Tag: da vinci

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Device of Wonder

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Way back in the fall of 2001 we made several trips to The Getty to marvel at an exhibit of fanciful machines, Devices of Wonder. Back then Søren was barely two-years-old so he made his way via a stroller. But I guarantee, even back then my youngest boy was captivated.

One evening this past week, three weeks into Da Vinci Summer—our family’s DIY summer tradition—twelve-year-old Søren handed me a handmade device.

My husband and the boys have a tinker chest out back that keeps all sorts of cast off gadgets that this mom would not have the vision to keep. For this particular project, Søren chose a piece of square tubing that was once-upon-a-time a bathroom towel rung.

“Look mom,” I made a kaleidoscope, “but you have to look through it in the dark.”

So I followed his instructions and went into the closet, held the tube that Søren had carefully duct taped at both ends, peered through the end baring a peep hole and beheld the geometric activity of seven activated glow sticks, “Wow!”

This was no ordinary kaleidoscope.

And, though I believe my Søren is no ordinary son, I honestly believe that every child possesses certain genius. But certain genius demands certain prodding. And sometimes saying, “No,” is just the thing.

No TV.

No texting.

No Facebook.

No Youtube.

No video games.

No… !

Leonardo said, “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”

But the technological world has a pesky way of diverting the child from the world of curiosity, and when the child is diverted from curiosity, then doing, at least the kind that Leonardo is speaking of, becomes quite impossible.

Søren’s kaleidoscope is a product of doing.

And as an aside, pay a visit to the virtual Devices of Wonder exhibit at The Getty, an online activity that deserves a hearty, “Yes!”

– Kim

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The Unplug Challenge

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At first the Unplug Challenge gave me laryngitis. Seriously, the vibration of my vocal chords was a jumprope snapping, “No No No No No!”

The simple summer goal was to challenge my boys that low tech is fun. It began with a Victor Hugo quote posted prominently on the front of our refrigerator, “He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign.”

My plan was more like a nudge. So each morning I reminded my boys that it would be their responsibility to deny the technological progress of the 21st  century, dust off their imagination, and engage in endless possibility.

At first my boys were bored.

R-e-a-l-l-y bored.

I reminded myself that boredom might be just the garden for imagination to bloom.

And on it went, “Mom can I _____________________.?”

Each time the blank was filled in with a noun or phrase having to do with video games or the word-wide-web, the answer was an affirmative NO.

Guess what?

The Challenge is doing the trick! I’m witnessing the resurgence of imagination in my pre-teen and teenage sons.

This weekend boredom led Liam and Søren to rummage through our shed where they discovered our old inflatable pool. That gave them an idea.

Since the adventure was to consume most of Saturday and Sunday, I enjoyed the snapshots I encountered here and there.

To begin, blowing up the thing was quite a challenge. Think Home Improvement. Yes, they actually began trying to use Dad’s air compressor to inflate. Not bad. I didn’t have the heart to stop their Tim-the tool-man-Taylor technique. Instead, I steadied myself for the pop. Luckily the compressor and the pool were not compatible so we never got to that point. Next, they tried the bicycle pump. No luck. Now think Tale of the Three Little Pigs. Yep, old school. They huffed and puffed for nearly an hour. Sure enough I eventually heard the hose running and, donning their beachwear, the quick-change artists were splashing, which is about all that a big lumbering teenager can do in an inflatable pool. Or so I thought. Not long after a few rounds of splashing, I saw them rigging up a balance beam, adjusting the ladder.

“What are you thinking boys?”

“Backyard-Ninja-Warrior!!!”

Of course.

That’s when the fun got really fun—cannonballs from the ladder and walking the plank.

Suffice to say, my boys are enjoying old school activities, the kind that don’t involve watts or mega bites.

R-e-a-l-l-y enjoying, imagine that.

– Kim

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A Souvenir of Stars

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This summer we’re exploring our Italian roots via an extended virtual tour. It’s such fun visiting all the places we would visit if we could really visit. Thanks to the wonder of technology, we can experience the landscape of Italy in the comfort of our home.

We’re beginning slow. On Sundays we eat Italian, risotto is a new family favorite that we are trying to perfect. Our touring is geographic and historical and with each click, we wander where our heels lead. Art, music, people, events, we never quite know where the trail will lead. And the great thing about a trip like this is that we can afford to stay as long as we want!

By mid-June we dove into year-one Rosetta Stone. On the 4th of July when we decided to explore the Venetian art of Millefiori, we were daring enough to venture the art of translation. “Millefiori” is Italian for “thousand flowers” by the way. Originally this art form was accomplished with glass and fire. Thankfully, nowadays a millefiori-esque process can be used to make designs with polymer clays. So we pulled out our tub of Fimo and experimented. Using the Millefiori cane technique, we made long tubes with the simple star shape and were delighted by the simple act of slicing star after star until the tube was a transformed to a mass of tiny beads—a souvenir of stars.

– Kim

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Metamorphosis of a Baseball

It‘s true. I’m one of those people who do not get sports analogies. So last week, I was tickled when I noticed Søren unraveling a baseball.

The activity began when he found an old ball in the ivy. He tossed the treasure toward the lolling blue sky a few times then snuck into the work shed and emerged a few minutes later with a pocketknife. He deftly skinned the thing and was delighted to discover that its innards were a tightly wound mass of fine thread.

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He spent an hour or so unwinding without an ounce of boredom. When our backyard had been properly spider-webbed, he came to the end of the fine thread and hit a layer of wound cord. He kept at the business of unwinding and was delighted to discover that at the core of the baseball were two wooden hemispheres, “Mom, look…!”

“I never knew.”

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I suggested Søren make something out of the baseball components and went back to my gardening, assuming he would shrug off my suggestion. But soon after that he came to me with his summer baseball sculpture, a non-functional tropical smoothie tumbler.

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Now there’s a sports analogy I can chew on.

– Kim

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Matisse iMadonnari

It’s become quite a tradition to usher in summer with a collective i Madonnari creation. This year’s inspiration started with “The Geranium” by Henri Matisse.

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From Wikipedia…

The Italian I Madonnari were itinerant artists, many of whom had been brought into the cities to work on the huge cathedrals. When the work was done, they needed to find another way to make a living, and thus would often recreate the paintings from the church onto the pavement. Aware of festival and holy days in each province and town, they traveled to join in the festivities to make a living from observers who would throw coins if they approved of the artist’s work. For centuries I Madonnari were folk artists, reproducing simple images with crude materials such as tiles, coal and chalk.

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Have fun creating your own sidewalk masterpiece! For a step-by-step tutorial, visit this post.

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Creative Writing and The Periodic Table

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A few days ago Søren shared an idea, “am going to write a story using all the letters on the periodic table.”

What in the world? After a summer of focusing on the garden—tilling earth, planting seeds, and harvesting fruit—the periodic table of the elements? But in the end, I realized that Søren’s idea has everything to do with the garden.

Last year I taught chemistry in my guild to a handful of high school students. We read The Periodic Kingdom, and “journeyed through the land of chemical elements” with P.W. Atkins. We watched the periodic table. Yes, watched. This was mad science in action. Chemists from the University of Nottingham have created a short video about each of the 118 elements. Stoichiometry, polarity, and biochemistry entered our discussion, and we concocted reactions in our little make-shift lab, extracted DNA from a variety of sources. But our explorations of the table itself was most amazing. And where was Søren? The little hovering bird was gathering seeds, of course.

So this morning, I woke up, hobbled sleepily into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, and saw our favorite coffee table acquisition from the chemistry class: The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, on the table along with a writer’s toolkit—pen, paper, dictionary.

Søren had an idea and was brave enough to engage the work, even during the last week of summer.

Thanks Leonardo.

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Our City Garden

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Tomatoes I’ve been watching our garden grow. The boys have learned so much about attention as they tend this living and growing thing. When little green tomatoes appeared they beamed with satisfaction. And when it was time for the first harvest (which was sizable for these city dwellers) I could not get them to stand still for the photo!

Since the garden was also abloom with basil and zucchini, we decided to make our first meal, Italian-esque. We can dream Tuscany, right?

We set a pot on the stove and waited for the water to boil for the pasta. Meanwhile, we chopped tomatoes and basil and sauteed them in olive oil and a pinch or two of salt. We let the harvest settle into flame just long enough to wilt the vegetables. Then we put the chunky goodness into our food mill and cranked until the base for our sauce emerged.

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Spinn We poured the tomato basil puree into a sauce pan, reduced it slightly, and added some cream. We served this over our pasta with grilled slices of homegrown zucchini on the side.

Trust me, this was a first for our family.

Seed. Earth. Water. Sun.

Galvanized trash containers and a front yard planter converted to a vegetable garden.

My boys are still amazed.

– Kim

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Industrial Animation

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Back in the summer of 2003, I took my children to Modigliani & the Artists of Montparnasse at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Sketchbook and pencil in hand, I patted each of them on the back and set them free to explore the works as they saw fit. I love observing the creative process. I felt fortunate to wander with them among works that we have admired from afar in books and on the web.

The exhibition, a collection of works by Modigliani, his friends, and contemporaries, might have been better titled “Conversations from Montparnasse” because the collection was a reunion of works developed long ago in a bohemian Paris neighborhood. I was excited to see how my children would join the conversation.

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My oldest son Taylor was nine. He had been studying piano for a bit more than a year, but seemed at the time more interested in visual art. Three works captured his imagination at this exhibit: Dancer, Second Version by Sonia Delauney 1916, Black Hair (Young Seated Girl With Brown Hair), Modigliani, and The City, Fernand Leger 1919. These are the works he decided to study. I watched him study and sketch the first two carefully. When he came to the third, Leger’s painting, he simply stood there, soaking the image into his imagination.

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Later that day I heard Taylor plunking away on the piano, but didn’t give it much thought until this past spring when he won a competition for an original piano composition and had to write program notes:

Industrial Animation, a composition for piano by Taylor Bredberg

The story behind this piece began seven years ago after visiting an exhibit, Modigliani and the Art of Montparnasse and after watching a set of short films called Masters of Russian Animation. Here I learned to appreciate industrial beauty and fell in love with the dissonance of Russian music that inspired the main melody. The next part of the journey is very dull considering that the melody sat dormant until recently. In a moment of composer’s block I began to sift through some of my older sketches and came upon the melody. It was unrefined but still had something to it, so I took to it and started working. Prokofiev and Shostakovich, being two of my favorite composers, heavily influenced its mood and shape. Soon enough, along with four brand new melodies, the work is finished, an Industrial Animation at last.

 

Industrial Animation

 

Da Vinci’s sketchbooks come to mind, page after page teaming with elaborate ideas, “Art is never finished only abandoned.” All those years ago when we visited the LACMA exhibit Taylor was simply encouraged to abandon some of his ideas into a little sketch book.

Guess it was worth the trip to the local art museum.

– Kim

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Very First iModinarri

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I’m not sure how many years have passed since Sara, Evelyn, Hannah and I participated in iMadonnari but I will never forget the experience. We packed a picnic, slathered on the sunscreen, and set out with our bucket of chalk into the unknown. When we arrived at our designated rectangle of road, Sara and I exchanged blank stares, caught our breath. The reality of our lofty goal to transform asphalt to canvas, translate a Renoir to chalk pastel was coming into focus.

We prepped our surface by painting a layer of crushed pastel mixed to a loose paste with water. We chose a pale blue-green value to begin. The pavement was warm so the pastel base dried quickly. Next we gridded off the area to match the grid lines we made on the laminated color copy of the Renoir that the girls would have to work from—preparation is key. These two steps made the process so easy for our girls. Laying the base coat of pastel paste smoothed the surface and helped the subsequent layers of color pop. Helping the girls break the painting down to gridded off parts made the drawing manageable.

The street painting took around five hours to complete. I am pretty sure Hannah and Evelyn never complained once, never uttered the dreaded “B” phrase (“I’m BORED”) because this activity was academic in the true sense… yes, academic. During all those hours I watched the girls merrily engage in scholarship, watched them navigate geometric spatial relationships, engage in complex problem solving, learn about color theory, and make intricate observations. All these years later I can say with certainty that participating in iMadonnari was one of those rare bird’s eye perspective experiences that gave Hannah and Evelyn a hands-on opportunity to be mentored by a creative thinker, Renoir himself.

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It has been great this summer focusing on the life work of Leonardo da Vinci with my children and trying to bring something of the Renaissance Man’s philosophy of education into our realm of reality. Looking back on summer and reminiscing gives me an idea. Today school resumes. I’ve decided to begin the year with Leonardo. Why does Leonardo da Vinci have to be limited to summer? After all he reminds me, “For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.”

My favorite phrase comes to mind, “I have an idea.” What about transitioning from Da Vinci Summer to school by celebrating Leonard iMadonnari style? Yes!

Coming soon: Mona Lisa!