Beneath the faery house: Nature-Thinking

Faery Houses may be the new Bird Houses for community activity and fundraising!  a Wisconsin version .  Nonetheless, Faery Houses can be a personal, classroom, and family activity.  I'm tinkering with the ways to present it, so it invites people into a dreamy creative process and not just speed them to a Thing. I tried an adult version MARKINGS.


The local sawmill, Laroe's, has a pile of cut-offs for the taking.  These might be the bases for this project. I like using easily available, yet unusual, materials.

DECEMBER, 2013   
I started working with a local kindergarten-1st grade class, (about twenty-three 5 and 6-year olds).   The general topic is "Faery Houses"... an off-shoot of my lifelong activity working with natural materials.
It's a way to explore Nature-Thinking: alternative ways of seeing, thinking, sensing that balance and complement the traditional logic or machine-thinking required in many situations.  It's a chance to develop different kinds of thinking talents. And it's a way of involving people who are more nature-oriented. I learned this a few years ago in a related project at the same school.


I had 40 minutes. The first ten were during a mid-morning snack of various fruit slices and it ended as the children went to lunch. During the first few slices of fruit, I was introduced and welcomed: "Hello, Mr Mack, Buenos Dias".  I had been previewed as a maker of things, things with natural materials and the father of a former student of the teacher. "I had Mr Mack's daughter in class, now she's having a baby!"   (What's the hidden lesson in this? Deal with him and you too will have a baby?)

I started by asking them what they were already making in the nearby woods; what trees were their favorite; I was told that they had already made many faery houses from all natural materials under the Big Sycamore.  "But it's all covered with snow right now." 


I said I'd like to learn more about what they knew about faeries.
I heard about wings and faery mounds and bottoms of trees.  No one had actually seen a faery. I asked if faeries were "nice".  Silence and then yes and no.  They can be either, or both.

I asked if we could do some projects together to learn more about faeries.. and maybe draw some pictures.  OK!  I said I had three different jobs:

I asked if there was anybody who was a good Looker?  Several hands went up.  I put down a stack of picture books on faeries, elves, trolls, angels and asked the group to look through them.  This was a popular activity.

I had Brian Froud's book on Faeries, and a few others.  I have an original copy of Waugh's Clan of the Munes from 1917  I plan to bring in.




Was anybody a good Counter?
Several more hands and I put down a box of those Artist Trading Cards: -- 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" cards either blank or cut/recycled from something. I asked the Counters to give everybody four of these.


Is anybody a good Rememberer?  One boy groaned about how bad he was at remembering. I said that I'd brought two special Chairs for Remembering.  That when you sit in these chairs, it helps you remember what you like about nature and what you really know about faeries.

Whoosh!       Books got opened, cards counted and chairs sat in...
then cards got made: words, wings, bodies drawn colored, named...
 
The Chairs for Remembering were a big hit.  I invited the users to close their eyes, take a few deep breaths...In and Out, In and Out and "Remember times in nature, in the back yard, the park, the woods .  Remember those smells, the colors, the animals and bugs and leaves you saw... Remember what you liked most about being in nature... Now when you open your eyes try to draw what you remember"
Just a form of meditation, mindfulness? 
The Cards themselves were another hit.  Everybody knew about cards. They are small, safe little things to keep, to trade. Mr. Mack, can I keep six?       Yes.

I go back in January. We'll see where this goes.  The "structure" of this engagement is like its goal... to learn more about The Organic Way.  Even the words of Nature-Thinking are fundamentally are different from Machine-Thinking: seed, grow, digest, fallow, fertilize, compost, cook, raw, whither, harvest, tend.  These are nice farmer-y words, but let's see what happens when they get applied. Is there the patience, tolerance for THINGS not to appear right away?  in a period?

 JANUARY        Visit Two:  No Snack!   I did more Cards and talked about the Faery Houses.
The Snows of the winter slowed things down a bit. Thank you.

FEBRUARY  
February 21, I came back in with 12 small slab cut-offs with a dozen holes of two different diameters drilled in the perimeter; a box of sticks ("kindling"); some yarn, acorns, and several pieces of thin bamboo and pine boughs from old Christmas door rope trimming.

I wanted to see just how much was enough to get all this going.  As a teacher, I have over-prepared many times and, I think, made the experience one of Following Directions rather than discovering how to make something.  In another recent situation, I referred to this as "teaching from the middle"

The kids got it immediately and began finding the right size sticks for the right holes.

Key in this was Grampa-Ed-With-the-Drill to add those extra holes.  

Homework.  I wanted some buy-in from the students, so the teacher asked if they could Find some natural materials to bring in to share.

February 28
There were baggies and bags of pine boughs, sticks, leaves, orphaned dry flower arrangements and a bit of dryer lint... YES!  This helped the kids participate in the project in their own ways.  I asked how they got all this great stuff.  My sister, my mother, my father, my friend... This is the group/community part of making something. Lots of people can have a part. It's much more than just getting a Project Finished.

That day we continued to elaborate the 12 ones we started.
They were still working in groups of three: Two K-1 students and a 5th Grade Buddy.  The projects grew taller, more complex, more fragile.  (There were a few times when I thought I was primarily working with a bunch of 5th Graders with Kindergarteners just watching)

To Glue or Not 
I got asked, mostly by the teachers, about using glue.  I had not given it too much thought.  We started by pressure-fitting the sticks into the slabs, then relying on gravity to help out. Glue makes things so permanent.  Keeping it all fragile may have a value... we'll see.  I remembered that this is not my first time thinking about the Permanence of Fairy Houses.

Here's an exchange with the teacher about NOT doing anymore building tomorrow.  (What is special here is that two of the older classes send in "buddies" to work with the younger students.  So this mixed age/skill grouping allows for a very rich and progressive experience.)
 
I was thinking of having them look at what they've done and develop a story about the Faery House (in group for 20 min) and then share as many 2-minute versions as time allows.  I don't think we have to build more this week.   How does that sound to you?
Good. They can chat with the buddies and the buddies can take some notes.  When they leave, we can develop the writing.  Big variety of levels when it comes to writing! 

Great Shift of Energy!!!  ... from the manic fussiness of building to the alpha-state dreaming about what built-object actually does.  
To help this, I brought in four Wands, to put all the children in the right mind for imagining what happens in these Faery Houses.  I turned off the lights and the three adults went around the room encouraging mindfulness:



Reality Footnotes

Faery House? No! A Boat.

1. Inevitable side chatter during it all. One girl to another:   
Why do you always get mad at ME and never HER!!?


2. The Teacher covered the tables with newspapers.
Two of the boys got very distracted by ads for toy Transformers on the newspaper and had to be reminded that the project was Faery Houses.  They then built a Boat with an Anchor.

3. Exchanges in the Classroom: 
Mr. Mack, I don't have a chair.  
Mr Mack, my buddy is sick today.
Mr. Mack, are there any more sticks? 
Mr. Mack, I don't have any thoughts!
There is NOT a bathroom in my Faery House.

Artist's Statements WHY!

My tribe feels obliged to "make a statement" about what they do. Most of them are not writers nor even very reflective.  They do what they do.  But somehow some weird aesthetic spirochete bites them and there a rash of words:   examples of what happens in this state of near delirium:

1.   “ The allure and wonder and physicality of working in a variety of mediums to resolve aesthetic considerations, studying the way light and atmosphere as well as surfaces in our environment have become my vocabulary, a challenge that never repeats itself.  It heals and defines the spirit, a passion I hope my art communicates to others.”

2.   Here's a recent announcement from a local college:
During the winter break between the semesters, the arts faculty has taken on the challenge of creating artwork while focusing on the topic, “What is the fabric of your process to create?”.
"THE FABRIC OF YOUR PROCESS"???   Is this translated from the Chinese?  How can one "focus" on gibberish?  I'm going to a presentation on it tomorrow, Jan 30. (Good as promised!)

 3.  A local artist recently sent an email with this title:    An Article about me!
It was a link to a blog by a writer who hires out to do articles for/on artists.This artist let us know how pleased she was with the article/blog:  
"I think I like me, the way placed images and worded things that I feel and think about creativity, my life and my work is so poignant."

4. "I never know what magical 'stuff' will serendipitously find me in the piles of vintage printers' wood type, toys and games, kitchen utensils and industrial findings  that were once useful or entertaining and make them come alive again as my art."                   Who's doing What to Whom?


Well, time to walk the walk.  I've had to do one of these:
Dan Mack's 2013 Artist Statement

Looking at a collection of made things one can ask:   What’s happening here?
Too often maker’s answers start with the word “I”  
“ I have always been fascinated with…”
But biography is a very partial and low-level answer.
It doesn’t honor either the unseen  forces at work nor the crucial importance of the object to take on life ONLY when it comes in contact with an Other.

The maker, aware or not,  has at least two elusive  roles:
to go deep into the old, the unspoken, the messy, the ambiguous, the irregular
to go out, bridging to the sensibility of others. 
Down and Out.    Out and Back. 
It’s a changing rhythm the maker sets up and some people respond.. 
The maker is never quite in control of this rhythm.  There are parts beyond control.  Because accident, chance and coincidence are powerful, ever-present  and humbling forces.   

The down,  for me, is the realm of the marginal, the common, the regular.
In sticks, bark, leaves, logs, stones, feathers, bones
The hunt for the sacred in the profane.    Is it there??
The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas puts it this way:
Split open a log and I am there; Lift a rock and I am there too.

This leads to an interest in folk, outsider, the raw, the found, the surreal
The word “foris” has appeared.  It’s that place outside the control of the  authorities; where the knights become demented.

It keeps me tied to decay and fleeting materials: Testimony to Impermanence

It impacts technique too.  
Just how much fussing is necessary to make the point?
When does flourish of technique get in the way of the connection?
It’s always so alluring to make it more perfect, more admirable
… and more remote.

And for that impact on Others, Duchamp said, maybe, “Don’t do as I do, Do as you do.”  Just go find stuff and put it together.
       
Daniel Mack
May 16, 2013

Light and Shadows in Three Hours

Pablo Neruda, Morse Peckham, Jose Saramago

Keeping Quiet    Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn't be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren't unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I'll go.

-from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon
Translated by Stephen MitchellWho else reads him?

Morse Pweckham  Man’s Rage for Chaos: Behavior and Art (1965)

“An ideology is always out of phase with the situation in which it is employed, for an ideology has always emerged as a response to a preceding situation, the attributes of which are different from the current situation.” 


















Art and Pornography (1971)

He's saying that a society needs trivial areas for policing--like pornography--to establish its power over the rest of the structure.

Just Discovering José Saramago! Where have I been for 65 years?

“We never consider that the things dogs know about us are things of which we have not the faintest notion.”
― José Saramago, Death with Interruptions

“As so often happens, the thing left undone tires you most of all, you only feel rested when it has been accomplished.”
― José Saramago

“Don't be afraid, the darkness you're in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body, they are two darknesses separated by a skin, I bet you've never thought of that, you carry a darkness about with you all the time and that doesn't frighten you...my dear chap, you have to learn to live with the darkness outside just as you learned to live with the darkness inside”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“As my cat would say, all hours are good for sleeping.”
― José Saramago, Seeing

What Becomes of a Broken Heart?

Last Night As I Was Sleeping  
Antonio Marcado

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

The Song