A Weekend “Art” Project

I decided to go green with the library bags I hand out to students this year. Let me explain.

As a resource teacher at a small, special needs school, I have the enviable job of hosting story times with students every week. Many of you would no doubt find it amusing to see me singing, dancing, waving my arms (I gesture expansively), changing facial expressions as fast as clouds morph into different shapes (I speak animatedly), and having conversations with a fairly large muppet named Candy.

OK, Candy is not a real Muppet (as in Jim Henson Muppets), but she definitely has the personality of one. I am her straight man (straight person?). You understand, now, that though I am a professional librarian, I am everything but staid in the library where I engage in the activities listed above. I have never said “Shhhhh.” I do not wear a bun (in my hair). And I laugh as heartily as any of my students while singing silly songs and spouting ridiculous rhymes (many of which I write myself). I am a huge fan of picture books, and a firm believer that learning should be fun. There is an eminent doctor that agrees with me. He even has an Institute about play, and how it unlocks human potential.

A pioneer in research on play, Dr. Stuart Brown says humor, games, roughhousing, flirtation and fantasy are more than just fun. Plenty of play in childhood makes for happy, smart adults — and keeping it up can make us smarter at any age.

Back to the going green part of this post. Every year I have handed out plastic bags with drawstring closures. They cost about $1.10 per bag (Canadian) and and I buy about 100 of them. I print out labels with students’ pictures on them, stick them onto the bags with clear tape, and hand the bags out. If you could see how eyes light up when bags are distributed, you would realize that getting a library bag with your picture on it, to hold your book of the week, is downright incredible.

I’m getting to the green part. This year, I went and bought the reusable bags from a company that shall remain nameless. These were $1.00 per bag (no, they didn’t give me a discount). I measured the label on the bag , and made sure that the labels I printed out were large enough to obliterate the advertising. This meant I could only get one label per page. After printing out the labels, they had to be cut out, laminated, and cut out again so that there was a clear plastic seam allowance outside each label. These were then pinned to the bags. Then they were sewn, with a zigzag stitch, requiring care that only the top layer of the bag was stitched through (this requires a certain way of maneuvering the bag on the arm of the sewing machine, not to mention holding my tongue and lips in a certain position.

The bags are all done: this was my weekend art project.

Privacy laws dictate that I cannot show you a bag, with the child’s name and picture, but if you listen, you might hear the squeals of delight as each bag finds its owner. It’s as much fun as a gallery opening, and every bag will be filled with a book that has a whole gallery of pictures in it.

How to Improve Your Performance In Anything

Isn’t this rich?

Those of us who practice positive thinking often face great skepticism, if not downright ridicule. How sweet it is, then, to see business guru Seth Godin state that “All the evidence I’ve seen shows that positive thinking and confidence improves performance. In anything.”

Just in case you missed it, that’s IN ANYTHING.

Then he asks the key question: “Why do smart people engage in negative thinking? “

I’ve often wondered the same. It seems to me that if you choose to look at the positive side of any given situation, you are energized by aligning yourself with new possibilities. You feel good, you notice wonderful things that are happening around you, life appears to be exciting and hopeful.

Godin’s take on the subject is that “negative thinking feels good:”

In its own way, we believe that negative thinking works. Negative thinking feels realistic, or soothes our pain, or eases our embarrassment. Negative thinking protects us and lowers expectations.

In many ways, negative thinking is a lot more fun than positive thinking. So we do it.

I have to admit this surprised me: negative thinking is fun? I suppose so, if your mindset is fixated on failure and humiliation. It may be more tolerable than those situations, but how does that kind of fun compare to  the exhilaration of learning new skills and acquiring new knowledge, or the elation that comes from putting them into practice in your life and work, or the satisfaction of achieving something that was once only a notation on your dream list?

Godin hammers his argument further home with:

If positive thinking was easy, we’d do it all the time. Compounding this difficulty is our belief that the easy thing (negative thinking) is actually appropriate, it actually works for us. The data is irrelevant. We’re the exception, so we say.

Positive thinking is hard. Worth it, though.

Positive thinking is only hard if you have been consistently practicing negative thinking for a long time. It can be turned around.

Your performance depends on it.

Ask Yourself If You’re Spending Time On the Right Stuff

The title of this post is one of the suggestions Randy Pausch listed as advice for anyone who might be running out of time.

I am sure most of you are now familiar with the story of Randy Pausch, a computer science professor from Carnegie Mellon University, whose Last Lecture literally riveted the world.

Robert Genn, one of my favorite online authors, wrote a tribute to Randy Pausch, and I decided to put the information on my own blog so that I could access it any time I needed heavy duty inspiration and a reality check on my problems.

Carnegie Mellon University still maintains Randy Pausch’s “presence” on their website. His humility (or lack of ego) was so ingrained, that even after an incredible degree of attention (even adulation), the attention did not go to his head:

I am flattered and embarassed by all the recent attention to my “Last Lecture.” I am told that, including abridged versions, over six million people have viewed the lecture online. The lecture really was for my kids, but if others are finding value in it, that is wonderful. But rest assured; I’m hardly unique. Send your kids to Carnegie Mellon and the other professors here will teach them valuable life lessons long after I’m gone.  [That number is now well over 10 million views.]

I found a very surprising fact about this man, who gained the respect and love of millions for his bravery in the face of death and his wisdom concerning how to live life to the fullest. It is well known that he had a PhD in computer science. However, Randy also sewed. You read that right. There is a connection between his PhD and the needle arts. Those PhD years were ” . . . the height of [his] sewing activity. Nothing like a dissertation to drive you to do anything else.”

While that does not sound like a glowing commendation for the art of sewing, and no art quilts were mentioned, Randy Pausch’s dexterity with the needle is just one more reason to celebrate an exemplary human life. As he advised in his last lecture:

Never ever underestimate the importance of having fun. I am dying soon, and I am choosing to have fun today, tomorrow and every other day I have left.

Some people are dying to have fun, some act as if they would rather die than have fun, and others have fun despite the fact that they know they are dying ~ imminently. Randy Pausch was one of those enlightened beings who knew that having fun was spending time on the right stuff. How else would he be able to grin and say, as a 47 year old man dying of pancreatic cancer, “If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

(If you crave more illumination about Pausch’s methods for celebrating life, watch this ABC special. He was famous for helping his students believe in themselves long before The Last Lecture that launched him onto the global stage. Viewing this may well awaken ~or reinforce ~ that belief in your consciousness as well.)

Daily Design Papers

Two things have converged in my mind to present myself with a challenge. The first is Maggie Taylor’s work, which I discussed in the post before this one. Maggie uses many layers of scanned images to produce her work, but I prefer to use photographs. I do not have a large collection of vintage photos, nor do they necessarily suit the kind of artwork I do. Besides, Ann Baldwin~who does wonderful collage paintings, as you probably know~talked about the fact that after amassing her collection of vintage photos, someone else grouped some of them into copyrighted products! The safest way to avoid copyright issues is to only use your own work (or get permission for that of someone else).

The second thing that impressed itself upon my brain for this challenge was Jane Dunnewold’s Daily Visuals. This is how she describes them:

On November 10, 2008, I committed to a year-long photo-journaling practice. As an artist, I believe it is valuable to spend time every day looking at the world around me. To this end, I committed to posting a daily photograph and a few thoughts when applicable – on color, design, spirit and making. While this is primarily a witness to processes that help me go deeper into my own art-making, it is also a practice worth sharing. I invite you to comment, if you are moved to do so. And thanks for joining in!

I especially love the comment Jane makes on her December 4th offering, which is papery bark on a tree, where she muses that “Every artist faces a myriad of possible considerations when it comes to representing an image drawn from Nature. The challenge is to recognize the elegant choice.”

Well, I’m going to do my own daily visuals, and see how many I can turn into design papers, as I am wont to call them. I will dub this practice my Daily Design Papers. That is my personal challenge. If you are interested in trying this as well, I have some ideas that could make it quite interesting. We could do swaps, for instance: you send me one of yours and I’ll send you one of mine. Later, we can share artwork where we’ve incorporated them. Sound like fun?

Fun is the operative word: anything goes. Do not let perfectionist tendencies stop you from taking, or posting, pics. Nothing is too mundane to photograph. Recognizing the elegant choice does not always happen immediately!

I am going to start with my hand reflected in the window on the door in my studio.

Hand reflection in studio window

After  a few quick duplications and flips in Photoshop Elements, the selection turns into this:

Hand reflected design 1

Rather argyle sweaterish, non? Combine things a little differently, tweak the colors, and you get this.

Hand reflected design 2

Now it’s your turn!

Fun foam stamp tutorial

Just for fun, I thought I would explain the fun foam stamp process step by step. It’s good practice for me, and I am learning something new every time I do this. It’s such a great, simple way to add pattern and personal marks to a piece of cloth, or paper. And extreme accuracy is not necessary, although you could certainly tighten everything up completely if you slowed down, cut the pieces very carefully, and used ink instead of fabric paint to print the image.

I print out my doodle pattern in multiples (whatever number I choose). I often do at least 2 of the same image in small, medium, and large sizes, as well as flipped orientations, to give myself lots of options.

1. Apply white glue to 2 images, identical except for the fact that one is flipped horizontally, or reversed. In this case, the design is symmetrical, so they look the same (I have an asymetrical example at the bottom of this tutorial). Glue the patterns onto the fun foam. Let dry thoroughly–I leave them overnight for this stage.

2. Once they are dry, number the pieces–alternatively, number them on your images before printing out in the first place! Just remember to number the pieces on your second image so that it mirrors the first. (See the end of this tutorial for illustrations about numbering).

You are now ready to cut out the pieces. Use a small, sharp scissor, and/or an exacto knife and cutting mat. The 1st image, or base, is cut only around the final edge of the stamp. The 2nd image is cut into pieces.

3. Glue the cut pieces onto the pattern base. Cut the black lines of each piece off (except around the outer edge). Glue paper to paper. The image on the base should look “correct.” You can see how the pink pieces in the illustration fit inside the black lines of the base.

Continue cutting and gluing all the pieces until your stamp is done.

4. Use your new stamp to put the image onto a piece of cloth or paper.

5. These illustrations show how numbering should be done on your patterns: