Phone Artists - childrens' sculpture

Arts & Activities, May, 2001 by George Szekely

Between classes, I like to spend time in one of the most inspiring ar! laboratories in the school, a place where children behave freely and creatively--the cafeteria. While the principal is talking on his cell phone, straw antennas pop up from empty juice boxes, now turned into imaginary cell phones.

Airwave's hum across the cafeteria, as children engage in lively conversations. Leftover aluminum foil dresses up a juice-cart phone decorated with stickers. phone user who (lid not have juice for lunch uses his banana 'with a fruit sticker keypad to join the conversations.

In a society of beepers, voice mail and cell phones, children; don't require technology to inspire their basic interest in the mysteries of distance talking. As soon as they find out that words and descriptive, ideas can be remotely transmitted phones become every child's magic art media.

Adults tend to long silence, while children dash answer the call, flying over obstacles to be the first answer a phone. When something new is made, found purchased, children want share it by making a call. "Can call Grandma in Florida to tell I made?" asks my daughter, Ana.

On the phone, she gives a beautifully detailed description of painted rocks she has glued together. She freely embellishes her artwork with fantasies, as her grandmother cannot actually see it. Play phones, just like other art media, carry lively images that children formulate, translated from objects, visions and experiences. Children's phones continue to be a popular toy for each new generation.

SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT

I have not seen the sculptures of my studio teacher in art school, but I heard them being made. It seemed a little bizarre that, at every opportunity, he disappeared into the back room and all that could be heard were his unusual phone conversations with the foundry about forms.

Children's descriptions of a substitute teacher's new hairstyle, about their nighttime fears, or about the incredible sights at a circus, sound as though children view the world through magic lenses. Playing with phones in the art class is a way to celebrate a child's ability to create pictures with words.

Pretend phones on our wrists or clipped to our belts allow us to fly on magic carpets anywhere. With phones planted in our lunch boxes, we can report on secret missions. With phones built into bicycle helmets, we are able to drop into space and recall the experience.

Playing with phones conjures up images in our heads, just like the artist who sees the work in his or her mind before it is even created. Art can be a vision to be fabricated by someone else. Of course, we always have eager "fabricators" on the other end of the line, ready to draw, paint or make what is being described.

Our art room calls are two-way conversations, as listeners also become visual note takers. Depending on the nature of the mission, the distance of the flight, or the description of the adventure, we may use three-way calling, enlist operators, or use speakers or videophones.

ART SURFACES FOR PHONE MESSAGES An exciting variety of phone-related surfaces are available to take visual messages. A telephone book is one of the richest contemporary sketchbooks, with an endless variety of shapes and patterns to which we can respond. As a collector of older phone books, I am happy to open their pages to phone artists.

Our art-room file cabinet naturally includes a file devoted to the telephone. Inside the phone file are interesting samples from phone message pads, Rolodex [R] inserts, personal phone book inserts and sample phone bills from a variety of carriers. They are all available to draw and paint on. The children are always interested in the many styles of old telephone number files, Rolodex carousels or 1950s-style pop-up phone lists, each inviting new ways to make and display art. In our joint effort to collect phone surfaces, students expand their views of surfaces thai may be drafted to make art.

PHONES AS SCULPTURE AND ART In our art class, we look at new phones and old phones as art history, with a special emphasis on children's phones. On phone days, every child's phone in our home is unplugged and boxed to go to school. Jacob has a phone in the shape of a football, Ilona's phone is a large cup of soda with a straw, and Ana uses a working Lego [R] phone.

After seeing these unusual phones, the students dream about what else could be created. Students' dreams and fantasies are an essential part of the art class; it's where the future of art is stored. In class, we share visions of incredible phones while sitting around a small toddler's pool. The pool is not filled with water, but rather with Legos, which are easily used to mold ideas into models. Our Lego "sketches" are further explored by working with found-object treasures from our "bottomless" tub of parts.

Of the many phones I have collected, I still find phone fantasies sculpted by children the most inspiring. These space phones, pencil-top phones and gum-dispenser models with unique features can only be found in our art class' fantastic phone store and its mail-order catalogs, which the children publish online. Each of our phones is handsomely boxed and illustrated with instructions. [Note: The children's online mail-order catalog is imaginary.-Ed.]