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Lessons from the Art of Junk-Modelling
Oftentimes children are the best teachers.
Each Thursday morning in August, we’ve been hosting, “Exploring
Art Together.” This is an environment in which budding artists of all
ages and all abilities can have space to ‘play’ with Art – and without
fear of criticism! Some of our activities were led and some were
self-supervised.
The biggest surprise for me has been the self-supervised activity of
“Junk-Modelling.” This is exactly what you might expect it to be: a
pile of rubbish with tape to stick it together! We’ve had flower pots
and cardboard tubes, boxes and plastic bowls. All the items were
once useful as packaging to contain something else. Now, they are
no longer needed or wanted.
The sight of one of the grandmothers – Mary - carrying home the
large ‘house’ her granddaughter had built is a sight that will tickle
me for years. I wonder where she will find space to put it! (As a
parent or grandparent, is there an acceptable timeframe for keeping
and storing such treasures before it is safe to recycle them?)
This activity was by far one of the children’s favourites. It requires
three major ingredients: supervision for safety, a pile of discarded
junk (with things to stick it together), and tons of imagination!
I have that kind of brain that sees lessons in most experiences. As
the children created masterpieces of Art, I thought about the junk
we have in our own lives. We all have ‘containers’ that once were
useful for a task or resource whose time has passed. Now those
containers clutter our lives. Penny is in the process of breathing
exciting new life into a dressing table she had as a child. This is
good but not what I have in mind here. Instead, Penny is restoring
a piece to its original intended purpose. Let’s think about new
purposes for old things…
What if, like the children, we could take wasted resources and
make good Art? What if we could take experiences that we no
longer think have value and stick them together with other
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