The Inventing Box

Alright, everyone. Let's talk Inventing Boxes.

If, in making a program budget, I had to narrow the scope of all of my art-making supplies down to one thing in the whole world, it would be materials for an Inventing Box. I'm being serious. I could do without paint, markers, crayons, clay, and canvas. Gone. Take away the pencils, the pastels, the glitter, and the easels. Easy. All I really need in this world is a plastic tub filled with random recyclables, scissors for everyone, and my body weight in brightly-colored masking tape.

My love affair with the Inventing Box began two summers ago, when I was trapped for hours at a time with two children who were too smart for their own good (or my sanity). Summer can be a terrifying time when you are charged with making sure children don't descend into primal chest-beating and grunting. We had forgotten to put the recycling out on the curb for pick-up a few days prior, and the bin overflowed, sending random plastic brick-a-brack here and yon. Three-year-olds, you might be aware, are attracted to brick-a-brack. I think it has to do with magnets or String Theory or something. Either way, I walked into the kitchen to find this dear sweet precocious boy wearing a (thankfully clean) yogurt container on his head, insisting it was a "brain scratcher." The three of us spent the rest of the day using an unholy amount of tape to make "inventions" from egg cartons, bottles, old cardboard boxes, straws, bottle caps, wire, string, and clothespins.

Since that fateful day, almost every program, camp, class, and workshop I have done (at the Perot, the Greater Denton Arts Council, and at Oil and Cotton) has involved inventing boxes and otherwise recycled (a,k.a. I AM POOR AND SO ARE  YOU AND WANT TO MAKE THINGS WITH PEOPLE) supplies. For toddlers up through adults, people of all ages and backgrounds that have interacted with me at a museum have been converted to the Ideology of the Inventing Box.

My reasons for being utterly devoted to Inventing Boxes are various and sundry, and I decided that they would best be related in the sonnet below:

For sooth, that budget creepeth into red,
When desperately do I attempt to buy
Some brushes for to paint thine wint'ry head.
"Expense!" Unload my cart and mourn must I.

"A box!" I cry, "I dream it to be full
Of buttons, bits of styrofoam and wood,
Of scraps and bobbins, sheets of felted wool,
And cardboard cut with notches would be good.

To fix these things together, you must think!
As teacher, mine's to only lend a hand.
Exertion makes your cheeks a little pink...
When, finally! It works! And by YOUR hand.

Though painting is a fine and noble skill,
Inventing Boxes are my greatest thrill.


That's right, friends. I love Inventing Boxes so much, I wrote a sonnet about them. I love making Invention Boxes because they are generally cheap, it is fun to go looking for strange building materials to include, it is a sustainable/responsible/less wasteful practice, and it serves as a way to offload some of the random objects I hoard in the name of "but it will be useful someday!" Pedagogically, I love Inventing Boxes because they demand problem solving and creative reasoning. Inventing Boxes allow everyone to create together but don't demand that everyone's products look the same. In my experience, my students have seemed less intimidated to make objects using an Inventing Box as opposed to painting or drawing or even using clay. This is purely anecdotal, but I hear "but I'm BAD at making art" way less often when using an Inventing Box than I do when I ask people to draw or paint. I think Inventing Boxes frame "mistakes" in a positive light. And there's something oddly appealing about playing with "trash" (don't deny it!).

Throughout Summer Arts Camp last week, I had a BLAST inventing things with the kids. A while week of cardboard, recycled scrapbook paper, rope, vinyl table cloths, and roughly 30 rolls of colorful duct and masking tape. And, throughout the week, things broke. Cardboard cabins and teepees came apart overnight. Chimneys fell off of houses. Heads, somewhat traumatically, came off of birds, and hands got tied up in knots. But Arts Scouts, I would say, are not to be afraid of mistakes. Making is a process. So if what you just tried didn't work, let's try it again!

But by the end of the week, all the kids would repeat with me when they came to me with a problem:

"So how are we going to fix it?"

A finished campsite installation!

Our Recycled River!

Construction is serious business.

The inside of Megacabin - some industrious boys combined their cabins into a longer one! This was a week-long undertaking with lots of "fixing."

And no campsite installation is complete without a resident owl!

Channeling Opportunities...

This summer I hoped to build upon my existing relationships with the managers so I could contribute on a higher level to the critical development of our education programs. In the past most of the contributions I have made have been to Public Programs. For example, our manager would ask me to come up with art activities and/or art searches for our Art in the Dark programs. I have always thoroughly enjoyed creating these activities for our patrons, but my contributions in this area have been cut back due to the hiring of a new Public Programs Coordinator. She assists the Public Programs Manager and is basically second in command for that area. I still have responsibilities for public programs, but now there are two of us to split the prepping of materials and getting things ready for programs. The manager now splits the creative thinking of developing programs and activities during those programs with the coordinator. I knew this would happen at the time of the hiring, but instead of being frustrated about it, I chose to focus my goal of building relationships to this very scenario. Like Alli said in her comment on my first post, “one of the wonderful things about this field is its flexibility, and how necessary it is for us to be able to bend and adapt when asked to.” 

As the Public Programs Coordinator stepped into her new position, we worked closely together in prepping materials for Storytime. As she grew more comfortable, she took hold of the reins in overseeing that we had everything we needed for each art activity every week. We continued to prep and make the materials and then stuff bags for the patrons together. We found a good balance and I could still fit my administrative duties and Library responsibilities into the work day without being overwhelmed. If she had not been hired the majority of the preparation would have fallen on me and I now see how difficult it would have been to accomplish all of it! We also communicate very well, whether its updating the other person about something or solving a problem. If she had a question or issue, she felt comfortable coming to me and we would talk through it or come up with a solution. If I have a concern her door is always open as well. In doing so, I have still been able to contribute through my relationship building with her. We talked about ideas for an art activity for the upcoming Art in the Dark and I also gave her an art search I created for a previous program to help her with some ideas she was working through for Family Fun Week. 

In building better relationships with other managers, I have seized opportunities to learn something new so I can better help them in the future and even take on the responsibility completely. Our Interpretation Manager has come up with some wonderful in-gallery accessibility tools for people who are partially or completely blind and people with dyslexia. So they are able to access the object labels with ease, she placed booklets with large font labels, as well as, booklets with labels printed in dyslexic font with a gray background. These booklets are created in house. Our Exhibition Designer formats them and I print the pages and bind them together and also fix them when they come apart. However the formatting is very time consuming and our Exhibition Designer has a lot on his plate. Our Interpretation Manager’s plan was to learn how to format the labels herself. I asked what program is used for the formatting and she answered Adobe InDesign which I have on my computer! Right now my skills are limited to using it for one thing, but I told her that if she would like to train me once she learns we could split the work load because she also constantly has a lot on her plate. She was very excited and open to that idea so hopefully we can get the ball rolling! 

My goal of making contributions at a higher level is a slow one in that building better, more responsibility-driven relationships takes time and I am willing to be patient. I have seen the small results from this building trust and I like where they are going. I hope I can continue to work on them as I know my time in the office will be cut back once the fall semester starts. From here my goal is to channel more opportunities of learning because I want my collaboration with each person in the department to grow.

Note(s) to Self: On Planning Your Week-Long Program

Hello all! The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity at the Greater Denton Arts Council, as I continue to work on internal research while also preparing for Summer Arts Camp! Camp starts Monday, and I am honestly having a hard time thinking of anything outside of that program. I am in charge of planning, prepping, and facilitating the Visual Arts Camp, and I am SO excited because I am getting to facilitate a program I have been wanting to do for the longest time - Art Scouts! This week, my kiddos will become Art Scouts, earning (and making) their own badges through independent learning opportunities and team building exercises, all culminating in a huge group "camp site" installation in Festival Hall on Friday (complete with cabins, campfires, tents, trees, a river, and a kayak!). A dream come true.

While I am beyond thrilled to be in charge of this program, the past few weeks have been some of the busiest and, honestly, most difficult I've ever had. From worrying about budget to writing countless lesson plans to coordinating donated recyclables to sourcing and budgeting cheap (but durable) supplies, the past few weeks have emphasized the simultaneous importance and irrelevance of planning for these types of programs. By irrelevance, I mean what any seasoned teacher will say: plan plan plan as much as you can, and you won't use most of it. I am the type of person who likes to be over-prepared for things, which can be a challenge when enrollment fluctuates and all my careful preparations from months ago seem to go up in glittery smoke.

In the spirit of planning, being scatterbrained, and wanting to get a multitude of ideas out there into the ether, I decided to spend the rest of my post jotting down some things I have learned in the last few weeks:

Notes to Self:

1. Pay attention to the allotted time for your event. Pay close attention to it. Observe it. Grow comfortable with it. Then crumple it up in a tight ball in your fist and throw it into the corner with an exasperated sigh.  Does the schedule say that you have a long, luxurious hour and a half with your sweet cherry blossoms? In the real world, that hour and a half is more like one hour, between late arrivals and early pick-ups, clean-up time and walking time. Factor in potty breaks for wee ones, and you're looking at more like 45 minutes. But you can't just plan a 45 minute activity, because then you run the risk of everyone arriving and leaving on time and you being left with nothing to do for 45 minutes except watch the children slowly descend into sticky anarchy. Instead, plan an activity that will SCALE well. Bare bones, it can be finished in 30 minutes. Add a couple of layers, and you've filled your time well and the children haven't gone all Lord of the Flies on one another. When in doubt, always have a picture book in your back pocket and practice your silly and dramatic reading voices. (And go get your crumpled schedule from the corner - you're going to need that!)
2. When you volunteer to handle the calls for and picking-up of insane amounts of cardboard (seriously, I could build a house with this stuff), make sure you pay attention to the type of car you drive. Let's just say my eyes were bigger than my Escape's trunk, and there were bungee cords involved.
3. The dollar store is your greatest ally and your most feared foe. Use its powers wisely. Whatever you do, do NOT buy dollar store tape (masking, duct, etc.) if you intend to have children make large-scale structures that you actually, you know, what to stay together. Trust me. Splurge on the tape, if nothing else. 
4. Mind the ghost in the corner. (his name is the Solitary Sentinel - look him up!)
5. Second-guess the canoe, but go for the kayak!
6. When accounting for materials prep time, use your imagination to first figure out the longest it could possibly take to finish all the prep work. Do you have a number in your head? Good. Now add six hours and five blisters and continue planning from there. I hope you remembered your caffeine!
7. Say your program has a maximum registration of fifteen. Registration's been going for a while, and you think you've hit your maximum at ten. People haven't registered in several days, so you think you have your number. You buy materials enough to cover the ten people who have registered, right? WRONG. Always prep for the maximum number of children allowed to register for the program or you will be sorry. Very, very sorry. (I'm sorry, fingers! I'm sorry!)
8. Look down at your cute, adorable, new, museum-y, artsy shoes. Heave a wistful sigh, smile to yourself, wave, and kick them across the room to rest with the remains of your poor crumpled schedule. Wear your comfortable shoes unapologetically.
9. In the event that a large group of vivacious, curious, hilarious children wants to know why they can't play with the beautiful hand-made chess set in the gallery... Just go ahead and admit that you want to as well and then make them all jealous by telling them you got to touch it when installing the exhibition and the pieces are all really light and smooth. 

Currently, I am laying on the couch with my feet propped up in the air, sore and dusty from a day of hard work. I made 20 kid-sized, donated, recyclable, foldable cardboard cabins today. Twenty!

I could choose to be grumpy and whiny about my throbbing feet right now, but I'm just so excited I can't stand it. The above list really feels like a mere fraction of my experience with GDAC in the past few weeks, and I approach the coming week of camp with trepidation and enthusiasm. Just picture me in my old scouts uniform, practicing bird calls and teaching kids to tie all kinds of fun knots!

STORYTIME!

Hello everyone!! I have been wanting to blog about Storytime since its start on June 10^th, but too many wonderful and awesome things kept happening during each program so I waited then waited some more to tell y’all all about it!!

What IS Storytime you might ask?! Well  first off, it’s a freaking awesome program that our patrons LOVE!! Secondly, it is a summer program held every Wednesday in June and July.  It is an opportunity for families with young children ages eight and under (but all ages are welcome), to visit the museum and participate in an informal, free choice environment to connect children’s literature to works of art.  The program offers three to four different stories paired with different works of art, accompanied by a discussion of the book and artwork, and an art making activity.  Through Storytime, children are exposed to literacy, visual literacy, and sometimes the museum setting for the very first time.  In the galleries, our gallery teachers read the children’s book and lead a discussion in relating things seen and heard from the story with a chosen work of art.  The discussion of the book and artwork is an open dialogue and allows the younger participants to “just be kids” as one of our gallery teachers likes to say.  There is no guided inquiry into finding a meaning in the artwork and little to no facts or scholarly based opinions are presented about the piece during the discussion between the gallery teachers and families.  The conversation relies heavily on the children’s interpretation of what they view and hear from the story and relating that knowledge to the work of art. 

 The theme changes every year and this summer our theme is Animals!! So far we have had Awesome Amphibians, Marvelous Mammals, Sensational Sea Creatures, and Radical Reptiles.  This summer is particularly special because we have real-life animals visiting the museum from the Dallas Zoo on certain days! Unfortunately because of Tropical Storm Bill the mammals were not able to visit on their designated day, but they will make a surprise visit on another Wednesday. Thankfully, yesterday, the reptiles didn’t disappoint our patrons! 

 As I mentioned before in my first post, one of my goals this summer is “to sharpen my skills of interacting with the public as an educator.” As I hoped for, Storytime has been a wonderful opportunity for just that! The first couple of weeks I was stationed at the art activity table in which I had to explain what they will be making. The children are usually always excited about the art activity and are eager to see what they will be making. To get them even more pumped, I think I have developed a “museum educator voice” which I can only describe as an excited, “Hey! Who’s ready to make some art?!” voice. I pictured some cheesy retro camp counselor as I type that, but I think we all pull it off a lot better. For clarification, I have NOT said the phrase, “Who’s ready to make some art?!” J Sometimes the interaction between me and the children is straight forwarded; they’ve been here multiple times and just need a simple explanation and a sample to look at and they are off to the blue mats to get their art making on! During the first few interactions at each program, I really try to watch my phrasing to see what works best so there is no confusion. Even late in the program, I find myself refining what I am saying as each interaction occurs.  Other times, the explanation of the art activity has turned into a full-blown conversation going beyond the activity which I love! I learned about Grandma Rose and how she is coming to visit at Christmas, which Mutant Ninja Turtle is the best, what animals they’ve seen on vacations or at the zoo, and what a brother and sister want to be when they grow up (a construction worker and a kindergarten teacher btw). The brother asked what I wanted to be when I grow up and answered “I am doing what I want to be right now: a museum educator. I work here and get to hang out with y’all and I love it!” 

Yesterday was our biggest turn out yet because of the reptiles visiting from the Dallas Zoo. This time around I was stationed in a gallery to handle crowd control. I did not engaged with as many patrons, but I observed one of our gallery teachers while she read and engaged with the families which was really nice to learn from. More than anything I invited families to join in, answered questions, and kept children from running away from their guardians-babies and toddlers are quick! Customer service skills learned from my years at the information desk came in handy. One story I have to share before I wrap up: After Patricia finished reading the book, she turned to the discussion about the painting and asked everyone: “Does everyone see the people in this large room?” and everyone answered yes. Patricia then asked “Where are they?” A child answers, “They’re all dead!” That definitely took the cake for wackiest comment heard in the gallery that day, but he was absolutely right.

 
Over the next four weeks, I will be stationed back at the art activity table and in the galleries also. We have four Wednesday s left, including Incredible Insects, Fabulous Fish, Brilliant Birds, and Wonderful Water Beasts! I have scattered some pictures from the program throughout the post. My coworker, Amanda, was super sweet to get a snapshot of me with a patron. This girl’s family has become regulars this summer. I have not gotten her name yet, but eventually will because what is so wonderful about all of our programs is that we get to know our patrons and their families so well. It is definitely one of the joys of working in education.

About the 25th

Thursday, June 25th, had so much activity packed into so little time. I am still mentally unpacking all that happened. I expected the day to be very long, and I wasn't wrong about that. I worked from 7:30am until 10:15pm!

The day began with a copious amount of traffic. I was late for the event, which was really disappointing and put me on edge all day. Luckily, everyone pitched in and got the TASBY kids rolling. Starting without, the group created camera obscuras. Once I arrived, we moved into the galleries upstairs. Adorned with our freshly made cameras, we investigated the works in the Abelló exhibition. In an effort to encourage the kids to consider the artistic process, we split into smaller groups and talked about works by Modigliani. The museum is fortunate enough to have some of the artist's preliminary sketches to accompany a couple of finished paintings. We then discussed complete and incomplete Dalí paintings. The kids seemed to have the most fun contemplating words to associate with paintings, based on the feelings they evoked. We concluded the group's activities by having the kids draw, followed by a discussion about their work. Afterwards, we adjourned for lunch. Upon our return, a Q&A with the Meadows staff was held. Some of the kids seemed really interested in the logistical operations of the museum. The TASBY day ended with a tour of the museum storage. 

The next event started at six. The museum hosted artist John Bramblitt and the DREAM kids. John is a blind visual artist, and the DREAM kids have various levels of low vision. We started by take a group. multi-modal tour of the museum. The tour included a range of works on exhibit, and we used everything from tactile drawings to garlic to allow the kids to  fully experience the works. I was fortunate enough to partner up with John and interact with the kids. The patience of the docents, combined with the passion of the kids, created the perfect recipe for success. We concluded the evening with a painting workshop, led by John. The kids were very open to experimenting and pushing themselves. They laughed, and chatted, and were so full of energy. From the moment they arrived, until the moment they left, their energy levels were exceptionally high. You never would have guessed these were high school kids with jobs!

My day was amazing. Now that things have slowed down, I'll be working on interpretation and programming for the upcoming Alba exhibition. So many hats, so little time...