a visual call-and-response

It’s winter. It’s cold. The trees have lost their leaves. The sun sets, it seems, a few hours after it rises. And Thanksgiving is tomorrow. Inevitably, it’s a time of reflection, and for thinking about (if not saying out loud) what fills us with gratitude. Along with the obvious (health, family, animals, cookies), I’d like to raise my glass to three things that I love: art-based relationships; dialoguing with children; playing with photographs and making images.

I’m sending a special thanks to the lovely Team at the Early Stage School in Warsaw, Poland, who sent me this collection of photographs of their classroom walls.

There’s the sensation of traveling…from Maine to Poland, from artist to student, from black and white photograph to colored drawing…

traveling back and forth, zooming in and out between the individual pages and the collection,

hearing the unique voice of each student, along with the collective voice of the class.

It’s like a visual call-and-response:

verbal and non-verbal, musical, collaborative, improvisational…

with the added sparkle of teenage verve. 🙂