Canvas

by Ruby

by Grace

by Nina

by Lily

Over the Easter break Kim got the girls to do a painting on canvas.  Thank god for Kim.  Once I was that mother who got the paints out more or less daily, made playdough weekly, did endless craft projects with the kids, sat them on my knee letting them guide the fabric through the sewing machine, displayed their work in an endless rotation on walls and on this blog.  And I didn't do it out of matyrdom or because I thought I should. I really liked that stuff.  I loved nothing more than hauling all the craft stuff onto the kitchen table and getting all the kids involved in some messy project.  It was my number one way to pass an afternoon.  When other kids came for plays it wasn't unheard of to sew bags or make potato prints, or stick bits of pasta onto cardboard and paint them.

Now it seems all my kid-crafting mojo has left me.  After more than a decade of parenting I just cant be bothered.  Painting seems like a lot of mess and hassle, and then what do we do with the finished products?  The art work on the walls has remained unchanged all year.  The idea of sorting through it fills me with ennui.

Maybe that is just the way it is - we are moving onto a new stage and lingering in the last one isn't so interesting (for me).  Unfair on Lil, who is forced to listen to chapter books when I'm sure the others still got picture books every night at her age, and who doesn't even get to watch half the favourite movies of the others because they've all grown out of them.  Movie nights on the whole are more difficult now - the tastes of a 12 year old and a 5 year old rarely intersect.  Do we just abandon the idea of a family movie and run it over two nights instead - little kids and big kids? I dunno.

I think I peaked too early, went too hard, too fast and left nothing in reserve.  

Robots

My brother, the sole boy with four sisters, did not much like drawing as a kid. He didn't like making things, or cooking. Having so many sisters did not seem to quell his passion for Aussie Rules, backyard cricket, and pounding a tennis ball against the garage wall for hours. He started a paper-round at aged eight, and saved his money to buy a calculator. It did basic addition, subtraction and multiplication, cost $24 (a small fortune circa 1978) and was the pinnacle of technological achievment in our household. He taught us the fine art of the 'chinese burn', the horse bite, the dead leg - mostly through demonstration rather than instruction.

His one creative passion, as I recall, was drawing robots. He would draw endless robots, which were always entirely comprised of squares of different sizes. Pages of robots, drawings of robots for every handmade card he was required to give and even, once, a robot rendered in DAS for Mum's birthday.

Lily, too, likes to draw robots. Robots with robots inside and robots inside the robots inside, a la 'The Cat in the Hat'. Robots with loopy arms a la 'Lost in Space'. Robots on (?)roller blades.

My borhter went on to have four sons, all of whom share his passion for Aussie Rules (different teams though, alas), backyard cricket and balls of any description. They also seem reasonably well-versed in the arts of sibling maiming. I'm not sure whether any are particularly into robots though, so it's kind of nice to see the love continue.

Dream a Little Dream

Birds singing in the sycamore tree...

The Bungle Bungles and other Drawings

It's only now, in the relatively quiet days post Christmas and visiting cousins that I have really had a chance to look at some of Lily's drawings and paintings from the year.  Once I regularly snapped the things my kids were making, whether I recorded them here or not. I seem to have lost the habit and rarely do so now.  I love this selection - the colours and the subject matter - Swiss chard, mushrooms and an unidentified leaf, as well as the Bungle Bungles. The only time I've ever been in a helicopter was in a 'scenic flight' over the Bungle Bungles. I wouldn't do it again. I constantly felt an almost overwhelming desire to be down and in amongst that rocky splendour rather than close but so far in this noisy apparatus. 

FIVE

Lily turned five. It's a big deal, five and takes us well out of the world of very early childhood. There will soon be no more kinder, no more Fridays just the two of us. Before long she'll be reading and making her own bed and expanding her world outside the family. Everything about how I feel about this has already been written - probably throughout the recorded history of humanity -in more eloquent and appropriate words than I could hope to find so I won't indulge my own somewhat divided emotions. Instead I'll record the gorgeous gifts her sisters made for her: Nina a little stuffed bunny that Lily named 'Bunette'; Ruby, who loudly declares that she 'does NOT like sewing' made a little penguin wheat pack, which Lily named 'Penguana'; Grace spent ages constructing a box, with lid, to contain her 'make your own Pikachu necklace' gift. She exhorted Lily several times to 'respect the box'.

I stole the idea for the cake from here and succumbed to Lily's penchent for pokemon with a Pikachu onesie. The big girls made up a treasure hunt for Lily to find their presents - they spent ages coming up with the rhyming clues and the collaboration was not always harmonious, but it paid off in cheap thrills for Lil. It was a kindergarten day so Lily handed out party invitations to her class and we brought in special fruit skewers (cheap thrills for the kinder kids - so easy to please at that age) and she had her little chest puffed out with pleasure and pride. It was a lovely lovely day.

Sherlie, Peter, Stella and Miranda, Katie, Mark, Richard and Lucy

Sherlie:  Kids, we have mail! From your fourth cousin twice removed daughter's daughter's son's wife!
Stella: Mail? Yay
Miranda: Mum! UR kidding!!! I haven't seen her since I was like 1!  Thats, err, 'news flash' 16! Years! Ago!

Dearest Sherlie and Family
Here are Katie and Mark's school portraits.  please enjoy.  Thanks for being such a great husbands mothers fourth cousin twice removed.  
Love Katie Mark, Richard and Lucy XOX

Miranda:  What is this crap?!
Sherlie:  It's so sweet

Sherlie: Maybe we sbould send them our school photos!
Miranda: Mum! I don't even know Katie or Mark. I look stupid in my pictures.  What if Katie things I'm an idiot!

Lucy: Looks like Sherlie replied to our letter and photos.
Katie: Who the hell is Sherlie?
Lucy: Just your very very distant husband's mother's mother's fourth cousin twice removed.
Katie: What!? You sent her our pictures?
Lucy: Not only her! Everyone else we know too!

Dear Lucy and Katie and Mark and Richard
We loved your pictures.  I have sent you Miranda and Stella's portrait.  We would love to catch up.
Love Sherlie, Peter, Stella and Miranda
Hey it's Miranda.  pls note that I look STUPID in my pic.  DON'T JUDGE

This is where Ruby is at lately  - somewhere between a graphic novel and a doodle.   She's always loved doing these little vignette's and has a great eye for detail and ear for language.   I love that she can convey so much with a few strokes of her pen.  I like the fill-in-the-blank on Lucy's form letter - 'thanks for being such a great _________________' (husband's mother's mother's fourth etc) .  And the look that Katie gives her mother when she realises her photo has been distributed far and wide is one I'm rather too familiar with.....

Boundless Plains to Share

Refugee Week

This story was very sad but it was exilent too. Because it shows that Australia is quit rich. We have food and clothes and water too. We are lucky and we also don't really let refugees in our country. We should help refugees somehow. We need to share. 

Grace wrote this after a school visit from a young man who came to Australia as a refugee from Burundi and is now a successful hip hop artist. All my girls were very impressed and moved by his story. 

Red Riding Hood, as told by Grace

My favourite part of Grace's re-telling of this tale? - Little Red's finger, pointing to her Grandma's house. And the wolf's response to being asked where he is going 'well not rilly enny were'.

Stormy Seas

Nina brought home these two paintings from school this week. That very contained little boat, neat as a pin, under those rather menacing clouds and that tempestuous sea could be emblematic, I suppose, of her somewhat opaque personality. She's so often such a together little girl, always busy, often on her own, deeply immersed in creating something and sailing contentedly along. And yet the storm clouds and the rough seas are never far away. Like all parents, I wonder in which particular ways I will fail each of my children, and with Nina I suspect it will be my failure to comprehend what causes the electrical build up that releases the lightning, and my vain attempts to calm those waters when they need to rage.

Emerging Artist

Hansel & Gretel

Letter to Elsie

The artist at work, even before she gets out of her pyjamas

Mother & child fight an invasion of ants

Those pesky ants....

House - with letters and chimney

Ruby and Nina were prolific and talented drawers from what seemed like birth. They had their own entirely different styles, and drew constantly. They always seemed confident in their ability to draw anything, and any resemblance to reality was a secondary concern. Grace took a little longer before she too started drawing all the time but certainly by the time she was in 3 y.o. kinder she was bringing home reams of paper decorated with drawings and paintings and collages.

Lily, however, was different. She never drew much and she didn't increase her output at 3 y.o. kinder. She would get easily frustrated trying to draw the image in her head and would give up quickly. She was a harsh critic of herself, and had to be coaxed to complete anything, or to not scribble out something she had drawn.

But, quite suddenly, she has emerged into her own. I'm not sure whether it is the fantastic art program at her current kinder, or whether it is just a consequence of being 4, or whether it is the growing confidence I see her developing by spending two days a week outside the house without her sisters around, but suddenly she is rarely to be seen without a pen or pencil in hand.

She has hit that stage where the distinction between drawing and writing is blurred. Why would you not populate your drawings with the letters and numbers you have learned? And when combinations of those letters actually spell a real word, it is as if you have cast your own magic spell. I love seeing the rapid leaps children make, the clicking of mental gears as concepts fall into place and their own delight in themselves.  Lily takes a little sketch book with her wherever she goes, practices her alphabet, draws cats.  It's pretty nice to witness.

The Lesbian Wedding

Ruby started out drawing a conventional wedding but the groom looked a bit feminine, so she decided to make it a lesbian wedding. Ten-year-olds get it.

The Art Exhibition

For the past two years the girls have been planning to have an 'Art Exhibition'.  Inspired by the wonderful Kim, each holidays they have done a bit more work and carefully set it aside in their 'exhibition portfolio'.  I wasn't sure that the exhibition itself would ever eventuate and wasn't all that fussed, to be honest, and then, in a flurry of activity, it suddenly did.

Additional works were produced. 'Windy' by Ruby,

'Pencils' by Nina

Nina again,

Fairy Garden I and II by Grace, amongst many others.

The house was transformed into a gallery,

Nothing like taking the furniture and paintings out to show you how filthy your walls are....

It was a mixed media show;

'Glamping' by Ruby

Not sure what this says about Grace's idea of marriage....

There were some tiny things, old and new, from Nina



Some old favourites given a new look;

And, most importantly, there were friends, family and neighbours, who came along, purchased works
(37 sold) and raised $268 for a very worthy cause.

I had next to nothing to do with the whole thing.  It was organised entirely by Kim and the girls, even down to the baking of the brownies and lemon slice.  My contribution was pretty much limited to birthing the children and distributing flyers.  It was such a great thing to do, and also really valuable for the girls to see how much hard work goes into something like this.  Producing the actual art is the fun part.  The cutting, mounting, gluing, blu-tacking (onto walls), labelling and all the rest of the less interesting stuff is just as necessary.  I can't thank Kim enough  - for inspiring the girls, putting them onto Artists for Kid's Culture which is a cause close to their hearts, and putting in the hours of work to get it all together.  And to top it off, she brought all her family along to buy stuff.