Art Play

I've been looking... um, quite lazily... for a class that Jacob and Melinda could both attend together for a while now. I happened upon a plea from a woman on a local email list recently - her son's art class needed extra participants in order to not be canceled. I asked for more information and got it, and we're now enrolled in a weekly "Art Play" class at The Painting Workshop. It is a drop-off class, 1.5 hours long. There's Whole Foods nearby, as well as Cylburn Arboretum (G&G Newson, that's where we took you last time you came out to visit, remember how gorgeous it is?), so Alex and I at least have something to do while the other two are busy. Their teacher is amazingly awesome with young kids, which just made Melinda and Jacob even more excited as I dropped them off. They each smothered her with hugs, true to form.

Today they talked about a painting by Jackson Pollock, and then did their own painting, attempting to mimic the style - which was, enjoyably, splattering paint outside! It was a gorgeous day for it, and they had a lot of fun. Apparently they were also dancing to music as they splattered their paint. They picked their own background colors from a choice of light colors, and the splatter colors were chosen for them. They also were asked what their paintings looked like, and so they named them on their own. Melinda named her "Splatty", and Jacob named his "Spider Webs". Quite honestly, after how striking their paintings look, I'm tempted to buy some canvas and have them do a few paintings for our still-bare walls.

"Splatty" by Melinda

"Spider Webs" by Jacob

Unfortunately on the way home, our timing was bad enough that we were contending with a police funeral. I don't know why, but it seems like all the police/rescue workers are always buried at the cemetary very close to our part of town. And thus, the roads become TERRIBLE. I mean, they shut down the highway in order for the procession to use it on their way to the cemetary. But I had taken an alternate route home. When I crossed over the highway and remembered about the funeral, I gave myself a mental pat on the pack for avoiding the highway. And then about 20 seconds later I hit the gridlock. Yeah, all those people not on the highway were joining me on the road. Greeeeaaaat. Seriously, it took me at least twice as long to get home, more like 3 times as long. I was in the stupid car for over an hour. When it normally takes 20-30 minutes. We'd move 2-3 car lengths at a time, and sit for a couple minutes going nowhere in between. I was so afraid Alex was going to wake up and need to nurse when I had no way of getting off the road. Thank goodness... he did wake up, but fell back asleep before we made it home. Jacob got a good nap, too. Melinda, like me, was bored out of her mind. But we made it home, amazingly. And we're looking forward to Art Play again next week, for sure!