[warm-up, creative parenting]

Did you play this game as a child? It bears repeating and is a great thing to do with your own kids. It’s non-competitive, free, interactive and instructive, for adults as well as children. Plus, if you bring a creative slant to it, it can be an experience that teaches about the close relationship between smell, memory and creativity.

THE GAME:

Place a series of smells under the noses of blindfolded people and ask them to name them.

Best played in the kitchen.

That’s it.

However, it’s not as easy as it would seem to be. Sometimes the smell is as familiar as your own name but the word for it will not come. This is probably because in order to do this we have to utilize two separate parts of the brain. The part that identifies smells as familiar and known—and the part that puts a word to that familiar and known smell, ordinarily with the assistance of sight.

It would be a great game to play at a Halloween party since this holiday is already so much about masks and the senses. Make it part of your “Haunted House” and have the kids identify a few ‘bad’ smells along with the good or neutral.

If you’re just playing this at home, talk to your kids about the brain and memory. Sit down with them and do a quick free-writing exercise just to see what the non-verbal sense of smell has aroused in your c-minds. If your children are too young to write, let them dictate their stories.

You can also use some of your game smells as the basis for art work. After you’ve played the Smell Game, tell your kids they can make art with the ingredients. Explain that this art work may not be as lasting as if you were using paint. It might be a good time to teach them words like “transient,” “ephemeral,” and “fleeting” and to talk about art and artists who make art that is intentionally so.

Smell Art Ideas:

Sprinkle jello on a paper and let them use their fingers to make art (this is a great sensory-rich way to help them learn to write their letters and numbers, but save that for another more structured time ) Enhance the smell factor by letting them dip their fingers in lemon juice first!

Dip paper in strong tea, coffee, fruit juice.

Use berries to make dyes, paint with them!

Finger paint with (a little) peanut butter. (Maybe even jelly, too?)

Put glue on the paper and use aromatic spices as you would glitter.

Take one item—how about a lemon?—and do a whole picture out using all parts of the lemon.

And, this is a whole other article, but don’t forget: edible art! Pancakes with food colouring, popcorn ball people, rice cake worlds.

LINKS

Here’s a lovely website
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0110299/html/index.php made by three young people about the brain and the mind, including pages on creativity (take the How Creative are you? quiz), the senses and memory.

The Ephemeral Arts - check this one out. it’s all about ephemeral arts on the Indian sub-continent; here’s another link to the same site, one that gives examples of these kinds of art. Use them with your kids!

Stayed tuned for my own Ephemeral Arts article. Coming soon!

Have fun and never forget that anything you can do with kids and creativity, you should be doing for yourself anyway. Tapping into our childhood well, keeps creativity flowing strong!

[-crackles!-]

If you’ve tried everything else…you could just PLAY with your collection:

Read the rest of this entry »

[-music, art, inspiration-]

Get your brushes, paints, colored pencils and gel pens ready. When you get finished reading this article you’ll be wanting them immediately!

by guest contributor, Debbie Jensen

“Today, I find myself interested in graphic arts and multimedia; albeit with music written upon my heart and soul.”

As a very young child, I began a long journey of piano playing which has followed me all the way through my adulthood. From childhood lessons to adult lessons, and after decades of musical education which included reading notes, chords, scales, music theory, and composition, you would think I’d feel like I had achieved my musical goals. To the contrary, I still have so much more to learn! However, once any pianist reaches an expert level, it is difficult (and expensive) to find the musical instruction required to keep going. From this experience, coupled with other twist of events, I have drifted away from playing music. Today, I find myself interested in graphic arts and multimedia; albeit with music written upon my heart and soul.

Music has been one of the strongest influences to my artistic expressions and has helped me understand how to express beauty, rhythm, and movement. From my photography background (from which I photographed thousands of images), I learned the seven wonders of photography, the importance of framing and composition, and how to create emphasis. So you might wonder, how could music influence artistic expressions of a different medium?

When I used to play the piano, sometimes I would reach to fasten my seat belt, but of course, it was not there. This often happened right before I started to play, and perhaps this occurred because I felt as if I was about to travel through space. From my mind’s eye, and at the point I was lost in my music, I could easily envision colorful, geometric forms. The forms were beautiful. Other times, I would see imaginary birds flying, and possibly those birds are manifesting themselves through my graphic designs today. My sketch books are filled with endless imaginary birds; and I often wonder, where is this imagery coming from? There seems to be no end to it.

In music, the rhythm can slow down and speed up, pause or sustain a tone, leap, or even freeze for an instant; but if the rhythm breaks–sadly, the moment is lost. Is art any different? Isn’t this concept similar to what we know as a design principle? Each piece of artwork whether it be 2-D or 3-D needs to pull together as a unit and needs to have the same feeling of completeness in the same way as expected in a song; that is, at least to the point of solving all the design problems related to it.

Next time you find yourself stuck, creatively speaking, turn on music which harmonizes with the piece you are working on. Amazingly, in the way songs are written and in the way words are expressed within them, pianists vary the way they choose to strike the keys. So, why wouldn’t music influence how the artist’s brush strikes the canvas? To experience what I’m trying to convey, close your eyes and draw with your imaginary pen or brush and strike the air as the music influences you; and let the music influence how you make your abstract design. If brush strokes and lines are artists’ signatures, then why not let your signatures be influenced by audio multimedia?

© copyright 2005 - 2007
Debbie Jensen “Black and White Piano Keys Composition”

[-essay, parenting-]

What do yoga, Carlos Castañeda and being a loving, effective parent have to do with knowing who and where and what you are? Read this great essay to find out.

Playing the edge, finding one’s spot and being one’s true self

by guest essayist, Joe McCarthy

I recently attended a four-class parenting seminar on Love and Logic, wonderfully facilitated by Cindy Horst. The three “rules” of Love and Logic are:

1. Take care of yourself by setting limits in a loving way
2. Give choices whenever it’s reasonable.
3. Let empathy and consequences do the teaching.

Throughout the classes, parents were encouraged to stretch to allow children to experience more consequences directly, enabling them to fail early and often, rather than being protected or rescued from those consequences. There is much to be gained by moving out of our comfort zone, but stopping short of real pain. Cindy notes that the Love and Logic principles can be used not only by parents interacting with their children, but in school and the workplace as well.

I see these principles as applying equally well to my interactions with my self.

This notion of stretching to the edge of our comfort zone reminded me of the concept of “playing the edge” that Erich Schiffman describes in his wonderful book “Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness”. Reviewing the highlighted passages in my copy of the book revealed close alignment with some of the concepts taught by Don Miguel Ruiz in “The Four Agreements” and by Don Juan (via Carlos Castañeda) in “The Teachings of Don Juan”. I’ll include some relevant passages below.

On “playing the edge” (from Erich Schiffman’s book):

A large part of the art and skill in yoga lies in sensing just how far to move into a stretch … This place in the stretch is called your “edge.” The body’s edge in yoga is the place just before pain, but not the pain itself … Sensing where your edges are and learning to hold the body there with awareness, moving with its often subtle shifts, can be called “playing the edge.”

One of the things you learn in yoga is to enjoy working with intensity. Intensity is simply more “energy” at any given moment, more feeling … Yoga can teach you to enjoy and learn from a broader range of experience. It will encourage you to seek out and process more intensity … Skill in yoga involves creating the perfect amount of intensity — not too much, not too little.

The real key to depth in postures is going slowly, making sure you have thoroughly opened your early edges … Proceed slowly, edge by edge and gate by gate … Respect your tight edges. Work with them sensitively. Lure them to greater openness.

Never be in a place you don’t want to be. If you do not like it, change it. Adjust. Find the degree of stretch you can totally immerse yourself in … Never fight yourself.

This last part reminds me of Don Juan’s notion of finding one’s spot (via Carlos Castañeda’s book):

Finally he told me that there was a way, and proceeded to create a problem. He pointed out that I was very tired sitting on the floor, and that the proper thing to do was to find a “spot” (sitto) on the floor where I could sit without fatigue. I had been sitting with my knees up against my chest and my arms locked around my calves. When he said I was tired, I realized that my back ached and that I was quite exhausted.

I waited for him to explain what he meant by a “spot,” but he made no overt attempt to elucidate the point. I thought that perhaps he meant that I should change positions, so I got up and sat closer to him. He protested my movement and clearly emphasized that a spot meant a place where a man could feel naturally happy and strong. He patted the place where he sat and said it was his own spot, adding that he had posed a riddle I had to solve by myself without any further deliberation.

Finally, re-reading the opening chapter of Schiffmann’s book reminded of the concept of mitote in Ruiz’ book:

Your mind is a dream where a thousand people talk at the same time and no one understands each other. Everything you believe about yourself and the world, all the concepts and programming you have in your mind, are all the mitote. We cannot see who we truly are; we risk to be alive and express what we really are.

Schiffman addresses this issue of who we are - and who we are not - and suggests that yoga can provide a way to discover and experience our true selves:

Yoga is a way of moving into stillness in order to experience the truth of who you are … From very early on, a fundamental conflict was introduced into our psyches revolving around this basic and most important issue: Who am I, really? And because we were not encouraged to find out for ourselves, we believed what other people told us. The result is that we feel guilty, ashamed, embarrassed, and confused about who we are. We feel judged … [Yoga teaches you to] turn your attention inward and focus on yourself. Focus on what it feels like to be you. Experience you.

One of the things I like about Love and Logic is that it encourages children to be who they really are. Rather than trying so hard to control children, the program points to a path through which children can more naturally unfold to be their true selves, with gentle guidance and support from their parents. This approach resonates with me, and I will try to apply it as best I can. And, regardless of how this affects my children, I plan to get up extra early tomorrow to have more time to find my spot, play my edge … and experience being me.

about the author:
Joe McCarthy’s mission is to help people relate to one another. He has played the edges of academia and industry, and is currently moving out of his comfort zone and opening up to the intensity of a new entrepreneurial path aligned with this mission. More about Joe’s entrepreneurial aspirations can be found at interrelativity.com; other dimensions of his journey can be found on his blog: gumption.typepad.com. This article is a slightly revised version of this one originally published on his blog.

illustration from the yellow woman series by nancy sm waldman © 2005 - 2007 all rights reserved

Published with the permission of the author in the April 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: inspiration