3 year olds tell odd jokes

My 4 year old explains things.

"The moon goes around the earth. The earth goes around the sun. The sun is in the middle. The dinosaurs stay in the museum. The museum stays in Pittsburgh."



More of Rachel's drawings at Rachel Draws A Lot.

Text Pieces

Animal Head

See more of this artist's work at Rachel Draws A Lot

Rachel Draws Dinosaurs

This is a two-page spread from a book about dinosaurs that Rachel is drawing. This book flickers in and out of existence as pages drawn on her Magna Doodle. You can see one of the dinosaurs walking from one page to another. She often draws multiple pages of a story this way, drawing a couple of pages, erasing them, drawing the next ones. . . You have to be present to witness the story. But one thing I've definitely learned about kids is that you definitely have to be present.

I've started to collect Rachel's daily drawings at Rachel Draws A Lot.

Vintage Halloween Parade

We dug deep into FIMP's film vaults and found this clip of Great Grandma Rachel in her Halloween Parade. She's the bee.

How to Draw a Fish, and a Fish Water Pipe

Our resident master of the Magna Doodle provides a demonstration in drawing fish and a fish water pipe.



She had previously provided all of the artwork for the latest book from FIMP.

It's a new book, and a new address.

FIMP's finally got a new tiny little home at our local post office. We've left Pittsburgh, and are out in the beautiful Laurel Highlands.

And with at least half of the studio out of boxes at this point, the latest book is being sent out to subscribers.



All of the drawing in this month's book is done by my extremely talented three year old. From our post office box to your mailbox, keep an eye out for it.

Because she said so.

Today, Rachel's animals wore play doh hats.

Rachel Draws Seahorses

Seahorse, white-board marker and magnet on white-board

Refusing to be sucked into the whole "making precious objects" racket, Rachel's preferred drawing media these days have been her white board and her "MagnaDoodle", neither of which produce a drawing which lasts more than a few minutes before it's obliterated and something new is created. Drawing for her is a completely joyful practice. Here are two of her most recent pieces.


Daddy Seahorse and Baby, white-board marker and magnets on white-board

I wish I drew like that.

After Hours

When you're stumbling around turning off the lights, you never know who you might find lying under the table.


Seems like good advice, but not in the bath tub.

If you wander around our house after the girls are in bed, you're always likely to find that sewing machine and umbrella meeting on that operating table. . . the Surrealists must have had toddlers.

Kicking Daddy's Butt.

So I'm thinking this one's done:





You saw its beginnings here. I'm calling it "ape or angel", for now.

Then Rachel does this:





and says "Does it look like Rachel with a pretzel nose?".

In a couple of weeks I'm just going to give her the studio, and I'll work on the living room floor.

trees, buildings, and a chicken

Rachel was building a city this morning, and she started with this border of trees. . .

Car-Pig

Every morning I "reset the stage" in our living room. This involves putting the blocks, legos, cars, animals, dress-up clothes, dinosaurs, Cozy-Coupe, musical instruments, and other odd objects back in their proper places, so that Rachel can come and give them all a good playing with when she gets up. Without fail, there is some beautiful collision between items that wants to be dragged away from the world of play and tossed into the world of art. Toddler-surrealism is a wonderful thing. One of today's themes was animals on cars. Now I have to give her back her pig and mini-cooper.

Block Snake

Here's the latest from Rachel, titled "Block Snake":





You may remember some of her previous work, which is much more expressionistic. With this piece it seems she's going all Bauhaus on us.

"Grid Action", and the Book of the Month

In a performance piece created multiple times throughout the exhibition, Snyder throws herself to the pavement. This gesture, despite its somewhat casual quality, always succeeds in making a powerful visual impression.

The fluid form of the artist’s body plays dramatically against the rigid modernist grid. Defying the deadly uniformity of these concrete squares, Snyder brings life to the barren sidewalks, ultimately creating images of healing and hope.

Text and image from this month's FIMP Book of the Month, an exhibition catalog of my daughter's first solo show, documenting sculptural work and performance pieces created in our urban residential Pittsburgh neighborhood.

Toddler Taunts Termites.

My two year old daughter continues her exploration of sculpture with this piece, her first truly site-specific work. What at first appears to be a fairly decorative effort, a simple arrangement of carefully chosen twigs, becomes more complex when the site itself is taken into consideration. A full appreciation of this piece depends on the viewer recognizing those three white circular patches of cement for what they are - the evidence of a recent battle with a termite infestation. The placing of twigs directly over the holes where the underlying soil was drenched with pesticide designed to kill wood-eating insects creates a powerful tension - a juxtaposition of food and poison. Is she taunting the termites, or is this some kind of peace-offering? Is she acknowledging that termites have a rightful place in the world, as long as it isn't in our basement?

Her preliminary studies for this piece, one of which is seen below, shed little light on her intent. They seem to focus primarily on the formal qualities of the work, giving little hint of the complex content in the finished piece.

Cubist Garden Rabbit

To this point, most of my two-year old daughter's artistic efforts have been in 2-d media; crayons, markers, and photography (see here and here).

Her forays into 3-d have been primarily installation/environments, using various scatter techniques. These are often quite ambitious and energetic, but lack some of the discipline of the traditional sculptural media. Today she has produced her first non-Lego free-standing sculpture, an untitled piece that obviously owes a great debt to both Cubism and our 100 pound dog, who during one of his mad romps actually managed to knock the ear off of a concrete rabbit.

Self-portrait

Self-portrait
disposable camera, 2008

My two year old daughter continues her work in photography, adding this dramatic self-portrait to her portfolio.

Apparently she is concentrating on portraiture, as her first image made with the disposable camera was this unsentimental rendition of her dad.

Her work in crayon, marker, and installation art (tending towards "scatter pieces") continues with gusto.

Kids These Days

Oh my, it looks like we're heading towards the "terrible twos" around here. . .