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Ogilvy Notes

Storyboard P

Arts Explorer #8: Magical Thinking

At first glance, you're probably thinking this is just a chair. You might say to yourself, "Hey, that is a mighty nice chair," but when it comes down to it, it's really just an object for sitting on.

Fair enough. On the surface, it's nothing more than a bunch of wood, sheets of fabric, cotton stuffing and some metal staples holding it all together.

But if you stop and take a closer look, you might be surprised at what you find...

Little closer...

Ah, yes: here we have the inhabitants of the chair.

The little known history of this curious fabric, known as Toile de Jouy or simply toile, is that these are not just fictional characters printed onto a beige background.

They are real people.

Take Jason here, for example. He approaches the two lovely ladies, who've been picking apples all afternoon and are resting under a tree. Jason wants to ask one of them out on a date but he's shy. Truth be told, she's not interested anyway, but unbeknownst to either of them, her friend is. Complicated, n'est-ce pas?

Maybe Sartre had it right...

L'amour consiste [...] à manipuler la liberté de l'autre... (Noudelmann, 1996, p. 76).

In any case, you'll also notice a young boy nearby, fighting to get his goat home on time. He knows his mom is waiting but he just can't get that stubborn goat to move. What to do?

Such complexity in this one small scene - imagine how many stories there are in all the toile of the world! Love, happiness, despair, anger, joy, exaltation... exhausting even to think about it!

Okay but what does all this made-up nonsense have to do with being an early childhood educator?

Part of working with young children is being able to imagine, improvise and make things up. Yes, I felt completely ridiculous making up a story about my chair but I think we pretty much need to get over it in order to be good ECEs. Kids don't hold back, and they don't mind looking silly - in fact, they usually encourage silliness as far as I can tell.

Engaging in pretend play is not only fun and exploratory, but also offers opportunities for growth and development. Children (and adults) can take on different roles, try out new ways of being, and push the boundaries of what they know. Magical thinking can even become visionary thinking, allowing us to innovate and create things that have never existed before. The number of possibilities we're aware of can expand if we just stop judging for a few minutes.

My art word of the week is design or composition. Schirrmacher and Fox (2009) list several criteria for assessing the design of a piece of artwork, but they do not touch on the process of getting to a balanced or beautiful design.
If, however, you use design as a verb, you can get some magical thinking going on. Throwing as many crazy ideas as possible onto the table increases the odds that you'll hit on one you like. Magical thinking lets us open up a bit and tap into other worlds, which makes for good conditions to support the design process and will probably result in more creative, interesting outcomes.

But it takes practice... hence the chair. It seems to me that letting go of feeling silly and inventing a crazy story is an exercise in magical design.

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References

Noudelmann, F. (1996). Sartre: L'incarnation imaginaire. Paris: 

     L'Harmattan.

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J. E. (2009). Art and creative

     development for young children. Belmont, CA:

     Delmar.

Arts Explorer #7: Grocery Shopping with a Twist

Food category: Made or grown in Canada

Photo by Cuppojoe

I buy groceries at Karma Co-op, located in an alley off Barton Ave. I actually like shopping for food (because I like eating it), but this trip was extra awesome. Lou Reed was playing in the background and there was a mom dancing and singing along with her daughter.

OK, so I'm on the approach...

That black thing is my granny cart. Life saver.

Not very exciting from the outside, but once you go in, it is very exciting. Thrills!

 
So many delicious things to buy. Now I must search for items in my category... food that is either produced or grown in Canada!

Here's what I found:
(if the exact location was listed, it's in brackets)

1. Rebars - There are like 20 different kinds of fruit and vegetables in each bar... it's impressive. And they taste good.
2. Distinctive Delicacies cat food - I don't have a cat. I'm allergic to cats. This stuff is made in Canada.
3. Ontario Natural tofu - I'm not vegetarian but a block of this tofu was $1.94. It's good for my wallet.
4. Organic Works bread (London, ON)
5. Hot house tomatoes (ON)
6. McIntosh, Idared, Empire, and Cortland apples (all ON)
7. Black River juice
8. Galerie au Chocolat chocolate (QB) - They make chocolate with maple sugar in it and it literally kills me every time.
9. Portobella, Crimini, White and Shiitake mushrooms (all ON) - Mushrooms are amazing! Click on the link...
10. Boston lettuce (ON)
11. Jerusalem artichokes (ON)
12. beets (ON)
13. turnips (ON)
14. English cucumbers (ON)
15. Belgian endives (QB)
16. eggplant (ON)
17. dandelion greens (ON)
18. red and green cabbage (ON)
19. carrots (ON)
20. Red, Russet, Banana, Yellow, and White potatoes (all ON)
21. cooking onions (ON)
22. Organic Meadow ice cream and butter (Guelph, ON)
23. Que Pasa tortilla chips (BC)
24. maple sheep milk yogurt (ON) - I know what you're thinking: sheep milk?!? Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
25. Liberté yogurt (QB)
26. Harmony milk (ON)
27. Hewitt's dairy products (ON)
28. Biovert laundry soap (Laval, QB) - Cleans your clothes without trashing the planet.
29. Chocosol chocolate (Toronto) - These guys go to Mexico, work with local farmers and then bring back organic Mexican cacao to make the best chocolate ever. Buy it. Now.
30. Pure Canadian Maple Syrup (Richmond, QB) - If you have Aunt Jemima's in your house, get rid of it immediately and go buy a can of this stuff. 

Now for some sketches...

My art word of the week is texture because the texture of an eggplant is surprisingly hard to draw. According to Schirrmacher and Fox (2009), texture is the "surface quality" (p. 144) of a piece of artwork. I found lots of different textures as I was wandering around the grocery store - smooth, rough, soft, pointy...
It could be a good activity to bring a bunch of different food items into the classroom and have kids find all the words they can think of to describe the textures.

So, what does that list have to do with the field of ECE? Why am I ordering you to run out and buy these products?

Because there is so much to know about food. Getting into where our food comes from, how it's made, what the ingredients are and what it does for our bodies opens up so many possibilities for learning. What would it be like for young children and their families to visit a farm, then do a project on food production? Or to go see an urban community garden? Or start their own garden at school - and then eat the food that they grew themselves?

If you think this is crazy talk, watch Food Inc. and then see how you feel. As educators, I think we need to acknowledge that kids are watching and learning from us all the time. It's not just about what we say!

That being said, I can often be found eating chips... so just don't tell anyone, ok?

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References

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J. E. (2009). Art and creative

     development for young children. Belmont, CA:

     Delmar.

daily heroes

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Street artist JR is the winner of the 2011 TED Prize and his work is mind blowing. Take a look...