Finding Faces At The Mansion

“I feel like I’m back in Kindergarten,” Bill said.  I wasn’t sure how to take that.  So I asked him if that was a good thing.

It was.

Bill said finding faces in the paint marks on the paper I made for them brought him right back to his Kindergarten Classroom in Queens NY. “I can still see it,” he said with a smile on his face “and feel what it’s like to be there.”

I was glad to be able to do that for him.

I called it Finding Faces.  Last week I laid out 13 sheets of watercolor paper on my studio floor, then splattered them with paint.

“Today we’re going to use our imaginations,” I told the people sitting around the big round table in the activities room in the Mansion.

Look for two eyes, maybe there’s a nose and mouth, maybe there isn’t.  At first, you may not see anything, but after you see the first set of eyes, after you draw the first face, others will reveal themselves to you.

“Have fun, don’t be afraid, you can’t make a mistake.” I told them,  “Think of the strangeness of dreams or cartoons.”

Then I spread the illustrations of clothes I cut out of a catalog I got in the mail.  I used them before to make collages at The Mansion.  This time they’d just be accessorizing.

Rachel, who has been living at the Mansion for about a month, said she loves being there and has learned that she likes to make art and is good at it. I watched as she made figure after figure, filling her paper with strange people.

She told me they all drew self-portraits a few days ago and she was surprised at how well hers came out. Aileen, one of the activities directors showed me their self-portraits and they really well done with a lot of emotion.

Before I left Paryese, the other Activities Director asked if I’d like to help next month when they tie-dye t-shirts.  After they are tye-dyed, Aileen will print their name on the shirts and they will wear them to the Washington County Fair.

I’m looking forward to it.