My daughter, Ana, came to me asking, "Can you take me to school before the carpool, Dad?" Two round trips--one before 6 a.m.--was an unusual request, but instinctively I felt it must be important. The freezing temperature in the car limited conversation, but my thoughts of what prompted this ride in the dark included studying for a possible test, tutoring or another early-morning orchestra rehearsal.
As we neared the school, sunlight started to peep up and shed light on our early-morning affair. "I wanted to be here before the janitor starts sweeping," Ana, my daughter, explained. "So I can look around and get all the cool stuff from the floor."
If I had just been a civilian parent--and not an art teacher who also advocates the importance of collecting--I would have shown my irritation. Instead, I praised Ana's artistic resolve. Indeed, it was a memorable collecting day for her and, after school, her pockets were bulging with unusual erasers, bottle caps, colorful candy wrappers, and other difficult-to-identify tiny treasures.
Between children and adults, there is no contest as to who keeps the most unusual collections. In a clear container, she keeps broken pencil points; in still another she houses her baby-tooth collection. When she finds unusual washers in my toolbox, they move into her slide-storage-page-pocket showcase. In binders, Ana curates collections of unusual matchbooks, unopened prizes, and the like.
Inspired by her small stuff, Ana also makes tiny art. Thumb-nail-sized bugs and ballerinas fill our fanciest living room containers and Model Magic[R] figures even line up inside our medicine cabinet. One hundred or more nail-polish colors stand in readiness--Ana's artistic palette for painted nail miniatures. There is something about little things, small toys, insects, play pals and street finds, that attract young collectors.
CHILDREN'S SMALL ART American art has grown from framed art on a wall to wall-sized art. While adult artists think in terms of room sizes, children dream of tiny forms they can pocket, carry and hide from adult inspection. Children's art scale is palm-sized, toy-sized, yet abundant with big ideas, big adventures, settings and fantasies. Children plan big things in a small scale. Giants and dinosaurs are fun and scary, while little things are controllable and appeal for protection. It is interesting that of all the living things in the world, children are so interested in insects and dinosaurs--creatures of such vast]y different sizes. The saga of tiny things abounds in children's rhymes, songs, storybooks and protected collections.
Using toys as scale models of their world, children taste, examine and set up their visions of larger worlds. Children's small-scale dreams are molded into tangible forms in play setups and small artworks. Small art allows kids to be in charge of private explorations, "vacations" from school and adult worlds, ready to take off with transportable things in a pocket.
The sizes of books, notebooks, school folders and art paper, defines school-scale art. But children dream of giants and love to listen to stories about elves and tiny creatures. Just remember the importance that Smurfs, MatchBox[R] cars, Cracker-Jack[R] prizes, magnets, and key chains held in your young life. Tiny hands forming tiny people out of cereal, foil wrap or paper clips, illustrate the size of children's personally improvised art.
Children provide the clues for rethinking the scale of school art. To respect this interest, we make an art of collecting nail-sized canvases (or use fingernails as canvases) and explore working with tiny art tools on projects admired with a magnifying glass. For portrait busts, we fire up the popcorn popper in class to discover the most interesting people on the many sides of each hot and delicious-smelling kernel. We search the pavement, nature's floors, and school hallways to find small canvases, art tools and inspirations for art.
SMURFS AND OTHER TINY CREATURES
For little people living in a big world, it is comforting to have objects they can control and tower over. MatchBox cars can be driven without a learner's permit. Polly Pocket" leases may be signed without a realtor and furnished without Moro or her decorator. Kids easily enter the worlds of Smurfs and California-Raisin figures, setting them up in imaginative places and providing the script and inventive accessories for instant adventures.
Plays with tiny figures and creating settings for them is an important aspect of children's art. Fast food figures can be disciplined for a bad grade of lined up in a parade to perform circus acts. Tiny books, from our "Nut Shell" library, and tiny cars are taken along on a drive in the family car. During a period when every tone else seems to be in charge of every action and detail in one's life, it is nice to have a small world with which to have fun.
SMALL EXCAVATIONS Recently we purchased a bulk package of Cracker-Jack boxes for the children's lunch boxes. Imagine our surprise opening Ana's door to find Cracker-Jack heaven--piles of prizes among dozens of opened containers, with Ana feeling her way, just getting to the bottom of things. Children love prizes. They are skillful excavators of full cereal boxes and are willing to eat any Happy Meal just to free the arrested little figures inside.
The ceremonious opening of prizes is repeatedly replayed in our art class, as everyone breathtakingly awaits the signs of pay dirt in magical containers. We study prize history from a new collector's book on Cracker-Jack prizes and rummage through the teacher's historic collection. Of course, we create our own prizes hidden inside dream boxes.
POCKETING ART If you shop for clothes with kids, you know the standards: a nice outfit has two pockets, a great outfit has a million pockets of all sizes, preferably with zippers, buttons and locking devices. Children's pockets are safes for collections of pocket-sized stuff. In the cement mixer of a pocket, all kinds of seemingly unrelated items are affiliated by the curator's tastes and interests. Kids' shopping often focuses on small items, which do not require bagging, but which can just be pocketed.
There is a richness to having sidewalk treasures, unusual candy wrappers. buttons and fast-food figures all scrambling for space in a single pocket. Not concerned with use of value, a beautiful pebble, an unusual bag-tie or a paint-sample card may land in a pocket for the highest artistic motives--just because it's beautiful. In our art class, we collect pocket-sized containers to organize and display pocket finds. We also make pockets and save pockets from old garments to broaden our collecting capacity. Kids exhibit finds in different types of clear pockets including plastic bags displayed with clothespins on clotheslines, Clear food-to-go containers are used for more formal displays of small treasures.
Children's small collections are uncensored by adults. They are individual choices and paint a fine self-portrait of the young artist. What is kept inside children's pockets is a valuable starting point to set up personal still lifes. A still life that represents children would include a portrait of the tiny things that reside at the bottom of a child's pocket.
A PORTABLE ART If you look for children's art, it may not be work in frames, permanently installed on walls or in collectors cases. When children make art objects they are often items that can be carried, easily moved and taken with the artist everywhere. Different ways to carry and store tiny objects area child's artistic concern. Children love carrying cases for small cars and figures. Containers with many different compartments, drawers and dividers are preferred.
Kids have an affinity for small boxes to keep small things. My historic collection of Barbie[R] cases, Matchbox, and Star Wars[R] carrying cases stay in our art class. We constantly share examples of all kinds of new tool and parts boxes, exciting tackle boxes, unusual make-up cases, and new ideas in jewelry boxes. We talk about the use of these cases for art and collecting and above all look at contemporary storage units filled by children as artworks.
A SMALL ENDING To find genuine children's collections and art interests, look deeply into their secret containers, lunch boxes and pockets. Check the items kids use to decorate their rooms, school bags and clothes, such as stickers, pins, key chains and magnets. In kids' special fascination with small things, art teachers can find new scales, themes, ways to store, and even display, kids' art. The many tiny figures that represent their owners are only a small part of a larger family of objects with which children design, create stories and make their own creative settings.
