Wednesday, October 5, 2011

A piece of art

Sebastian has never been very keen working with his hands. With a missing thumb on the left hand and a rather weak thumb on the right hand it has never been a surprise to us, that painting, gluing, drawing and modelling were not a first priority to Sebastian.

However, he has now entered school. After the normal hours of school, the whole place turns into a recreation centre, where the kids can play and work in a whole range of different workshops (clay, wood, knitting etc.).

Yesterday Sebastian came out, proud, from the 'multi-workshop' with this creation:

A little taken my surprise of holding his very first piece of art in my hands, I asked him what it was? "A burial place" was his answer. "With a tombstone and an urn" (the white ball with the red pearl as the lid on the right). Ahh!

And yes, it was right, this past weekend we went to the southern part of Jutland to take part in the funeral (placing the urn in the burial place) of one of my mothers brothers Poul, who had died. He was an old man, with a full life behind him, and part of the grand family on my mothers side gathered in Abild for the occassion.

The weekend was much more than that, though, meeting up with cousins and relatives, diving down in the candy-markets over the German border, watching the birds and the North Sea by Højer Sluse and visiting friends in the northern part of Germany. But sure, the burial place and an the urn of Poul did make for a lasting impact on Sebastian. And then he was able - thumbs or not - to model his cardboard version of the experience. Great!

On top of it, the burial place had been a great inspiration to a lot of other kids in school yesterday. Apparently a whole range of tombstones, urns and fantastic burial places were created in the multiworkshop yesterday - inspired by the creation of Sebastian (which he, by the way, plans on using for his teddies - the cardboard box can open and close).

I wonder what the next piece of art will be ... ;-)