GROUP EFFORT SPEED ART

Sometimes the best thing to do is chuck care to the wind and scribble.  Better still, let the kids scribble with you and all over everywhere!  This is what art therapy is and it was a blast; the kids had fun, I had fun, the cat had fun (the fuzzy moron is mysteriously compelled to plant her butt firmly upon anything paper, no matter where it is or what's going on), and I think we turned out a pretty great piece.  The mash-up of otherwise conflicting styles and colors strangely works here.  I could not have come up with such a scheme on my own, and certainly the invasion of Superman on the English countryside was an inspiration, as well as the revelation  that Jane Eyre's favorite color was most definitely pink.

Forget Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; someone should put together Little Miss Eyre as some 1930s/40s-style Amazon in a graphic novel with guest appearances by Barbie, the Cabbage Patch Kids, and the entire Marvel lineup.  

KAZOWIE!

"First Light at Thornfield," by J, J, and R. Center

*

BRICKS PREVIOUSLY FEATURED

"Life of Pi," by Zuri I.

"Music from the Head," by Marianne E.

"Story Like Wine," by Sam M.

"Studies of Iron Man," by Jacob C.

"Together Forever," by unknown

BUILD A BRICK on me* (in celebration of blog entry #100)

Okay, everyone.  So I need people here.  You are people (so I expect).  You are creative and wondrous.  You are also busy.  I am busy.  I have a proposition.  HERE IT IS:

To the first 5 (unless I just get a crazy-huge response, in which case I will expand to 10) responders--and just a word is enough--to this post will be sent in the mail, the physical mail operated by the worthy USPS (once, of course, they've emailed me their mailing address), the following:

• 1 or more pieces of paper (white, colored, textured, who knows),
• 3 or more random art supplies (crayons, tissue paper, chalk, glitter, stencils, whatever), and
• 1 BRICK prompt (book quotation, author, poem, title),
• 1 SASE (Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope) for return to me, hopefully within a week or so.

SO WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS FABULOUS ARTISTIC OPPORTUNITY?

1. be one of the first five people to COMMENT ON THIS POST,
2. send me your US Postal mailing address to my email address,
3. wait for your letter from me,
4. get crazy creative,
5. mail the results back

Piece of cake, yeah?

DO IT!

***

* Imagine what Weird Al would do with this song under the title of this post:

soliciting: STICK A BRICK

"Screaming Old Man," by David Connelly;
other two by Connie Podleski

Need an idea?  Once upon a time, BRICKS were thematized by the book we were reading in class.  I've got a whole mountain of 'em themed upon Voltaire's Candide, of all things (see example below).  So why not check again the list of titles we've compiled for posts on East of Eden?  Any one of them would make a pretty thick brick.

Here are all the East of Eden chapters to date:

(Send new bricks HERE.)

1. The Salinas Valley 
2. Introducing the Hamiltons and Our Gods (not exactly the same people)
3. Cyrus, the Trasks, and Sexism and The Fall of Gods
4. The Aches of the Restless and Young
5. Meanwhile Back on the Ranch
6. Restlessness, Part Deux -- Maturity
7. The Return Home
8. Nature versus Nurture
9. From the Bottom Up
10. The Trasks: Family Drama
11. Adam is Taken with a Devil
12. unblogged, and subject to your creativity
13. The Glory Boys
14. Olive, the Olympian
15. Divination
16. The Golden Man with the Goat's Eyes
17. Of Meteors and Monsters
18. To Bury Secrets
19. What's the Opposite of a Church
20. Treacherous to Her Master
21. Calculation, Poison, and Patience
22. Baptism, Minus the Water
23. Flies on the Brain
24. Timshel
25. Resurrection and Glory, via Timshel
26. The Beginnings of a New Beginning
27. Abracadabra
28. Just Call Me Joe!
29. Shot Through the Heart
30. ADAM to CATHY to LIZA to WILL; next Dessie and Tom; and there was the parrot, Polly, too
31. Purple Eggs and White Pigeons
32. THE GREAT ACORN CONTEST, scheduled perhaps on a day particularly perfect, as it happens, for bananafish
33. There and Back Again
34. Believe it or Not
35. same as 34
36. Liars
37. Lettuce-Head
38. Cal Trask, Softer than He Seems
39. Caleb Trask, Super Hero
40. The Troglodyte
41. Prep for a Bean Bash



artist unknown



The Wall -- the OLD wall

Most of you will remember "The Wall."  Thanks to Portia and Sevonna Brown, I was able to take it with me when we left Michigan.  For anyone else who's taking a look here, "bricks" like these were funny quotations from class, reminders, or just silly drawings instead of careful notetaking. 

Regardless of the funny, anonymous comment I got for the former wall picture, I thought that it would make a lot more sense to do it this way than the old way.

Each week--or every so often, more likely--I'll change the header picture to a photo of another brick from the old SASA wall.  (I'm sorry to the bricks' original creators, I have credits for only a couple of them.)

A couple others:

artist unknown

"Kandiliciousness," by Tyler Darland;
"Hey, Handsome," by Chris Largent

Got a BRICK?  Send it here.

Perhaps the Loveliest Wall I've Ever Seen; and BRICKS

As many of you know, this "wall" (not the one below, but the blog upon which that image is posted) is nothing like the "brick" wall I had at SASA.  If any of you ever happens to come across a particular image or draws or designs something like the bricks we had then, send it along via Facebook.  I'll post it here, or create a page just for showing off the bricks.  Or maybe we should do illustrations for each of the chapters of the books we read here....  Any thoughts?  After an entire book's worth, I imagine it could even be something worth trying to publish.  Hmm....

The wall here below was found by my wife.  "Your kind of bookshelf," she said of it.  Indeed!