Small Dream Saturday, Entry 11

Hello Strangers, 

In honor or earth day, my dream this week is to one day teach a community art class using unwanted things. As you may have noticed, many of my dreams involve the use of junk. When I was a teenager, I used to cut cardboard from cereal boxes to make book covers and canvases. Cardboard has a tendency to “drink” paint; it sucks the pigment and the liquid into its surface, but! It was far better to paint on than printer paper, or even low weight art paper. If it hadn’t been for those makeshift canvases, I never would have picked up acrylic painting, and if I’d never done that, I would never have found gouache. 

In the future, I have all kinds of projects planned that I genuinely believe will be beautiful. New paper made from old phone books, handmade journals, faux stained glass, mixed media master’s studies, pendants with paintings inside pressed flower water bottles and lanterns…There’s a million things that have been made by more creative people than me, and they’re easy to find. Just type ‘plastic art’ into Pinterest, and you’ll find incredible things.

But the other thing I’d like to say about these second hand DIYs is that the power of children’s imagination cannot be understated. Little girls of seven years old have more complex weaving skills than many adults because they’ve been braiding hair and making friendship bracelets since they were in preschool. There are still some little boys who paint model cars with their fathers, and a significant amount of children I’ve found are fascinated by intricate geometric patterns. 

My hope is that by the time I have the option to teach a community class, I will know how to incorporate the knowledge of that community into the curriculum. How beautiful would it be if entire towns of people returned to a system of creation? Everything from rebuilding engines and building tables from scratch, to making windchimes and decorative stepping stones, to making rugs and wallhangings? Think about the sense of pride in that place, knowing the craftsmanship involved in every little thing. I hope to one day have an art truck with a frog holding a paintbrush on it. I’d drive it around and give lessons to anyone who wanted one. 

Happy Scrapping, Strangers. 

–Mabel