Sticker Artists

Arts & Activities, Oct, 2000 by George Szekely

Checkout lines at stores and supermarkets are prime places to observe children and to hear their opinions. In an express line the other day, I moved along with a sticker-clutching youngster and her dad, who hoped to remove the child's treasure by exorcising it out of her hands.

"What do you need it for?" he asked. "It can't be reused. Don't you see it's just paper? We already have a closet full at home, don't we?"

The speed of the line and the pace of the verbal barrage added pressure and little room for the child's response.

Adults generally consider children's special finds--like stickers--a waste of money. Teachers look at the stuff kids hide in their pockets or inside their lunch-box "safes" as distractions to education. Even some art teachers don't give proper recognition to sticker artists, or view stickers as a legitimate art media and a viable children's art supply.

Would it have made a difference if the adult in our checkout lane waited for the child's response? Kids will almost instantly come up with a variety of impressive ideas and uses for the creative supplies they collect.

Would it have made a difference if I had been able to share with this dad my collection of children's carefully arranged and imaginatively set up sticker albums? Would it have helped to quickly enlist my many photos of children's rooms in which stickers clearly stand out as an impressive personalizing and decorative element?

How will adults recognize the importance of objects kids value and dream about? How will my colleagues support children's unique art interests and art supplies and not substitute adult art concerns, values and "real" art supplies?

In spite of checkout line opposition, and generally little adult support, it is amazing how children still amass vast sticker collections which they apply to their art, to the decoration of special objects and their rooms. By the way, the little girl in the express lane won, and I am certain if we could visit her bedroom-studio, we would all be impressed to see the importance of stickers in the creative life of children.

STICKY INTERIOR DESIGNS You know where you are by the stickered door frame and the stickers displayed on the doorknob. You know it is a special place even before you turn on the lights and experience the flickering effects of the fluorescent-sticker light show. As you get to the light switch, you may notice the customized switch-plate, one of the many canvases of the resident sticker artist.

The contemporary stained-glass design across the room is the child's stickered window. It is not gum that decorates the bedpost (as the old song goes) but a collection of produce stickers, curving with the flow of the white piping of the daybed. Rows of stickers detail metal venetian blinds in the windows.

Framed pictures and mirrors in the room are re-framed with sticker designs. A garbage can covered with stickers becomes a canvas in the round. Sticker books and stamp collection albums are neatly placed side by side on a shelf. Stickers, stickers everywhere.

Our photo investigations of children's rooms record the many different surfaces accented with decorative elements. Most children cannot wallpaper or repaint their rooms as they desire, so stickers become the young decorators' means of altering, personalizing and exercising visual decisions over the appearance of their spaces. The study of children's rooms serves as a valuable resource opening schoolrooms to children's designing and decorative talents.

CUSTOMIZING THE HOME OFFICE Dancing stickers move up and down the beige phone receiver and add color as riley ride around the blades of a black desk fan. If you are trying to find the controls to my daughter's boom box, or the opening to her electric pencil sharpener, beware of the sticker camouflage. It is difficult to decode the identity of her computer. On one visit, the repair person had to peel away layers of sticker decorations. The neutral office tones of Ana's appliances are shaken up by her sticker detailing.

Stickers allow children to be decorators and designers without being destructive. Children understand the resurfacing required of the many office-styled items in their rooms. What classroom items could be resurfaced by sticker artists? What appliance canvases can be designed in the art class for children's own rooms?

STICKER FASHIONS Stickers often become wearable art, finding their way onto children's fingernails, often in combination with their vast holdings of nail polish colors and their artistic application. Children who are the most conscious of the fashion value of Band-Aids[R] frequently add creative sticker designs to the bandages.

Of course one can view sticker shows on children's sneakers and lunch boxes, but have you noticed them on belts, sunglasses and hair notions? Very special stickers are worn as children's jewelry, and for the natural look they are displayed on foreheads or on the nose.

Our class fashion shows frequently review the latest and sometimes set new trends in sticker fashions. Body and clothing are always a child's personal canvases, and art teachers need to pay attention to the walking galleries entering their class.