Arts and Life

Not thinking about much today.

Arts Smarts Camp ends today. A week where kids pick out three (from 30) hands-on classes to take. Offered are such crafts as : carpentry, cooking, cake decorating, crocheting, knitting, duct tape art, mosaic, drums, keyboard, bass, signing, singing, writing, theater production, movie making or the class I am helping with....3-D Art Spree, a montage of messy art for the elementary grades.

The kids are very diverse. Some will take a lump of clay and work it and knead it and turn it over and over in their hands waiting for the inspiration of what this lump of clay can become. Others, most often boys, will start right in, tearing off little pieces, rolling out snakes, lumping it all back together to start rolling all over again...for 50 minutes. Their hands are black, also their tee shirts, the floor is dotted with little droppings of clay. They are having such a good time. Mostly they do not have a project to show mom and dad that might justify the camp fee, but they sure are having fun.

On another day when kids see the flour, sugar and water paste that they will need to get their hands into in order to create fabric macrame some, mostly girls this time, are likely to give you an "Ugh!" or "Ewww!" while the boys are happily playing pat-a-cake with paste-covered hands.

Adults are very diverse also. Some enjoy things, like their lives, neat and tidy. Others love the mess that comes from change and not knowing and guessing about what their day may bring. The former walk around with PDAs. The latter sit around waiting for someone to join them in an adventure. Sometimes I am one; other times the other. No, sadly I think my family would disagree. Regardless of what I like to believe, I so yearn to have a neat orderly life. But since it isn't always that way, I believe am learning to embrace the adventure of the mess.

That's what I'm thinking about.