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

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?

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

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?

Hannah M from Massachusetts did.

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.

I have always been obsessed with the Neolithic Standing Stones of Great Briton. Stonehenge, Prehistoric Avebury (Eve’s-Bury?) Silbury Hill, Skara Brae, Callenish Circle, Boyne Valley. My mom rarely tells the tale about little Mary when she was about 5 years old looking up at the black and white TV news story about English Stonehenge saying “Oh Mummy, I remember when we lived there.” Since I was American born and bread She was suitable ’shivered’ out. Mary was always an odd Fey child. I started to carefully build little rock Cairns in my sandbox… immediately knocked about by my other ruffian siblings who were true Yankee Doodle’s.

My artwork was always strangely out worldly. I stared to look up photos and information on the ancient European standing stones and study them in my thoughts- These were huge monumental, cooperative undertakings, more massive than we modern civilizations can comprehend. These communities had to live and breathe these constructions! There had to be competition involved (Just to make it a fun game.) Each territorial ‘Building’ had to be the biggest and most impressive. Life, then, was not just a quiet bucolic existence. People get bored, then trouble starts. There has to be an organized activity that everyone wants to participate in.

‘Meaningful play’ Religious games..let’s make a freakin’ gamongous monument to our Gods
…way bigger than theirs down the coast. In fact let’s make ours the grandest ever built!” It will be a contest of strength and ingenuity. Man is naturally competitive. I’ll bet he liked that idea! The ‘Building’ was a unified, channeled aggression- A peaceful outlet for the hostility occurring from the unavoidable ‘elbow banging’ of the growing establishment of a permanent community.

They had to work at getting along…it was all so very new. There were no rules to go by. They existed in a ‘Watchful Harmony’ Making it all up as they got up each day. People had to willingly cooperate with others outside the immediate family unit. It was no longer ‘me and mine’ now it was ”us together”. What an exciting, intellectual…expanding idea! But there had to be flareups and conflicts-The rules (or laws) were formed to fit the situations and were worthless without the agreement of all involved. There had to be hard feelings and there was no where to get away to (They each need the protection of the new expanded Tribe) Just think of the frayed nerves and negative energy that had to be redirected. They had to find something fulfilling to work on together once the fields were planted and gathered.

Something that required personal strength and endurance and cooperative cleverness. But contests without the traditional bloodshed and destruction which would rob the new tribal community of their finest and strongest. That natural passion was harnessed to create impressive monuments to worship the local Gods and as warnings to invaders

…Proud Monuments that say “This place is taken. We live here! Look what we can do together! Look how strong and organized we are!
Think well, before you dare to attack us!”

And I bet newcomers wondering upon the occupied lands were impressed! Then as now! Hell, I’m impressed 2000 years later! Their prehistoric, cooperative accomplishments astound our modern minds. The tangibility of these, all our ancestors, just real human men and women not so genetically altered, so like each of us today, endures as ancient ruins all over the common landscape of today’s world.

We can’t presume to understand their rich, social reality, or rituals of life and death by examining the bits and pieces, and ancient artifacts left for our Scientists to Carbon date. But how can we feel anything but Global Pride and awe at our distant ancestors’ unconquerable determination to work together, somehow, to create a common civilization.

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.