This Won’t Fly
AKA: Have Art Will Travel
My eldest son, Josh, and I share a love of art, and we especially like creating it from unlikely everyday things. When it comes to art, I’m a late bloomer. The extent of my childhood exposure to it was flour and water paste, crayons, and homemade paper dolls. In school it was drawing lollypop trees and coloring within the lines.
As an adult I worked as day care teacher whose job it was to set up art projects for children. When my sons came along they benefited from my background and, unlike me, were exposed early to a variety of art mediums. Josh especially took to art like he was born to make it, experimenting with different mediums since he was old enough to hold a…paintbrush, crayon, bottle of glue, or scissors. Today, as an adult, he’s primarily a potter, but he continues to explore his artistic expression through a wide range of mediums, such as photography, printmaking, journal collage, and street theatre. Recently, he found a new medium, and he phoned to tell me about it.
He began the conversation by saying how cool the IPOD he got with his Christmas money was before moving on to the real reason he called…to tell me about his favorite new artist’s toy given to him by a friend. “A label maker! You would love this, mom!” he exclaimed.
On the same day he got the label maker, he had an art show to set up at his school. “I found the room but it was locked, so I printed out a label that said “art show” and stuck it on the door,” he said.
The story went on… When the janitor came with keys to open the room, he saw the sign and became disgruntled. “This won’t fly,” he said. “It’s going to rip the paint off the door,” he suggested as he tore the label off.
“THIS WON’T FLY,” Josh emphasized as he set up the scene for me.
After the janitor unlocked the room and left, Josh printed up a label that said THIS WON’T FLY and stuck it on the door. “And guess what? The name of the art show is now THIS WON’T FLY,” he said.
January 23rd, 2006 9:47 am
Your son sounds very cool! Great story.
January 23rd, 2006 9:51 am
That is such a neat story!!!
Did the janitor respond?
It’s snowing like crazy here today, by the way.
Wouldn’t Jimmy have loved Blogging? Remember when he used to send those daily weather updates? Blogging would have been perfect for him!
January 23rd, 2006 10:41 am
Cute! Label makers are so much fun. I use them for everything.
January 23rd, 2006 11:10 am
Just checkin’ the comments
January 23rd, 2006 11:13 am
What will fly is Josh’s ideas! I think his creativity will cause him to soar to great heights.
I love those label makers too (don’t have one though).
Kathy
January 23rd, 2006 12:15 pm
As a mom, I worried what the janitor would say or do later when he saw the new label sign on the door…but I haven’t heard about that part yet. I’ll ask him next time we talk.
Yes, Jim would have a great weather blog. There was a woman from Maine who spent some time lighthouse keeping at the spoken word open mic Saturday night who read. I thought of Jim the whole time!
Stay posted on the label maker story…more to come.
January 23rd, 2006 2:38 pm
I love that making lemonade approach 🙂
January 23rd, 2006 2:50 pm
Wow Col – I didn’t know you could click on a persons name and it would bring their blog up!!!
That’s so neat.
Now I am seeing how it all “links” together.
January 23rd, 2006 6:29 pm
Colleen,
I’ve heard that those label makers can be quite inspiring!
January 23rd, 2006 6:29 pm
I love that one person’s negativity becomes another’s positivity!
January 23rd, 2006 7:39 pm
I love this story.
Santa brought me a labelmaker for Christmas, and you wouldn’t believe how much fun I’ve had with it.
January 23rd, 2006 11:00 pm
My daughter-in-law asked for one for Christmas and when she opened it, she immediately started making labels. I think I want one too!
January 24th, 2006 2:14 am
Nyssa has one, decorated her high school notebooks with lots of labels. I did a lot of paper mache when Nyssa was little. That sounds strange. I made paper mache rocks, Mickey Mouse head (big) and a tree (for a birthday bear party). You’d have to see pictures.
That Won’t Fly is a great name for an art show. Maybe the janitor has some other witty sayings your son could use as well.
January 24th, 2006 7:47 pm
Good for Josh.. taking a negative action and changing it to a positive. I like his attitude 🙂
January 25th, 2006 12:41 am
Oh, that’s a brilliant name for a show. I love hearing the story behind a name. I suppose this is similar to how so many bands find their names.
oh, and thanks for alerting me to the problem with my blog commenting. I was able to fix it.
January 29th, 2006 6:20 pm
Love this! It makes me think of Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas un pipe” by his painting of a pipe.