Tonight's picture was taken in January of 2009. Mattie was in the child life playroom of Memorial Sloan Kettering in NYC. This was Mattie's second visiting to MSK. Thankfully, Linda (Mattie's child life specialist at Georgetown) called the child life folks at MSK and gave them a heads up that Mattie loved boxes. Honestly they thought it was a VERY odd request when Linda asked them to save packing boxes for Mattie's arrival. Nonetheless, they couldn't get over how Mattie transformed these boxes. MSK was a very different place from Georgetown. It was every man for himself up there. No one really paid attention to us, and treatment was done practically anywhere. Even in a hallway! I am not exaggerating. The spacing is so limited there! Another place I never wish to visit ever again in my lifetime. This amazing blue plane that Mattie created started out as many brown packing boxes. Over two days, Mattie transformed them. The plane even came for a taxi ride, back to our hotel room! I know Mattie wanted to bring it back to DC with us, but fortunately I was able to convince him to keep it in NYC. We had so much in our home at that time, I just had no idea where "big blue" was going to fit in.
Quote of the day: I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me. ~ Henri Matisse
I returned to Mattie's school today to do my second kindergarten art session. This week's lesson was on Matisse. The class has 17 students in it, and fortunately Donna (the teacher), gave me a photo of the class with each student's name attached to it. This helps me to get to know the students faster given that I only have three sessions with them! This morning was a riot! I had my first quiz. We went around the room, to see if I remembered every child's name from the week before! I got each and every one correct! That may not seem like a big deal, but to me learning a student's name is very important. That is the first connection you establish with someone. It was always a very important factor for me with my students when I taught! However, when I was teaching, I taught multiple classes, and how I was able to remember anyone's name back then now amazes me. Because we did not have the same technology available to us like today!
Any case, the kids loved that I knew their names! Before my usual three step process (lecture, hands on project, and snack), I asked them to tell me three things that they could remember about Picasso from last week. Now mind you if I asked my graduate students about what happened last week, I would most likely get blank faces for the first minute or so. But not with five and six year olds. Hands were flying in the air, and the enthusiasm was all over the place. They were able to tell me that Picasso was the master of shapes, that his art form was cubism (big word, no?!), that he preferred to be messy, he was born in Spain, he liked to paint at night, his dad was an art teacher, and I could go on! Get the picture!!!?? They got it!
Today, I introduced the children to Matisse, the Master of Color, the father of Fauvism (wild color, and color that isn't true to what actually exists in nature). Matisse's father wanted him to be a lawyer. However, while recovering from an illness, Matisse's mother brough him some art supplies to keep him busy. As I explained to the children, there was no TV, computers, iPads, or any other technology back then to keep him occupied. Matisse said, "from the moment I held that box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life." I think this is a profound quote, because Matisse's mom transformed not only Matisse's life, but the world of art as we know it. Unlike Picasso, who basically was a child artist, Matisse came into the world of art in his twenties.
The children had a chance to learn about Matisse's life, see examples of his paintings, and then I shared with them how Matisse transformed his artistic style as he aged. I did not alert the children to this but Matisse developed cancer and therefore it became impossible for him to physically paint in his 70s. But creativity was within him and destined to come out. Therefore, Matisse developed the art form of paper cut outs (which he could do in a wheelchair or in bed).
What I learned today, and mind you I have done this four years now, is some children do not like GLUE. This is my first experience seeing this in Donna's classroom! That may have caught some adults off guard, but I did not skip a beat with this fact. I did not skip a beat because Mattie and I are just like that! We both do not care for the texture of glue on us. We learned to deal with it over time, but it took practice. Just like it will take these two children practice. At first glance, I noticed this one little girl did not have her foam core board filled at all with cut outs. She looked distracted or disinterested. Given that I saw her behavior which was engaged last week, I knew something wasn't right today. So I kept on observing to try to figure out what was up. Did she just not like the assignment or was it something else? It was the glue! Once I acknowledged that she did not like the glue and it was okay not to like that feeling, but to try to work through this and I would help her, we were able to get part of her composition done. The beauty of this particular student is that she reminds me of the female version of my Mattie. If that is possible. She is the same cutie that came up to me last week to personally thank me for my efforts and for making it such a fun session. This week, at the end of my session, I had so many children come up to me and give me hugs. This was a very special gift, because not being a mom anymore, hugs from a child are few and far between.
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