It's Not Trash - It's Art Supplies

OK, y'all - confession time. I'm a paper hoarder.

I keep scrap paper. I use old emails and letterhead to print coupons or drafts. I keep gift bags. I have a big stash of large scraps of craft paper and magazine cutouts. I almost got rid of the last of these when we were cleaning and reorganizing when I was pregnant with Elianna... but ended up keeping them because I knew that in a couple years I'd want to start doing art projects with her.

Part of this comes from when I worked at a public library during the recession. We had NO BUDGET. Any piece of paper that could be reused was. Anything that wasn't meant for public use was printed on the back of previous printouts. Old summer reading folders were cut up for scratch paper for the public (you know - you walk in, you jot down the call number so you can go find your book).

I got a full-time job in the children's department of the busiest library in the county just as we were starting to get just a wee little bitty bit of of supply budget back. I got $100 - to last for craft supplies for a year.

In a way, it was a fun challenge. What can I do with the craft supplies we already have in the closet? What can I do with faded construction paper instead of throwing it out? What can I do with the legal sized printer paper no one uses anymore? With the magazines that aren't sent to be bound or aren't sent to the book sale? For that matter, what are my coworkers throwing out that I can use? Give me your Kleenex boxes, your toilet paper rolls, your scraps of Christmas wrapping paper! I went dumpster diving in the office recycling bin for colored copy paper and lean cuisine boxes. And we made some really fun crafts, if I do say so myself.

But talking about craft projects reminds me that it actually goes back farther than the library. My mom was a Sunday school/Bible school art teacher, then a pre-school teacher, then a free-lance art teacher. She saved toilet paper rolls and those little green plastic baskets strawberries used to come in. She saved egg cartons. As an art teacher, we couldn't throw away my dad's lactose-free milk cartons after Halloween because my mom needed them as the base of the gingerbread houses her class would make in December. You threw away bubble wrap? How dare you! "That's not trash, it's art supplies!" was a constant cry in our house.

Recently, I joined a couple groups on Facebook focused on repurposing and reusing things with a mind to sustainability. One of my fellow group members proudly posted a picture of her stash of Christmas bags saved from previous years. I commented with a picture of my own even larger stash, and the caption "look upon my bags, ye mighty and despair!" It was well-received.

So now, here I sit: in the next room is my daughter's Christmas tambourine that I made with her class using rings of Coke cans. On my desk is, admittedly, a fresh notebook and smaller notepad for jotting ideas and to-do lists (but I will turn those pages over and write on the back). But on the other side of the desk is scrap paper I've doodled poetry on, a map for my book that I drew on the back of an old email, a 2020 planner that will be pulled apart next week to use for scrap paper... oh, yes, and I still have large scraps of construction paper from the cornucopia project Elianna and I made for Thanksgiving.

I also have a bag full of laminated Russian onion dome towers made out of scrap paper... but that's a topic for another post.

Snowman made with: construction paper, crayons/markers, glue, and buttons (supplies we had) and donated fabric scraps (thanks to my mom!). We only bought the marshmallows and pretzels.

Fall wreath made from glue, paper plates we had on hand, construction paper we had on hand (including faded paper that was used for the painted leaves), and donated paint. No supplies purchased!

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Summer Reading, Summer Crafting

It's June and we're well into Summer Reading. I've taken Elianna to a couple library programs now, and with some of my former library coworkers posting on their pages about Summer Reading, there are times that I wistfully think of my Summer Reading Program days.

Several years ago (I was about to say "a couple" but then I did the math and, y'all, it's been longer than I realized), I worked in the children's department at the busiest* library in Cobb County. Part of my job was to plan story and craft time for 5-to-8- year-olds. During the school year I did this once a month; in the summer, I did one every week.

(*There were actually three "busiest" libraries, with "busy" being defined different ways. One was most patrons visiting, another was most computer usage. Ours was most items checked out.)

Actually, doing a story/craft hour "once a week" is not quite accurate. The first year, I did them once a week. Demand was so high that first summer that we had to add a second session of my story times the second summer. I had a day every week that the majority of my day was spent setting up, doing the first story and craft, re-setting the room, doing it again, and then cleaning up. It was a lot of work, but I loved reading the stories to the kids (doing all the voices, of course) and teaching different art and craft techniques.

I do miss it sometimes, even though it was crazy-busy and other aspects of the job eventually got to be too much for me. I keep meaning to do some craft projects with Elianna (though I also realize she doesn't have the attention span or fine motor skills for a lot of art projects yet). Taking her to her first story time (just a socially distanced story time with a basic craft you took to do at home) made me wistful - especially watching how much the librarian was enjoying herself.

But, as with many situations, many former jobs, ultimately I am glad that I'm not out working in a public position right now as some people race ahead to get back to "normal" while others are still cautious. I miss the art. I miss the stories. I don't miss the pressure. If you're still out there in it, still telling stories and coming up with craft projects for dozens of kids, I salute you.

Snake project from my second summer.

Elianna’s first library craft!

Not a summer craft, but one of my favorites.

Put the Band on Stage

The past couple days I've been thinking a lot about theatre. Specifically, songs I've listened to have triggered a need to choreograph and/or design. Listening to "Rock Around the Clock," I was thinking about choreography for Grease (particularly egregious, as I turned down an offer to choreograph said show...). Today, driving to Elianna's appointment, my randomizer brought up “Prologue/Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof and oh... my brain wouldn't shut off.

"Hey. Hey!" my brain said, "What if some of the band were up on stage with the rest of the villagers? What if you hid instruments in the props? Have a mama or a daughter with a tambourine disguised as an embroidery loop. And banging kitchen implements! Oh! And have a papa or a son with a xylophone hidden by an anvil!"

And it kept going. I was brain storming all kinds of props - house and farm implements that could be turned into instruments, or vice versa. Thinking about how to costume everyone. Wondering if we could get away with having an alto woman in a beard playing the Rabbi (there are never enough guys for shows). Heck, can we have the whole band in costume on stage?

Then I started thinking about what other shows you could have the band on stage. When I was in college, we did Cabaret and the band was in costume as the club's band. When I was in high school, we did Anything Goes, and the band all had fancy music stands so they looked like the ship's band. They all had a big moment where they reacted to the news that there was a wanted criminal on board. "SNAKE-EYES JOHNSON?!" the whole band cried in unison. And what about Grease? Put all the band in letter sweaters. Or do period marching band costumes.

And, yeah, I know it increases the costume budget - suggesting period marching band costumes is probably not the way to get the producer or director to agree to having the band in costume on stage.

But Fiddler? Yeah, you could probably do it with Fiddler - raid thrift stores for peasant shirts, old "dress" shirts, floppy pants, broomstick skirts, aprons... Grab surplus fabric for cheap to make head scarves for the ladies. Small throw blankets make great shawls. While that's not the most historically accurate way to do it, I feel that Fiddler is one of those that can be costumed partly from what the cast already owns. Which is probably why I see a lot of community theatres doing it.

I just like the idea of including the band in stage when you can - for a lot of shows, I feel that it adds something.

I also think that if I ever were to get back into theatre, I'd likely be doing costuming or choreography. Possibly directing. I have a feeling that if Elianna ends up getting into theatre that I will definitely get dragged back in. Now I'm reminded of the time I did costumes for our high school's production of I Never Saw Another Butterfly. I was also in the show, and was still madly sewing stars of David onto sweaters and shawls backstage during final dress rehearsal. I accidentally sewed my own sweater to my skirt and had to hobble out onto stage clutching my sweater to my knee. Yeah, let's not do THAT again : )

Banned Books Displays I Have Loved - Part 2

One of the things Tsarist and Soviet Russia had in common was how many of their writers were famed for being banned or challenged - to have a celebrated Russian author that was banned, exiled, or imprisoned almost goes without saying.

I was a Russian minor and, as mentioned in yesterday's post, was pretty much left to my own devices for displays the year that we happened to be celebrating The Year of Russia with the Kennesaw State University Library System. Below are some of my banned author info cards and some of my "propaganda" cards that temporarily festooned the Year of Russia poster.

Banned Books Displays I Have Loved - Part 1

One of the things I miss the most about working at a library is making book displays. Banned Books Week was always fun to plan for. We usually started brain-storming several months ahead of time.

One of my favorite Banned Books Weeks was my last year at Kennesaw State University. We had two libraries on two campuses that needed to be decked out in all the Banned Books glory we could come up with. That year, as the head of the display committee and the only member of the display committee on the Marietta campus, I was pretty much left up to my own devices and put together what I feel were two pretty awesome displays.

Today I present my favorites from the rescue pet themed display - tomorrow I'll post pictures from our Year of Russia/Banned Books Week tie in.

I was inspired to do this rescue pet theme for Banned Books Week when my mom adopted a kitten - reading the little bios for all the cats and thinking about the “judge the deed not the breed” mentality for dogs that are harder to get adopted kind of made me think about people who raise a hue and cry about the content of a book without actually having read it.

For Those About to Craft, I Salute You

Many of you know that I used to work in a library.  I worked in the Cobb County Library System for almost 8 years, the last 2 1/2 of which I worked in the children's department at the Mountain View Library.  While I was there, Mountain View was the busiest library* in the county.

*This is going on number of items checked out, as opposed to total number of people in the door, where the central branch, Switzer, had us beat, or computer usage, where South Cobb held the title.

You might notice I said "worked in the children's department" rather than "was a children's librarian."  I don't have a Master of Library Science, which is what you need for the distinction of "librarian" in most places.  But the position I was hired for did not require the MLS, and was specifically intended to help revamp the children's programming.  Having a love of literature and a creative background was more important than the degree for what I would be doing.  A lot of what I would be doing was kids' story and craft hour.

One of my favorite parts of the job, and arguably what I miss the most, was coming up with monthly (or in summer, weekly) craft projects that tied to either a seasonal theme or the summer reading program theme, and a story or two that tied the whole thing together.  It's not going out on a limb to say that people loved my programs.  My very first story time had 13 kids attend; my highest before we started offering 2 weekly summer sessions was 30.  This was within 4-5 months of my first program.

Because of such high demand my first summer, my second summer I was asked to do double sessions of each craft/story.  I still look back fondly on how much I enjoyed these sessions, even though they made the rest of my day and week more packed and hectic.

Recently, I was cleaning out my basement and found a stash of art supplies - a caboodle** full of crayons and markers, and a bag full of scrap pieces of bulletin board trimmer that I had been holding onto "just in case."  I guess when I left Cobb County, I had thought that at some point I might go back to kids' library programming.  But now having been working in a University registrar's office for almost a year and half, and a university library before that, I figured there was no point in continuing to hoard these.  But, since I work at a university that has an education department, I decided to ask if the dean of the school of education was interested in having these supplies for her students.

**80's/90's kids, you remember those?

A couple weeks ago, I took my stash over to her office, and we got to chatting about just WHY I had a stash of craft supplies in my basement.  I don't think she had known about my past in the children's department and was fascinated.  She even said that I should come teach a workshop.  That was very flattering and we left it at, "well, let's get past the first month of fall semester..."

But I do miss the craft projects; the planning, the brainstorming, even the budget challenges.  When you have a very small budget, you have to be even more creative.  What can you do with what your already have lying around?  What "junk" do you have lying around at home that you can use as craft supplies?  (Just using Kleenex and food boxes - crackers, cereal, etc. - we had fodder for robots, shadow puppets, mosaics, time machines, and probably other cool stuff I've forgotten.)

This summer, many public libraries are using the "Libraries Rock!" summer reading program (with the awesome banner "For those about to read, we salute you" in the AC/DC "for those about to rock" font).  I remember at the beginning of the summer wistfully watching my library buddies post their displays, projects, and program announcements on social media.  There were a couple mornings in the car on the way to work that I was daydreaming about what craft projects I might have done with the kids, especially if I had ever had the opportunity to start working with older kids.

I do miss it sometimes.  But I also know that for all the fun, there was a lot of stress - the demand keeps going up, the budgets generally go down, and there's just so much one person can do.  I have a lot of respect for my former coworkers who are still plugging away at it.

For those about to craft, I salute you.

Guerrilla Poetry

I had a dream the other night where high school students started a rebellion using poetry.

In the dream, the kids were concerned about being identified by their handwriting, or by IP addresses, so they took great pains to turn the poems into visual art rather than simply writing out or posting their poetry.  They cut out words from magazines and other print sources.  They wrote on pictures using Sharpie and their non-dominant hand.  They wrote on paper, but then crumpled the paper, copying it multiple times to mask their hand-writing.

After a while, the storyline of the dream became lost and it turned into me just coming up with what essentially now was an art project.  What supplies did I have that would work for this "guerrilla poetry?"  Could I make this work as a youth library program?

I haven't done kids' art projects as part of my job for 2 1/2 years - and I never did teens - but I still come up with stuff like this.  I constantly see things, or come up with things, and think, "gosh, what a cool art project!"  Maybe someday I'll get to the point where I'm doing that again, either in my main job, as volunteer work, or even with my own kids some day.  (Correction, if I have kids, they will have art projects : )

In the grand scheme of things, I didn't do kids' art projects all that long either - just a couple of years.  But I grew up in a house where craft projects were the norm, where my mom taught pre-school and/or art for most of my childhood, and then I went into costume design for a few years.

While my art is mostly verbal now, I do sometimes get the itch to take up paper, paint, pens and just craft something.  If I ever get around to doing any "guerrilla poetry," like I describe above, I'll show it to you all.