Art on wheels - Children's art diary - Column

Arts & Activities, June, 2002 by George Szekely

My daughter, Ana's, purple 1950s Schwinn was so big and heavy, that I had to walk it for her. She wanted the wide-tired "tank" (found at a flea market) because of its imposing color and because it had not one, but two baskets--a wicker basket in the front and a wire one in the back.

While I pushed the bike, she picked up street treasures to fill both baskets and placed the overflow in my pockets. During autumn, leaves were woven through the baskets, and fresh wild flowers filled it like a vase, during the summer. I proudly wheeled Ana's living displays of forms and colors around.

I also learned to admire other children's bikes in the neighborhood and often asked to photograph their bike artistry. Children's bikes undergo remarkable alterations by owners who dress up handle bars, decorate the frame with stickers and flags, and weave noise-making beads through wheel spokes.

Children enjoy seeing my early works, and it's fun to share photographs of my first bike. Its frame was basic black, since color choices were limited in Europe after the war, but the bike looked anything but basic. Among its exciting attachments was a sculptural fitting of found, bright chrome pipes, my make-believe motor and dream of a motorized bike.

With future art teachers (i.e. art education students), we often visit the bike accessory aisles in stores to learn about the latest items available to the bicycle decorator's palette. In these aisles reside the most interesting striping tapes, self-adhesive reflector shapes, and camouflage seat covers. Many other children's play creations move on wheels, glide on skateboards, piggyback behind pull toys, or could be entered in custom car shows.

COLLECTING WHEELS Wheels move children's toys and help them to keep up with active players. Creative dreams are mobilized by spinning wheels. Every child discovers the excitement of the wheel and the vast possibilities it offers. Tiny Lego[R] wheels acquire large fantasies, constructed over them. As a child in Hungary, when most things were scarce, I collected ball bearings, which flew out from the wheels of army trucks. I admired these tough forms and their delicate movements and converted them into play scooters, racers and other things the metal wheels suggested.

After our neighborhood bike shop closes on Monday evenings, fabulous deposits are left on the sidewalk for the next day's trash. In the twilight, my children and I start to prepare the haul to school. Like a true ball-bearing hunter, Ana finds fabulous ideas in each discarded spoke, training wheel and used tire. Future Ferris wheels, rolling printers or moon explorers all start as ideas on the sidewalk. We can encourage children to develop their own wheel sources, to share their best wheels, casters or tire finds, and complete plans for their use with the art class.

DECORATING OBJECTS WITH WHEELS In the art room, eager students who love to assist with setting up my childhood train set, help to move all furniture aside. But why all the stickers on the railroad cars, and why was the locomotive painted with nail polish? I was not a destructive child, but I repainted the tracks to simply make my favorite rolling toys more attractive. In the art class, we expand the modest layout into an elaborate imaginary track system with new cars, tunnels and bridges. We add rail yards, stations and scenery. Of course, the children sticker and decorate all their railroad creations on wheels.

Ana's childhood doll carriage makes regular appearances in our art class. She decorated the ragtop, pink carriage with pillow creations and pictures advertising her favorite dolls on the sides. She constructed additional storage compartments from boxes wrapped in fabrics and ribbons. The boxes hang from the carriage handle and sit over the main frame, jingling on a chain attached to the carriages and carts, customizing what is important to share with other vehicle artists.

From the art-class toy chest, different wheeled objects can be rounded up for conversion. Plastic toy trucks, red Radio Flyer[R] wagons and Matchbox[R] cars are overhauled with new colors, foil armor, paper and plastic wraps, fringes and banners to be proudly paraded down school hallways.

BUILDING ON PLATFORMS WITH WHEELS

Ready to roll, 25 brightly painted skateboards line the center of the art room. Our theme is the Macys' Thanksgiving Day Parade. Children designed floats to ride on top of the rolling skateboard platforms. Using fancy woven and dyed cords, the children steer their floats like pull toys. The floats transport children's characters and settings. Each float is highly detailed, down to its decorative new hubcaps. Wanted: old, clip-on style four-wheeled roller skates that no child would want to be seen wearing today, to serve as future platforms for art-room pull-toy designers. Unusual fast-food trays, revolving Rubbermaid[R] platforms and exciting box tops are some of our best chassis to mount over wheels.

The love of pull toys stays with most of us for a lifetime. We mount lunch boxes on rolling platforms and convert them into circus trains. We also study the incredible art history of the Fisher-Price[R] Co., Gong Bell and Slinky[R] pull toys as well as other lesser-known works of American pull-toy sculptors. Children at home like to push, pull and carry their stuff whenever they go. We learn from children pulling or pushing their wheeled toy phones, banks or toy carrying cases. We learn to question whether each art lesson could be moved, carried or placed on wheels.