Monday, August 12, 2013

VELCRO POETRY & OTHER ARTSY AMUSEMENTS

A few years ago I helped organize a "Random Acts of Art" series of events in Birmingham. Of course, my contributions revolved around poetry: spontaneous poetry readings, poems left on car windshields, and children's events.

For one of the children's events, I brought a homemade Velcro Poetry board. I printed, laminated and attached velcro to create little word tiles, in the vein of the magnetic poetry kits sold worldwide. But I wanted a BIG board, with words easy for small fingers to manipulate. I loved the result, and the event was loads of fun.



Well. The other day I was doing some cleaning in our basement -- only because it has rained and rained and RAINED in these parts, and all of a sudden we had some puddles -- and I saw that Velcro Poetry board sitting all lonely, its only poems dust and cobwebs. I brought it upstairs and cleaned it up. I mounted it in the hallway between our kitchen and dining room, right in front of the doorway to the laundry room. In other words, I move it to the place where I, on occasion, pop up the ironing board and press the wrinkles out of my favorite little dresses and skirts.




And oh my, what a difference this has made! I rearrange words as I iron. It's brilliant, and I can't believe I didn't think of it years and years ago. Living my poem...

Other inspirations on that wall include a found poem by Robyn Hood Black, a still life of a pair of scissors by middle son, a pen-and-ink drawing of a giraffe by youngest son, an E.B. Lewis print that looks like Ludelphia given to me by Lindsey Leavitt and the very first birthday gift I gave my husband (art with love quotes by moi). It almost makes you want to iron, doesn't it?! :)

3 comments:

  1. Not sure about the ironing, sorry, but love your wall! It's wonderful to put up things we want to look at again and again & it seems you have done that, Irene. Nice idea about the poetry-especially for little hands!

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  2. As always, you are an inspiration! We're going to have to steal this idea for the library!

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  3. don't you just love to have treasures around you... I do... can you guess that I love treasures... some given from friends hearts and some found at yard sales... other people's treasures that their family can't see the love inside of them and cast them off... you're going to come to the yard sale that my kids have and save some of my treasures... right

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