My cousin Matt is opening a business in town, just down the street from us in fact, and it is a custom frame shop. Matt worked for years at Corners and he learned the ways around the business. Now he’s branched out on his own and started a great little place in the center of town. The shop is called The Preservation Framer and it has charm and a real rugged artistic feel to it. With one wall of exposed brick and another displaying frame choices, the hardwood floors and the industrial type ceiling It is a great place for artists to get their work framed.
Matt asked me to come down and take a photo of he and his business partner, Rob, for their website. I was only too happy to help. We thought that we got an awesome shot but unfortunately when I looked at it on a screen bigger than the back of the camera I was dismayed that Matt and Rob were out of focus. That and I need my glasses back.
The image will work in small scale on the site but it is not something that they could send to the newspaper or use in any other PR materials. I will have to get a better shot at the opening this Saturday. I did take a few other shots while I was there too. I posted them all to Flickr.
On the glasses front, I placed an order for glasses at Zenni Optical that were exactly $200.10 less than the new lenses that I got for my existing glasses. Ouch.
Last week Allison and I picked up a set of TaDoodles for Eva. It was a set of three crayon type ones that came with Red, Blue and Green. TaDoodles are shaped for the grasp of a toddler. They are chunky and look like weeble woobles with a crayon on their heads. There are silly faces, animals and many other choices. Some TaDoodles are markers, some paints, some stamps and some are even bathtub crayons and markers.
While Eva is not quite ready to use these she is fascinated by the color being marked on the paper. Allison was smart and kept rolls of fax paper when her old office switched to a printer type fax. Now we have a huge supply of paper that Eva can use to make her mark. It is great fun and the scribbling is important so Eva can express herself. You might not think that scribbles are important but I was reading about a book from a couple of child development doctors called Celebrate the Scribble. Here is a description of that book.
Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Dr. Roberta Golinkoff, renowned authors and child development experts, offer a peek inside early childhood through the marvelous marks made by young children. There’s much to see and celebrate in children’s scribbles much more than meets the eye. What appear to be random, accidental marks are rich in meaning, both for the children creating them, and for the adults who proudly display their colorful scribbles on office walls and refrigerator doors. Created by toddlers from across the U.S. and Canada, including a few celebrity children, the drawings and paintings displayed in this book elevate scribbling to the magnificent and important form of art it truly is.
Tonight when I came home there was a piece of artwork waiting for me. Eva and I then sat down and played with the TaDoodles together. She is looking like a lefty. We shall see. Oh and here is Eva’s first piece of Art.
