Art Supply Inventors

Arts & Activities, Oct, 2001 by George Szekely

Infants buckled into shopping-cart seats anxiously reach out to try to touch objects of their desire. They dream of the day when they can freely roam store aisles with their own separate shopping basket.

A child and parent often have different goals and reasons for shopping. Adults make a list and worry about price, while children see the entire store as an amazing warehouse of interesting objects just waiting to be discovered.

In the produce department of the grocery store, my wife and I check prices and make our selections. Why is our daughter transplanting apples from one fruit crate to another? Ana finds the deep blue molded plastic apple tray liners beneath the apples and excavates some. As we fill our cart, she peels off fruit stickers from oranges and bananas.

In her friendliest tone, Ana speaks to the produce clerk, admiring his sculptural stacking of tomatoes. She patiently waits until each box is emptied so she can take home the handsome, interlocking fruit dividers. The bag-closing devices that she has collected en route weigh down her shirt pocket. In any store, children consider and explore seemingly mundane materials as exciting items with which to play or create.

At the start of each school year, our art-education students create an art-shopper's charge card. The card is good at any store where students may find new art materials in the aisles or in trash bins, discarded there by store clerks. Our cards make environmental, shopping and children's searches for new art materials a common concern.

We recognize that children's ways of discovering and choosing art materials are different from adults. Children are constantly on the forefront of discovering new materials for art, things that have yet to find their way to art classes or galleries. Materials that will be used in artworks of the future are discovered by kids, today.

We need to learn early that art supplies don't have to come from stores or catalogs; we need to discover that new colors are not in school paint jars, but may be found in soft-drink aisles, cosmetic departments or on store shelves. Children point our way on where to shop, how to discover new contemporary materials, and what to bring to the art class. When children leave the art room, confidently knowing that every store is an art-supply store, they are well prepared for the future.

TASTY ART SUPPLIES Don't touch! Just admire as the tasty art supplies gather after Halloween night. We wait to be summoned into Ana's room while she arranges a display of treats inspired by the patterns of an Oriental-carpet background. Children frequently save wrappers and trade candy, designating one color to be most desirable.

Candies are posed as figures, laid out as furnishings inside a playhouse, or rest inside a plastic storage box. Candies are children's art supplies, played with as often as eaten. When I ask Ana to show her box to my classes, she consents with the stipulation that no taste-tests be conducted.

Our art class is a charter member of the "Jelly Belly Jelly Bean Club." Everyone is excited when we hear that a new membership box has arrived. We celebrate the arrival of new flavors and the "color of the month." Students smell and admire new additions to our class art-supply box. Just like paints and drawing tools, sweets are part of our class materials, and despite popular opinion, the children have great will power in their use of sweet supplies.

PEELED SUPPLIES As a young art teacher, the attraction of the pencil sharpener was new to me. Why did my students constantly want to sharpen their pencils? It took me a while to recognize the call of the cavernous dark box, the interest in looking inside, and that my young students came back with more wood in their hands than they deposited into the sharpener.

Children notice the beauty of pencil shavings and collect the colorful, curly lines as extracted treasures. "Peeling artists" create amazing items with pencil shavings. During my mother's recent hospitalization, Ana sneaked up to the room to bring her flowers. It took us all several moments to realize that her fine bouquets, tastefully arranged inside a jewelry case, were made of pencil-shaving swirls.

Do children offer to peel your orange and then wear the peels proudly as a changing series of fabulous masks? All the better if there are special peeling tools available. Kids will line up to peel a carrot or to discover unusual strands loosened from an apple.

Of course, children find the best-curved lines from each experience and will want to keep them. How many kids do you know who were punished for peeling off their bread crust or have been accused of being fussy eaters when they really just loved the look and feel of the textured brown curls?

STICKY ART SUPPLIES During a big home repair job--well, really just changing a light switch--I accidentally cut myself. A Band-Aid[R] was needed for the emergency, but not one could be found. And was wearing all of them. Some may have covered real scrapes, but most were used to decorate her arms and legs. And was upset that we had to dig into her Band-Aid collection book, but fortunately she found some "doubles" I could wear. Children not only preside over the largest Band-Aid collection in a home, they also are curators for vast Post-it[R] note and sticker collections.