Addressing Art Issues

I've written before about Shabbat Overload, the overwhelming amount of Jewish ritual objects created by children in pre-school and elementary school. But this is only a fraction of the problem. An artistically-inclined child can easily draw a half-dozen pictures a day.

GoofBoy has gone through Star Wars phases, super-heroes, and now is primarily drawing funny monsters. GoofGirl has, unsurprisingly gone through kitty, flower, and pony phases. But she has been doing a great deal of self-portraits.

GoofManor is literally littered with piles of drawings, as though inhabited by pre-school hoarders. The obvious and sensible thing to do would be to throw them out, but we can't quite bring ourselves to be sensible. What if one of the little Goofs becomes a brilliant artist (or world-renown gangster - I have high hopes for GoofGirl) and their childhood art becomes really valuable?

I came up with the brilliant idea (if I do say so myself) of taking pictures of the art that was interesting. Piles of junk on my hard-drive are much less inconvenient then piles of junk around my house. This process, however was time-consuming and we only took it on in occasional spasms of frustration.

But now, the little Goofs can operate my cel camera. So I asked GoofGirl to go through her recent masterpieces and divide everything into three piles: keep, take a picture, and just throw out. She did a great job.