What do you do when you have a child who goes through reams of paper for countless drawings?

Have an art show!

Russell has always been a drawer. He could, and some times does, spend hours at the table drawing dinosaurs and spiderman, along with a few other things. He has a box filled with drawings. His desk is filled with drawings (even though his desk is supposed to be for school only). There are sketch books filled with drawings. Our tiny apartment is overflowing with drawings done by Russell.

Since we have an overwhelming number of drawings, we agreed to help Russell plan and carry out a show of his own. 25 of his favorite drawings were picked and framed and a volcano was made, with the help of R.C. and Maxwell, from some sketches he had. Russell picked the music that was to play, and actually made a great playlist that I may use as my new workout playlist (The Beatles, Talking Heads, Kanye, Wilco, M.I.A, TRex, Dan Deacon, David Bowie, Animal Collective, Weezer, Harry Nilson, Tom Waits, Tom Petty, just to name a few). He also decided what snacks we would serve. Last summer R.C. and Johnny had a show and I made chocolate covered strawberries for them, so Russell felt it was OK for him to ask for the same. He also wanted chocolate covered pretzels and fresh pineapple pieces. Needless to say, the last few days I have spent countless hours in the kitchen dipping pretzel after pretzel and strawberry after strawberry and coring several pineapples. I would be perfectly happy if I could avoid seeing melted chocolate for awhile. We cleared everything (EVERYTHING!!!) out of the living room, patched holes in the walls (from the pictures and shelves we took down for this night) and hung all the drawings.

The night was a success! Russell was happy and that's what mattered. Max was happy also. He ate more than his share of chocolate covered food and was telling silly jokes and dancing for the guests by the end of the night. We had 15-20 people come, mainly people from RISD, which made the boys really happy. Russell had made comments the day before the show that he hoped they would come see his art since he goes to see theirs. He was very happy they showed up! Our neighbor came from downstairs and also some kids from our street came and were very impressed with the volcano. Russell had some offers from people who wanted to purchase a drawing or 2, but he declined all requests except one from Hannah (from upstairs). He is giving her a drawing of choice in exchange for some of her art. This was the only offer he felt was suitable to shake on.

Smoking volcano

You may be wondering how Max felt with all this attention on Russell... Max is OK with it. He loves the drawings that Russell does and was really happy to see them all hung. He stayed close by Russell most of the evening and listened intently as Russell chatted with various people about his work. Now Max is talking of his show. He has just started to enjoy drawing so we will see how quickly his drawings add up in comparison to Russell's mound of papers.

Now the real fun begins as we try to put our home back together. Just when we had felt settled, we go and mess it up. There never seems to be a dull moment in the Sayler home.

(I would like to see how many other home schooled kindergartners are going to have a solo art show as part of their portfolio they turn in at the end of the year. I'm guessing not many...)