Welcome to the May edition of ‘Mixtape Monday’, our last-Monday-of-the month burst of craft and inspiration, brought to us by Gemma Jones by way of Justine at Mixtape Zine.
Gemma Jones is a writer, curator, painter and craftster. She runs the Melbourne renegade craft collective the Kaotic Kraft Kutie, is a founding co-editor of Craft City Melbourne online directory, and is a curator for Outré Gallery.
Gemma has a long-standing passion for the 1960s and mid-century style. She collects vintage dress patterns, reads old books about kittens, digs old-style tattoos, listens to vinyl 45s, eats vegetarian, and likes to dance with her friends at Anna’s Go-Go Academy once a week. She believes in community spirit, sharing knowledge and women being heard. Enjoy!
(You can read previous Mixtape Monday posts here)
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Letterpress print by Niels Oeltjen, 2008
Peeps talk a lot about making art with kids - about the creative process itself. But equally it is important to expose young people to art as part of their experience of the world. And it’s more than just taking them to the gallery, it’s about growing up with art and living amongst art that is just a totally enriching thing.
When you decorate your home and your kids’ rooms, you should think about art. And you should think about it for more than a second. And make sure your thoughts wander further than fashionable aesthetics or clichés of pastel-coloured teddy bears. You want to inspire, create wonder, teach your kids the dynamics of visual language, and somehow allude to the deep, deep mysteries of a bigger world.
Shannon, a publisher, curator and collector, thinks that most of the traditional art in his family home had just about no impact on him at all- but his parents’ record collection was something else.
‘My parents had an amazing record collection and i would spend hours listening to them, but also studying the covers meticulously to try and figure out what it all meant. Covers like Led Zeppelin II, Lou Reed’s Transformer, the Who’s Tommy and War of the World kept me entertained for hours. I loved the album artwork because it obviously told some sort story to me, not that I fully understood that story.’
Before you think about dotting your little one’s walls with anything, you need to shake off the stereotypes. Kids might like animals and trucks, but there is no reason to assume they like them more than other things, just as - and I hate to remind you - boys don’t like blue any more than girls like pink. (If you want a good read you should look up Lynn Peril’s fantastic article, The Tyranny of Pink, in which she spells out wonderfully the way that pink is indeed a very modern, culturally constructed gender assignment - neither in our blood nor in our history at all).
I think kids are pretty opinionated - not to mention complex - when it comes to colour.
Rachel McGrotty, an artist and interior designer, says, ‘I guess like a lot of kids, I went through stages where most colours were my “favourite”, but I’ve always liked the hot, bright colours best: I think red mostly, followed by greens. That is still the case. I must say though, I took a stand against blue. I’m sure I would have said “hated” it at some stage. I was a tomboy too so was never a girly pink girl, which might surprise you. It wasn’t til uni when I looked at feminist issues in my art that I started using a LOT of pink and subsequently I now wear pink all the time!’
What can babies even see? Well, interestingly some say that babies find large black-and-white patterns the most visible and attractive, and that their 3D vision takes a while to develop (after five months). Given this, I love the idea of bold, geometric black-and-white art for a baby’s room. Ever thought of a Bridget Riley serigraph for the nursery? Sixties op-art has never looked so GOOD!
Personally, I also think that abstraction and abstract art is just good for the mind, especially when it comes to imagery that you have to live with day in and day out. Somehow abstract works of art have a slow resonance, a mystery and gentle process of revealing themselves that some other imagery does not. It creates a dialogue with the person who spends the time to meditate on it.
For kids, this meditative process can be calming and even intriguing. It can also teach them that the world is complicated, that it is not something that is readily understood. The mystery is also something that kids like.
Patty, an artist and writer, says, ‘I slept beside a very large spray- painted abstract, geometric painting all through my childhood. I would study it over and over, trying to unlock the puzzle. It became my own story, with its own secrets that I made. I loved that painting more than anyone would’ve suspected.’
Lots of parents seem to shield their kids from spooky stuff. Weirdly, kids get a kick out of scary things (and gross things too). Kids have a different relationship to the world than we do. Sometimes being able to objectify fear is somewhat reassuring. Fairytales that conjure monsters and witches do so in order for children to be able to contain and name fear - rather than it just being an abstract, uncontrollable emotion.
Speculative investment and art is pretty low down on my list when it comes to choosing art. But investing in a young artist’s career by buying their works for your own children’s collections could end up being a win-win situation. There are no surefire guarantees in the world of art, but you are closer to the mark when buying an original painting than a generic Disney poster.
It’s nice to think about works of art that your kids can grow up with and own and love later into life. Treasures - the seed of an art collection, even!
This article can be found in issue 7 of Mixtape Zine. You can buy current and back-catalogue issues of Mixtape here (the current issue is limited-edition hard-copy; back-catalogue issues are available in PDF only.)
