For about six years now, my daughter has considered herself a mouse. Not like one of those weird furries that act like some kind of animal, barking at strangers, but in a cute kid way. It has been developing over time however and she has created a her own imaginary world called "Mouseland", which as she gets older, is evolving into a more complex story, with lore, culture, social structure and magic. I found out the other day that Mouseland doesn't have a monarchy, but Mouse Island (which is joined by a bridge) has a Queen, and on the island they speak a slightly different mouse language.
Today is CheeseDay.
CheeseDay is an annual holiday that is five days long, with the main day being the Friday, with Saturday a recovery day. The first days are for organising the events and inviting all the guests to the five tables filled with different cheeses, nuts and a few biscuits to celebrate. But no eggs. Eggs are okay to have in the morning, but if an egg is cracked after the sun goes down, all the eggs magically hatch into chicks. It happened once and according to Smallsteps, it was a disaster.
And since we can't make it to Mouseland tonight, we are going to hold our own CheeseDay celebration tonight after dark. So once Smallsteps has finished school, we will go to the shops to buy supplies.
It was also an open morning at the school.
Parents were invited to spend half an hour going from class to class looking at the artwork they have done throughout the autumn. It wasn't compulsory for parents, but Smallsteps was excited about it and since my wife was working and couldn't go, I went. About half the kids had a parent there, which wasn't too bad a turnout. It is always good to see what the kids get up to and we went through classes from the 1st to 6th grades, and there were a couple pieces that indicated that the child might actually have some talent. Most of it was more like Smallsteps's work, okay, but not gifted. Art is one of those funny areas though, as it isn't about technical ability as much as it is about having the eye and hand to express a perspective. Technical ability can be easily learned, an artistic eye is far more difficult to acquire.
But not impossible.
Smallsteps has plenty of creative ability, but at this point at least, she doesn't have the touch for image creation. I think for her, it mostly comes down to impatience, where she is a lot like me and wants to get a result relatively quickly. For her, this comes through story telling and music, where she can take a feeling or a prompt and create a melody that fits in moments. She is then willing to go on developing the piece and adding layers of complexity in the same way my dad would block out a painting that would eventually be filled with depth and fine detail.
This isn't to say that Smallsteps doesn't have an artistic eye though, because she does. It just doesn't translate into the hand skill required to create it. She tends to make unconventional choices in what she does, often surprising me (the audience) in what she attempts, even if it doesn't completely work. And this is another thing that frustrates her with image art, because it isn't like on the piano where she can just go back a couple bars, and try something else. But I think everyone could do with practicing physical art, because there is a permanence to it, unlike digital art where it is possible to just undo a number of steps and adjust. A mistake on a painting isn't as easily corrected.
To learn from a mistake, the error has to carry a cost.
Which is something I have been thinking a lot about lately due to the "personal" environments we are creating that provide us with what we want, without us having to make a mistake. To make a mistake we can learn from, we have to do something, but most of what we do is passive now, so the learning potential is also heavily reduced.
Which is a massive mistake to make.
Because we don't feel it enough to learn and grow.
Taraz
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