Hear ye, hear ye: I’m going to make stuff this summer.
Make a mess.
Make do.
Make it work.
Make peace, not war.
You get the idea.
I’ve been playing with Pixelmator, and having a grand time. I told my husband last night that it reminds me of what I loved about being a printmaker during my BFA days: repetitional visual mantras, deconstructing, layering, and chemical, and now digital, accidents that create something uncontrollable and unexpected. These are what I love about printmaking. I miss the lithographic stones, the acid baths of metal plates, and the cool, damp sheets of good paper. And I am in good company: I was the original fangirl of Albrecht Dürer.
I’m moving classrooms, again. This is a good thing. The classroom I moved from is very large, and while that would seem like a benefit, it would be if I was team teaching, but challenging when the media station was tethered to the front. It didn’t quite become the studio/workshop atmosphere I wanted, and I’m not sure why. But knowing how important that is to students I’ll be more intentional in the new space. My sons were helping me move yesterday–the younger one and his friends doing the heavy lifting, and my older son helping organize supplies, papers, etc. He couldn’t understand why I kept so much stuff. To the untrained eye, half-used construction paper and old calendars may seem like hoarding. But students love to personalize their things:
So, keeping supplies at the ready is a must. I’ll be cleaning out physical and digital spaces, clearing of social media clutter, curating and pruning pages. I took pictures of anchor charts and signs that need to be recreated, and recycled the old. I’ll share what I can on Instagram and Pinterest.
One thing I don’t want to make is myself anxious or unhappy. I’ve been pretty down about politics lately. We watched “Where to Invade Next” by Michael Moore last night, and…this is odd…but I feel surprisingly hopeful again. Maybe it’s because I can make edits/cuts from scenes and we can have discussions that mean something: why don’t we get an hour for lunch? Why aren’t we taught nutrition? Why do we serve doughnuts for the ‘free’ breakfast? Why do we feed children full of starches and sugars, and then wonder why their health deteriorates? Why do we assign homework? Why do we have a deathpenalty? Is the school-to-prison pipeline another means of slavery/indentured servitude? Is our mission to make informed citizenry? Yes. I believe so. We want to make change: then shut up and do it.
Make it so.
