flyers

Here is one of the flyers I'm gonna' use to promote shenotahe locally. There are more to come...

Umbilical cord

Here is the child's version (I don't even know which child, because another children's art conoisseur gave it to me). I don't know what the deal is! The thing with the fangs has given birth to the head with no body and the umbilical cord is attached to the eye?! Why does fangs look so spritely if it has just given birth?

Or maybe head has one eye closed because it's crying and the trail of tears is leading to fangs' belly? Who knows? It's exactly the kind of ambiguity that makes this thing so fun.

In any case, my version is here at the bottom. If you click on it, you can see the thread up close - it's neat.

It's a she!

The image that started it all. That butterfly is a girl, and don't you forget it.

No comma?

You'll notice there is a comma missing from the name of this blog. If I had come up with the name all on my own, it would read, "It's a she, not a he." But I didn't -- a six year-old did.

I worked with kids ages 5-10 last year in an after-school program. In those three hours a day, five days a week, I inherited a ton of discarded children's art, including the "It's a she not a he" butterfly posted with this entry, which inspired this here blog and the project I'm about to describe. Much of the art I found was hilarious, surprisingly well-crafted, oddly profound, and most importantly, completely irrelevant to its creator. Kids would grab a piece of paper and a marker, dash out some bizarre piece of art -- out of boredom, excess energy, spontaneous bursts of creativity? -- and then fling it to the floor as they leapt out of their seat to go do something else. They forgot their art completely, only remembering projects that we had done as a group and that had required an immense amount of concentration on their part.

In the moment they let go of their art, it becomes artifact, an archeologist of childcare's dream - and although it means hardly anything to them, it means worlds to the adult observer. We divine from it the hidden workings of a generation navigating the trough of bullshit stimuli that comprise their intellectual diet. We extract all sorts of chilling profundities, which may or may not be there, and make the pieces mean something to us.

I figured, as long as we're doing these kids the disservice (as some might insist) of interpreting their art, we might as well bring the activity to its logical conclusion and translate their art -- make it into something new and invest it with the hang-ups and intentions of an adult ego.

So that's the project: pick a piece of discarded children's art to make your own. Use any media you prefer. I'm hoping to get enough visual art to fill a nice little zine. Some people have expressed interest in doing musical translations, which I can tack on as a CD.

To view my growing collection of found, children's art, click here. If you want to post something, either a piece of found art or your own translation thereof, you can join the group by emailing shenotahe@gmail.com.