Flower Power

These are some of the recycled rain forrest flowers we've been making with my daughters class. I'm getting them ready for the kids to color tomorrow - I'm so excited! 

I've really enjoyed this process. It's taking quite a long time to prime each gorgeous creation but as I do, I've ben thinking about each child - their enthusiasm, their remarkable work,  individual style and all the great energy they put into this project. 

I've been thinking allot about energy recently. Excess energy, not enough energy, nuclear energy...and the ways we loose it and use it, direct it or don't. Some of the children who typically have a very hard time focusing their energy in ways that aren't disruptive for the rest of the class have made the absolute greatest flowers, and they are so proud of them.  I was shy, but I was the little dyslexic girl who had to be tutored all the way through school and who learnt better by doing things with her hands. I've always loved making things.  I totally understand the children who learn better by different means. I also understand the resources it takes to accommodate those needs from an institutional perspective.     

  

Local photographer Richard Ross gave a lecture once about a series of "shelter" photographs (bomb/fall out) that he was working on. His theory (as I remember it) was that all the energy that went into building a shelter was tantamount to violence and was indeed energy that should have been spent on things that promoted peace and love instead of objects of combat or defense. 

I'm thinking about individuals, about children and the power of love - and loving what you do, of how very important that is. I'm thinking, on the brink of another war, in the aftermath of a devastating natural and nuclear disaster - that we might all benefit from channeling just a little more energy into the things and people we love. Imagine if everyone on the whole planet just stopped and did that. Imagine that.

I'm going to start including my favorite love songs with each post I've decided. Check it out.

Regina Spektor's Real love

and in the words of Spektor in "on the radio"...

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again

For instructions and tools needed for this project go to The Garden Shed