Story Picture Paper
A week ago I attended a concert by the St. Cecilia Chamber Music Society at a local church here in Houston. Although I’ve been going to their concerts for almost two years, it was the first time I really noticed the concept behind their concerts. Instead of having an official Music Director, each of their principal musicians takes his or her turn to choose the music and players for their particular concert.
This time the flutist, Judy Dines was in charge and began with a serenade for flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon by Karl Pilss. The tonal colors of five wind instruments were fantastic! Usually I hear wind instruments as part of a large or medium-sized orchestra in a large concert hall rather than a small ensemble in an intimate setting. While I enjoyed all four pieces of the concert, the third piece was really special: a duet for flute and piano by Franz Schubert. Judy played her flute without using sheet music and did so with great passion, and I should mention that everything Schubert wrote for the piano tops my list of favorites because he wrote for himself and his friends rather than for the music critics or the rich patrons he never had. All his music came from the heart, and that is what I heard last Tuesday evening.
While waiting for the concert to begin, I thought about artistic creativity and meditated on that concept throughout the concert except during the intermission when I was busy partaking of the wine and snacks they provide. Artistic creativity brought to mind something from my early grade school years. During first and second grade we were provided with “Story Picture Paper” for certain projects. Each sheet of this tablet paper had lines on the bottom half and perhaps the back side for stories and was blank on the top half for crayon drawings. The ability to write and draw on the same sheet of paper stimulated our creativity. We mainly used Story Picture Paper for special occasions like holidays, the change of seasons, basic science, history, and personal things like vacation trips. I was not inhibited in those days by lack of ability like drawing everything from a side view similar to the way ancient Egyptians drew.
I don’t remember whether the school issued us Story Picture Paper in third or fourth grade, but it was definitely gone before upper grade school. By then I realized that I couldn’t draw very well and quit trying except for private doodles that nobody saw. What then became of my artistic creativity? Art and music were required subjects in grade school but were not seriously graded and had no bearing on passing or failing the highly competitive and stressful grading regime that spoiled the fun of education. I had mechanical drawing in my industrial courses, but that had nothing to do with art. In grade school and junior high school I did military model building and began model railroading in junior high as a creative outlet. Then there were those clandestine “experiments” in feminine makeup that remained under the radar for a couple of decades.
This photo shows what prevailed of my visual artistic creativity. As for the written part of my creativity, a computer is easier on my hands than using pen and paper for long passages and much easier and faster to store, edit, reuse parts of certain text, and post them to a wider audience than would have seen my writing before the Internet. Here on Flickr I combine photos and text just like my old Story Picture Paper.
Story Picture Paper
A week ago I attended a concert by the St. Cecilia Chamber Music Society at a local church here in Houston. Although I’ve been going to their concerts for almost two years, it was the first time I really noticed the concept behind their concerts. Instead of having an official Music Director, each of their principal musicians takes his or her turn to choose the music and players for their particular concert.
This time the flutist, Judy Dines was in charge and began with a serenade for flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon by Karl Pilss. The tonal colors of five wind instruments were fantastic! Usually I hear wind instruments as part of a large or medium-sized orchestra in a large concert hall rather than a small ensemble in an intimate setting. While I enjoyed all four pieces of the concert, the third piece was really special: a duet for flute and piano by Franz Schubert. Judy played her flute without using sheet music and did so with great passion, and I should mention that everything Schubert wrote for the piano tops my list of favorites because he wrote for himself and his friends rather than for the music critics or the rich patrons he never had. All his music came from the heart, and that is what I heard last Tuesday evening.
While waiting for the concert to begin, I thought about artistic creativity and meditated on that concept throughout the concert except during the intermission when I was busy partaking of the wine and snacks they provide. Artistic creativity brought to mind something from my early grade school years. During first and second grade we were provided with “Story Picture Paper” for certain projects. Each sheet of this tablet paper had lines on the bottom half and perhaps the back side for stories and was blank on the top half for crayon drawings. The ability to write and draw on the same sheet of paper stimulated our creativity. We mainly used Story Picture Paper for special occasions like holidays, the change of seasons, basic science, history, and personal things like vacation trips. I was not inhibited in those days by lack of ability like drawing everything from a side view similar to the way ancient Egyptians drew.
I don’t remember whether the school issued us Story Picture Paper in third or fourth grade, but it was definitely gone before upper grade school. By then I realized that I couldn’t draw very well and quit trying except for private doodles that nobody saw. What then became of my artistic creativity? Art and music were required subjects in grade school but were not seriously graded and had no bearing on passing or failing the highly competitive and stressful grading regime that spoiled the fun of education. I had mechanical drawing in my industrial courses, but that had nothing to do with art. In grade school and junior high school I did military model building and began model railroading in junior high as a creative outlet. Then there were those clandestine “experiments” in feminine makeup that remained under the radar for a couple of decades.
This photo shows what prevailed of my visual artistic creativity. As for the written part of my creativity, a computer is easier on my hands than using pen and paper for long passages and much easier and faster to store, edit, reuse parts of certain text, and post them to a wider audience than would have seen my writing before the Internet. Here on Flickr I combine photos and text just like my old Story Picture Paper.