Grandma Moses Paintings Now at the Dayton Art Institute

Tom and I celebrated our fifty-fourth anniverary by going out to eat and then to the art museum to see American Sampler, Grandma Moses and the Handicraft Tradition.

Both of us enjoyed the show.  Tom had never seen crewelwork and was impressed by the beautiful pictures Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860-1961)  made with worsted wool.  One crewelwork picture is on the cover of the flyer advertising the exhibit.  I scanned both the front and back so you can read about some of the upcoming special events associated with the exhibit.  Click to enlarge.

 Both of us enjoyed the farm scenes she painted. Tom was raised in the country and though I was raised in what would now be called a suburb, I had many aunts and uncles who lived on farms.  Every time we visited the farms, I did things I never did at home...played in the cornfields, jumped off the loft into mounds of straw. When I was six I even fell into a fresh cow pie.  I expect you know another name for cow pie.

Grandma Moses didn't begin painting until her hands were too gnarled to sew.  She used housepaint in the beginning and whatever she could find that she could paint on.  One of her first projects was painting on her wall because she ran out of wallpaper.  She was fond of using glitter on her winter scenes to give the snow the effect of sun shining on it.

I had a hard time deciding what to buy in the gift shop as a memento of the visit.  Even now I'm thinking, "If I go back, I'll buy the children's book with a spring poem by Robert Frost and pictures by Grandma Moses."  What I bought was a children's book about Grandma Moses.  I have about a dozen other books in this series.  They are inexpensive, have nice reproductions of the artist's work and give a brief overview of the artist and his or her work.  There are amusing cartoons to accompany the text as well. One of her paintings is on the cover. Click to enlarge.  These books are written and illustrated by Mike Venezia.

In the hall leading to the exhibit hall there were "thread paintings by Mary Borkowski, a Dayton folk art painter.  These were mostly silk embroidery on silk.  They are very different from Grandma Moses crewelwork but are still considered folk art because Mary Borkowski was untrained in the fine arts and had a unique vision just as Grandma Moses did.

The last section of the American Sampler exhibit includes text that explains how some of the embroidery stitches are made.  It also includes samplers made by young children and women  who used the samplers to decide what stitches to use for future sewing projects.  The samplers are another example of folk art.

The exhibit will be in Dayton until February 21, 2016.  I hope you live close enough to visit it.

More About Miss Grace Durrin

Miss Durrin was a legend.  She was ardent about her subject, Children's Literature, at a time when it was often dismissed as a lightweight field.  Her course was dreaded by many elementary teaching majors because it was not an easy course.  We were expected to go out of her class knowing something about children's literature, the more the better.

The big project for her class was a collection of children's poems, at least a hundred neatly typed and bound in a sturdy binder so we could use it in our classrooms.  I had been alerted to this project before I went to college by a woman I babysat for.  She offered me her book if I wanted to use it.  She was proud of the "A" she received on her selections.  She said she used her book a lot when she was teaching

I took her book though I intended to make my own choices since I have always liked poetry of all kinds.  I enjoyed reading poems and picking out my favorites but putting the book together was a major problem for me.  I was an terrible typist.

Another relic in the basement, my high school graduation gift from my parents.

In those days  the only three ways of correcting  typing errors were to use White-Out, a liquid bought in a bottle, or small  rectangles of paper covered with a chalky substance which covered up the error when typed over, or erasable typing paper.  She told us we were not allowed to use the erasable paper.  She wanted a neat collection with no errors.

I typed page after page, only to make horrible typing errors as I neared the end of the page. Then I got nervous and started making errors after typing only a word or two.  Finally, my blessed roommate took pity on me.  She typed most of my collection.  Many of the poems in my book are from the book of the woman I babysat for.

That project was one of the best projects ever required of me.  I still have the book. It's in the basement, too. The bits of white on the cover are from the label which fell off some time or another.

I used it in every classroom I ever taught in...first grade, third grade, fourth grade.

This is the first page of the four page contents list.

In Memory of Grace Durrin

She read what has become one of my favorite poems of all times in her Children's Literature course at Bowling Green State University.

The Night Will Never Stay

The night will never stay,
The night will still go by,
Though with a million Stars
You pin it to the sky;
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon,
The night will slip away
Like sorrow or a tune.

Eleanor Farjeon

I found Miss Durrin's photo in one of those things I have saved because I have a big basement...The 1957 KEY...the Bowling Green State University yearbook.

Happy Birthday, Ted

I pulled this photo from one of you and your dad at the wedding. As I was going through our photo collection I found this one. It is appropriate that you are wearing a shirt proclaiming "Navy".

What I remember most about you as a child was your curiosity. I think there was a cicada in the jar.

Given your curiosity about all things it is not surprising that I associate these two books with you. You wanted me to read I Can Count to 100, Can You? by Katherine Howard with pictures by Michael J. Smollin for about a month every time I saw you which was often. You loved to count.

Counting to twenty was easy.

And shortly afterward, you were counting further.

Another book you liked was The Holes in Your Nose by Genichiro Yagvu.

This was one of your favorite pages. Even boogers lined up neatly are dirty.

Whatever you are doing today, I hope you are happy.

Love, Grandma

Happy Birthday, James

I hope your day is a happy one. The photo is pulled from one of your dad and Gretchen's wedding photos.  I  have a wonderful collection of pictures of you as you grew up. I'm glad you lived near us.

Here you are with a  stuffed monkey that was a gift from Great-Grandma-with-the-dolls. That was the name you knew my mother by since she had an enormous collection of dolls.

Books that I read to you when you were young...here they are.

The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and the BIG HUNGRY BEAR by Don and Audrey Wood.

The little mouse really had a hard time protecting that strawberry.

The second book that I remember you liking was Great Day for UP by Dr. Seuss.
 

These are two of the early pages.

Even after you could easily read the book yourself, it was a book you liked to have me read to you. I think you liked the last page best of all. I'm not going to publish that page. People will have to find out about that last page some other way.

Till I see you again...Happy, happy, happy birthday.

Love, Grandma

Happy Birthday, Barry

I've heard you are enjoying high school. I'm glad.

Here is a photo I took at the county fair. I was taking a picture of Grandpa and Courtney but you are in it, too.

Here you are a little closer.

This year as I write the Happy Birthday Blogs, I am thinking of books I associate with my grandchildren. When I think of you I think of Manga drawing. It is something you are really good at. (You are good at other kinds of drawing, too.) I gave you one of the books in Tadashi Ozawa's series, How to Draw Anime and Game Characters. There are a lot of books in the series.
 

Every book in the series has useful information for drawing people even for people who are not primarily interested in Manga and Anime.

I hope your day was a good one and that you did something special to celebrate.

Love, Grandma

Happy Birthday, Camille

It's nice to have an up to date photo of you. That's because you came to visit us in August. I didn't read to you when you were a preschooler because you were five hundred miles away but I do know something you like to read now because you have told me you like this series.

This manga book was created by Erin Hunter, written by Dan Jolley and has art by James L. Barry.  The copyright is 2011.

I bought the first one for you because I had been buying manga books for your older brothers and I know that you like cats. Also, I remembered that when I was your age, my sisters and I enjoyed spending afternoons reading comic books
.

Your mom has told me that you like the traditional books in the Warriors series, too.  By traditional, I mean the old-fashioned kind of book I read when I was young.

   I hope your birthday was a happy one.

 Love,
 Grandma

Happy Birthday, Robert

 

             Grandpa took this photo this fall.

Below is a picture of you when you were three, almost four.  You and Grandpa are picking apples from our red delicious apple tree.



Back then, one of your favorite books  was this one, Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, story and pictures by Virginia Lee Burton.

The story is exciting. Will Mike and Mary Ann, the steam shovel, get the cellar for the townhall dug in a day?

 

 

As it turned out, Mike Mulligan and Mary Ann had an even bigger problem than digging the cellar in one day but a little boy helped them. Sometimes, when I was busy I put this tape in so you could watch the story on the television.

Now you prefer your car to a steam shovel.

I hope your birthday is a wonderful day.

Love, Grandma

Happy Birthday, Treven

Hi, Treven, I hope you were feeling well enough to enjoy your birthday. It has to be a bummer to spend so much time aching and feeling bad. I'm glad that bio-feedback is helping. This is the photo I took of you just before we headed back to Ohio last October.





Since your family moved 500 miles from here when you were two, I don't have memories of reading special books to you when you were young. I do have good memories of looking at the Anime style drawings you drew. Every time we visited you had a collection of new ones that you had drawn.





I was always happy when I could find a book that had drawing ideas in it that I thought you might like.  I remember finding some good how to draw hands diagrams in this book. I am not sure I sent you this book but I am almost positive I sent you the diagrams of the hands.





Enjoy your day.  Happy drawing until I see you again.  I expect Grandpa and I will visit you some time this fall.

Happy Birthday, Stephen

It wasn't long ago that you and I took a walk at Charleston Falls and I took this photo of you at the front of the limestone cave. That was a good day. I hope this was a good day, too. This year I decided to remember some of the favorite books that your cousins and you liked to have me read. I'm almost positive that your favorite when you were young was The Train to Timbuctoo. Remember the last page?

                    "From
                      Kalamazoo to Timbuctoo
                     It's a long way down the track
                     And from Timbuctoo to Kalamazoo


                     It's just as far to go back
                     From Timbuctoo to Kalamazoo
                     From Kalamazoo and back
                        A long, long way,
                            a long. long way,
                              a long way down the track.
                                   From Kalamazoo to Timbuctoo
                                      From Timbuctoo
                                           and back.

Happy Birthday, Samantha

When I think of reading to you when you were young I think of poetry. First I read Mother Goose rhymes to you. Then I found an old poetry book I had read to your mom when she was young. Its cover was taped on with masking tape so when I came across a newer edition, I bought it.
 

By the time you were in kindergarten, you wanted something different so I found a poetry book whose title, Sing a Song of Popcorn, I remembered from a Children's Literature class.

Remember the Jumblies? The refrain was...

     Far and few, far and few,
        Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
     Their heads are green and their hands are blue,
        And they went to sea in a sieve.

The poet is Edward Lear.
.

Click on the picture to get a better look at the Jumblies.

Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar

I saw this book as I walked past  the children's  books at the library.  I picked it up because I had seen it when Tom and I stayed at a bed and breakfast on Russian Hill in San Francisco thirty years ago. 

I am not a believer in my ability to understand Math. I took College Algebra and College Trig because I didn't like it when people told me I couldn't understand Math because I was a girl.  I passed both courses. I hate to have someone tell me I can't do anything.
I've learned that I can memorize Math formulas but they don't stick with me.  I learned when I memorized the multiplication facts in fourth grade that I don't believe what people tell me about numbers.  I especially dislike people saying,   "Just memorize it.  Don't worry about understanding it.  Just accept it."  

1 X 2 was easy to see.  7 X 8 was not.  Periodically, I would make seven rows of eight dots or eight rows of seven dots and count them one by one to see that there were really 56 dots total.  It is clear that I am visual when it comes to Math.  (And also, that I am a skeptic about what I am told.)

And that is what appeals to me about this PICTURE BOOK.  It explains the math concept, Factorials,  through pictures. 

First there is the Mysterious Multiplying Jar.  In it is water which becomes the sea and in the sea is an island. And then the fun begins.

On the island are two countries.

In each of the two countries are three mountains.

By now you have probably noticed that although there are two countries and three mountains in each country, the pictures of each item is different.  Different-looking countries, different-looking mountains. That is one of the aspects that I find fascinating.  So much to notice besides the numbers.  A small child and I could sit and just look at the pictures and notice what is on one mountain that is the same on another mountain.  Then we could notice what was on one mountain and NOT on the other mountain.  We could count things.

Eventually there are nine boxes in eight cupboards in seven rooms in six houses in five villages in four walled kingdoms on each of the three mountains...lots and lots and lots of items.  And guess what.  There are ten of these Mysterious multiplying jars in each of those nine boxes. 

And then the Annos explain the same concept with dots. Here is the page showing dots rather than the houses in the villages.  6! = 6x5x4x3x2x1= 720.

They continue with the dots until they fill up two complete pages with dots to represent the eight cupboards in each room.  It becomes quite clear why mathematicians use the factorial, 8!, to represent that number of things.

Anno's Mysterious Multipying Jar was written by Masaichiro and Mitsumasa Anno in 1981.  It is fun as a picture book and I think it would be helpful to any student encountering factorials for the first time, especially if they think like I do.

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