The Art Fairy

Stevie Nicks Boston 2008 Poster by Mary Lee Mattison

A Brand New Free Children’s eBook by Mary Lee Mattison

I Went Out and Planted a Tree PDF

I asked Tessa what kind of cake she wanted this year. ‘I want a Princess cake.’ Simple. Precise. So Meema (aka The Art Fairy) bought a Wilton Princess cake pan from Amazon (Which they had of course.) Amazon sells everything. Google knows everything. Then from 3 hours, 4 varied cake decorator tips with slippery, goopy bags; an unlimited array of mixing bowls, knives and spatulas; 4 mini gel tubes, 30 gallons of home made butter-cream frosting and a 24 shade palette of non-stain food coloring…The Princess Cake emerged.
Oh it is sweet! But is it Art?

Six Year old girls at Miss Tessa’s Birthday Party LOVE The Art Fairy!

The Art Fairy has been sighted placing bundles of
You be the Artist Book Packs

(A colored version, a matching line art coloring book and a brand new box of Crayola crayons)

Into the Drop boxes marked for Holiday Gift Donations for:

The Home for Little Wanderers

and Toys for Tots

Know a charitable group that needs the The Art Fairy?

Hey Kids! I had a blast visiting your club. I still have paint and glitter in my hair, on my nose and on my gluey finger tips and toes. The snowflakes we made were as one of a kind as those that fall from the winter sky…but so much more dazzling. Your tree looked beautiful. I hope you are enjoying your gift from the Art Fairy. Now don’t just copy my pictures…Always remember there are no rules in art. You can’t be right or wrong. So throw open your imagination and You be the Artist! Let me know if you want more coloring books!
The Art Fairy

Kids can get a Gift from Merrimac Book Works & The Art Fairy!
Coming this Holiday Season Merrimac Book Works will be donating copies of Mary Lee Mattison’s new children’s book ‘You be the Artist’ FREE !

The combined Art Fairy Gift package comes with a vividly-printed, color ‘You be the Artist’ book, a companion line art coloring book and a box of 24 Crayola Crayons. Perfect for those kids that could use a big dose of Imagination.
We will be contacting the local Red Cross, Hospitals, Shelters, Boys and Girls clubs and Toys for Tots…
Anywhere sad kids need some giggles and a creative outlet.

If you know of some place where the kids would enjoy this creative FREE gift please contact The Art Fairy

Each You be the Artist Book pack costs $8.00 to print and package. Please donate to help cover costs for this important project: Inspiring Imagination and Children’s Literacy

I think we read far too much into what our primitive ancestors made. They were the treasured and necessary items of the times made with simple tools, hands and ingenuity. We look at the artifacts and say oh how folksy and naive the decoration is. Could we do as well today? No modern technology. No examples to emulate. A totally original creation. That’s hard to even conceive today where we are all influenced, intentionally or not, by what we see and learn. And then to use such skill that their personal treasures would last forever- as they pretty much have.

What were those important items?
Weapons certainly. But lovely weapons. (Now there’s an oxymoron.)
When you consider people got to own maybe 2 or 5 or 10 things. Each of those things was certainly very special. They were probably held and admired a lot. Treasured. Ornaments were apparently essential There was always lots of jewelry and personal adornments. Stylish to its own time and fashion sense, but still desirable and lovely to our modern eyes. We still aspire to drape our bodies with the same sort of stuff, blinding sparkles and intricately shaped precious medals, dangling earrings for our pierced ears are as common now as back then.

And solid gold is still coveted.

Oh sure, man has always loved extraneous ornament. Perhaps that is finally something that is inherent only to man. Natural embellishment seems to be enough to satisfy other life forms, but not man. We even project our love of decoration onto our animal friends. Do you think Poochie really likes wearing that little turtleneck sweater?

People have always loved to fashion and craft purely decorative items. An artist embeds a little bit of his essence into a creation. And back when money meant nothing the artist’s labor must have been one of pure love… and then to have your finished work admired or even desired. That’s where trade comes in. The artists probably traded with each other. You would have to get something pretty awesome for your handmade masterpiece. What was an opulent neck piece, or armband going for then?

Or a dagger carved all over with intricate animal designs? You can bet no two guys ever showed up at a party wearing the same mass produced helmet.

Ah but wait, Did you just catch that? I assumed all the early artists must have been men.

…But just maybe it was the women who drew all those extraordinary wall paintings. After all they were the ones home in the cave all day with the kids…school, maybe…

“And so you see when you find one of these (Tapping giant painted elk image with carved antler pointer) you run up and twang it just like daddy does…see here’s daddy down here…” Hummm?

Send The Art Fairy a digital scan of you child’s work of art along with their First Name, Last Name Initial, State, (Country) and Age. You can impress all the world with their astounding talent.

Hannah M from Massachusetts did.

Let’s talk a moment about Art and our prehistoric Artistic ancestors. I maintain that all humans are by innate nature prone to create some understandable order from disorder- this human tendency is called Simulacra. Without all the Psychological babble it means we as humans want to see something familiar in everything. Rocks and trees, and billowing creatures in cloud formations. The Man in the Moon. Human skulls in the bones of animals.

A sleeping rock Giant’s face or the NH Old Man in the Mountains
Virgin Mary in an oil stained window.
A beloved dead hero in the oozing sap of a local tree.

We love to fashion intentional recognizable some-things from something else-
In prehistoric times a piece of cast off unusually shaped wood is deliberately saved for later and chipped and fashioned by idle hands to make it in to a figure. Maybe to the primitive artist the scrap looks a bit like a fish so he chips here and there at it to make the image more recognizable. Does he think it becomes a real fish? No. Art is purely representational. It is never meant to replace or displace the actual elemental subject. Art is subjective. That means we each see what ever we want to see regardless of what the actual Artist intended. Artists are supremely BRAVE for this universal aspect, certainly not at all fair to the original creator, opens Art up to all and any observer’s interpretation from any Geographical, Geological, Time, Space or Psychological Profile. Art becomes what ever any individual sees in the creation. The Art answer is never right or wrong. All genuine Art leaves the creator’s hand and evolves with the exposure.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing was ever more exciting than getting a brand new 64 Crayola Crayon Box for Christmas- In my own personal stocking. Santa meant this gift just for me! I was not expected to share this treasure with my brothers and sisters. (Who disrespected crayons and shot them out of GI Joe cannons and stuck them up little sister, runny noses!) This Crayola Crayon 64 model had a ‘Built in sharpener. It was extremely, crayon cutting edge. But I never wasted any of my crayons on point-envy.

I imprinted on this first exciting encounter with personal technology. (”But-I can say no more…” The Beatles- The Movie HELP! The Funniest underrated loop of Everything I ever say to work out an awkward situation. “But-I can say no more…”

I remember lifting the crisp cardboard, yellow and green, rectangular top box. (Such precise logistics-) And worshiping every Crayola Crayon color name:
The Exotics like- Prussian Blue, Aquamarine, Sepia, Mulberry, Mahogany, Thistle, Cornflower…Periwinkle?
Or the comfortingly descriptive: Lemon yellow, Forest Green, Orange, Plum, Sky Blue, Grey.
Then there were the angst driven Crayola crayon color choices: Blue Violet? or was the sky actually more Violet Blue? Or Red Violet or Violet Red? This kind of power to choose the precise shade and hue, of that illusive moment you want to capture in Art, has always been daunting!

Is the growing plant colored Spring Green-Even if is a Pine? Are carnations always Carnation Pink? That seems unduly limiting. What color is Orchid? There are millions of orchids loose in the world. I don’t think one color crayon will be able to sketch them all in.

I was most intrigued by the shiny, metallic minerals. A Copper crayon, that was really copper, right? And Silver and Gold? I used my metallic crayon coinage sparingly-Santa knew if you had squandered your last years crayons.
Maybe just in a Father’s Day card or a letter to Santa pleading for a new Crayola Crayon 64 (With built in sharpener!) Box in my next year’s stocking.