Part 1: IRB and Paper Shopping

On October 11, 2013 Kris and I submitted our proposal to the IRB for approval called “Using the Present to Unlock the Past: Children’s Aesthetic Decisions in the Making of Simple Movable Books.”  Writing the proposal required a tremendous amount of planning and use of a very detailed and controlled imaginative thinking. I spend my time with children from the past, and have little experience working with present day children—my undergrads laugh when I say I work with dead children —(I feel like an Edward Gorey character).

Kris and I met with another colleague, Kathleen, who knows the schoolmaster and after school coordinator of a local private elementary school.  We developed a revised plan for a winter themed movable book project for the school’s children.

Afterwards, Kris, who is an art educator and early childhood specialist, and I went shopping for supplies in a crafts store.  Kris led like an ice breaker steaming forward through the frozen Arctic seas, while I followed in her wake.  Since I am clumsy and poor at any handicraft or art the store was a new experience. It was full of items but seemed a bit limited in each type. It reminded me of a large toy store, lots of examples of the same, but actually little variety.  Since we are thinking of perhaps doing a collage-making activity, to allow for different talents of the students and for the brevity of the time for the activity, we started looking for the basic materials of papers to collage, paper on which to mount the pieces, markers and glue. Since I usually buy my paper supplies at the dollar store (like my pantyhose) I was fascinated by the array and presentation and horrified by the price per sheet. I realized watching Kris examine each paper by look and feel, that she was seeing a creative product in her mind’s eye. Meanwhile, ever the library researcher, I was looking at white and beige papers that might reproduce the colour of 17th or 19th century paper. All I can imagine is facsimiles. She was looking at leopard prints, bright pinks and shiny purple sheets—and accepting or rejecting by feel and weight. Finally we ended up looking at a larger, heavier white paper to form the canvas for the collage.

After a while I stopped being alarmed and became fascinated again by the visual-artist mind. As I watched, I remembered some more of my original ideas that played with size and scale of the pantomime-based harlequinade books. When I had been at MIT I had seen their wall sized touch screen and had imagined the tiny turn up book being projected on the giant interactive screen and the viewer becoming part of the performance when he or she turns the flaps.

In the end the bill came to only thirty-two dollars, since we got a discount—the same price as my weekly grocery bill.