovered after my grandpa died. I was the only one interested in keeping it, so by default, it came to my house. The artist signed his name down in the right hand corner, Bambrook.

Walter Bambrook was a friend of my grandparents. I think my grandpa met him when they both set type at the Albuquerque Journal in the mid-1900's. My grandparents had other paintings of Mr. Bambrook in the house.We would see Mr. Bambrook at the New Mexico State Fair Fine Arts Gallery. He would take us over to his paintings on display and show us how he hid animals in the aspen scenes. I had no idea that he was a fine artist- I only knew that he painted the landscapes that were my backyard, the Sandia mountains, the adobes, the changing fall colors.

I'm guessing that this painting was from rather early in Walter Bambrook's career, and not nearly as valuable or appreciated as his later works. That does not diminish its worth in my eyes one bit.

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Upon looking at it close up, I realized that it was a mosaic, tiny pieces of tile.
Man, that must take patience!

7/365

inspired by this,
my attempt at craftiness
(of the creative, not cunning or devious, sort...)

dpp- 8 december

if only all of life's mice were so gosh darned cute...!

lately...

a random list of this.
and that.

1. Back in the cold of winter, my dear friend Susie in Omaha wrote me, her excitement oozing out of my computer, that her recipe was chosen as a finalist for a Midwest Living recipe cook-off! So sweet Susie made the all expenses paid trip to a beautiful kitchen in Branson, Missouri, and baked her heart out. To know Susie is absolutely to love Susie, and even more so once you taste the delights that come out of her kitchen! Alas, she didn't win the grand prize, but her recipe and a gorgeous picture of her Kiwi Summer Limeade Pie is featured in the May 2011 issue of Midwest Living.
(photo credit: Midwest Living food photographer Andy Lyons)

2. For the last five years, I've worn a very loyal and very comfortable pair of Nike all-terrain sandals. I wore them to raft the Colorado through the Grand Canyon and I wore them to hike in Costa Rica and all kinds of places in-between. But sadly, their time has come to an end, as they lost their soul, oops, I mean SOLE, at Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica. Their replacement?
CHACOS! I am SO excited about this, because everybody I know that has Chacos loves them. I found mine at a big discount at Amazon.com, and used gift card $$ to pay for them, and they arrived today. Much rejoicing! (but look closely at the picture! notice the mosquito ON MY FOOT! Not rejoicing about the mosquito attack at dusk!!)

3. Newest addition to Thou Shalt Not: this little piece. It comes in a smaller version too. Actually, I could find a few treasures there...

4. first trip of the summer at the Texas Stop Sign. It's really rather remarkable how much a French Silk Blizzard tastes like French Silk Pie...

a few of the easiest parts of lately...