On a green high horse

April 27, 2009

We spent the weekend in the kid’s activity tent for the Art City Austin festival put on by The Austin Art Alliance. We were asked to participate to bring an element of Green to the crafts being offered to the kids. We realized after the first few minutes that we were the only green craft in the joint and while we were happy to offer our completely sustainable craft, we were sad to see the other offerings which just seem far too prevalent in our society.I am not usually one to get snarky, nor is Kathie, but we both feel the need to share it with others in an attempt to let people know that there are indeed other options for kid crafting and in this day and age, sustainability really needs to be one of those options.

There were rocks to paint with pre-requisite googly eyes, party hats with purchased pom-poms and bags of brightly colored feathers. Abrakadoodle, a kid “art” company had a table making mobiles made out of corrugated sheets of plastic cut into shapes and all I could think was “I hope my kids don’t want to make one because there’s no way in hell I want that hanging in my house”. Finally, from the Austin Children’s Museum, shrinky-dinks made from purchased sheets of #6 plastic which they touted as “recyclable” which I felt was an effort to mislead and make people think it was actually green when in fact, NOT. I know that those shrinky-dinks can be made from actual “recycled” plastic taken from the bins but I guess that’s just too much work or something.

In our Future Craft booth, we were making note cards and postcards from various pieces of cardboard we had pulled from the recycling bin. We had oodles of file folders we had gotten from the bins at Ecology Action and we cut them into sweet little note cards. We had lots of other cardboard too – corrugated and otherwise, that we cut into postcards. When you deconstruct a corrugated box into postcard sized pieces, they are amazingly aesthetically and texturally pleasing. We had also scored a couple hundred envelopes at the thrift store just the perfect size.

Then we took still more stacks of various recycling: cereal boxes, beer boxes, pasta boxes and more and we took them up to Family Connections to make good use of their die cut machines with their hundreds of different shapes to cut. (And a special shout out to Christina who led us to that wonderful tool free for the using) Let me tell you, running a cereal box or a beer box through a die-cut machine cutting out little kitty cats and turtles and bats and horses and hammers and pliers and chickens and the like is really, really satisfying and completely addictive. We could have spent many, many hours just playing around with that fun tool.

Then, the element that really brought it all together was the rubber stamp Kathie carved that had a line and a big TO: so that anything you stamped looked like a postcard. (I know a photo would be easier to grasp but you’ll have to wait because the cards are in the car and as I type this it’s POURING rain here in Austin, TX so if I go get them to photograph, they’ll get soaked.

The project was mini collages, using the die cuts and the cards and glue. It was a super fun project and Kathie and I got to work making oodles of samples. We could have gone on for hours and in fact, when the table was clear of kids, we did just that. We had dozens of samples up for folks to peruse. Our idea was to not only inspire art and upcycling but to inspire connection through letter writing too. Getting folks to celebrate the art of the handwritten note is a big desire for both Kathie and myself.

Our booth was sandwiched between the hideous plastic Abrakadoodle mobiles and the painted pet rocks. I know that for a kid the pet rocks are hard to resist. Who doesn’t want to paint a little face on a smooth rock and give it little googly eyes. There is just something compelling about the whole thing – perhaps it’s the taming of the natural world or the desire to anthropomorphize inanimate objects, whatever it is, kids love it. Parents seem to love the craft too because it’s easy and clear cut. When they get it home and let it live on the windowsill for a few years, well, that’s another story.

But the mobiles left me wondering. First of all, Abrakadoodle received some kind of “Go Green” award because the plastic pieces they use for the mobiles are the refuse from their giant plastic frames that they use to frame their larger kid “art”. My surprise in it all was how many parents kind of steered their kids past our table and towards the mobiles. I was left with three questions: Do you really like that as an option for your kid? Do you want to take that home and hang it up? And do you see this as wasteful at all???

So, that’s where I stand. Curious about how the word green has lost its impact. Sad about the amount of waste we produce as a society. And hopeful that someone will read this and have a change of heart about how they go about their crafting business. Perhaps from now on they should have two labels True Green and Faux Green as a sort of truth in advertising.

Someone asked me recently how we encourage the kids in Future Craft to live more sustainably and the answer is modeling. First of all we try to make truly useful items instead of just reforming some piece of garbage into another piece of garbage. Secondly we ask the kids to really use their creative muscle instead of completely steering their every vision with ours. Here’s an excerpt from our book proposal and each time I read it I realize it’s really and truly true. At Future Craft Collective we utilize holistically sound materials for the earth’s sake through upcycling, recrafting, and creative reuse. Because we make use of these materials, our projects offer lessons on ways to create an atmosphere that naturally leads to the discussion of our social environment, and the investigation of other upcycled, raw materials.

When we model True Green for the kids’ sake, we do it for the earth’s sake too. It might be a high horse but it’s one I”ve got to ride*.

*Please excuse me, I couldn’t resist that hoaky ending!

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