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Deck the halls!
Dec. 12th, 2005 02:57 amWork had us sign up in up to ten teams of up to ten people each to enter a decoration contest. Being a silly, I decided to enter the contest. ( I wound up working with people I hadn't intended to work with, but that was ultimately all right. Teamwork! ) I came in on Wednesday and started putting it all together, and evidently made quite a sensation.
When I do Art, I don't do half-measures. My co-workers are used to me walking around with a clipboard or sitting primly behind a desk, with the occasional dive-under-desk-after-computer moment. Wednesday saw me sitting on the grungy break room floor with bits of construction paper scattered around me, paste on my fingers, nose, and hair, and an expression of glee matched only by that five-year-old who's just made a plaster handprint for Mom.
I explained a little later in the evening to the Trader Joe's Queen Monitor that yes, people without the artistic vision could too help out, because it's one thing to see what you want to do with a hundred leaves and a bunch of paste, but it's entirely another thing to sit there with the green paper and scissors and cut out all those hundred leaves. You have to have both vision, patience, pattern-following, and follow-through to do that, and while I had plenty of vision, I was not at all good at the sitting and cutting out leaves bit. She could see where I was coming from, and was newly appreciative of her ability to sit and follow a pattern patiently.
I left Wednesday with the feeling that we had only two major sources of competition in the contest: group 1 and group 8. I came back to see that group 1 was totally kicking butt, but we'd improved. As of Sunday morning, group 8 had been left in the dust, and we were neck and neck with group 1. I stayed late after finishing up my shift this morning to put the final touches on our work. I started around 4:45, and worked through until 6:30 or so. One of the Group 1 people was there finishing up theirs as well. Naughty Boy was helping with both -- he was in my group, but his friend was in Group 1. Naughty!
Our scene was a fireplace with cat on mantle. They had a Nativity scene, with subtle and effective use of three-dimensional construction paper effects. Our three-dimensional effects, while effective, are certainly not subtle.
At this point, it's really down to the personal taste of the judges, whether they consider a beautifully-crafted simple scene to trump a more exuberantly-crafted piece with great attention to detail or not. I'd be hard-pressed to judge between the two.
(photo album of our group's panel)
When I do Art, I don't do half-measures. My co-workers are used to me walking around with a clipboard or sitting primly behind a desk, with the occasional dive-under-desk-after-computer moment. Wednesday saw me sitting on the grungy break room floor with bits of construction paper scattered around me, paste on my fingers, nose, and hair, and an expression of glee matched only by that five-year-old who's just made a plaster handprint for Mom.
I explained a little later in the evening to the Trader Joe's Queen Monitor that yes, people without the artistic vision could too help out, because it's one thing to see what you want to do with a hundred leaves and a bunch of paste, but it's entirely another thing to sit there with the green paper and scissors and cut out all those hundred leaves. You have to have both vision, patience, pattern-following, and follow-through to do that, and while I had plenty of vision, I was not at all good at the sitting and cutting out leaves bit. She could see where I was coming from, and was newly appreciative of her ability to sit and follow a pattern patiently.
I left Wednesday with the feeling that we had only two major sources of competition in the contest: group 1 and group 8. I came back to see that group 1 was totally kicking butt, but we'd improved. As of Sunday morning, group 8 had been left in the dust, and we were neck and neck with group 1. I stayed late after finishing up my shift this morning to put the final touches on our work. I started around 4:45, and worked through until 6:30 or so. One of the Group 1 people was there finishing up theirs as well. Naughty Boy was helping with both -- he was in my group, but his friend was in Group 1. Naughty!
Our scene was a fireplace with cat on mantle. They had a Nativity scene, with subtle and effective use of three-dimensional construction paper effects. Our three-dimensional effects, while effective, are certainly not subtle.
At this point, it's really down to the personal taste of the judges, whether they consider a beautifully-crafted simple scene to trump a more exuberantly-crafted piece with great attention to detail or not. I'd be hard-pressed to judge between the two.
(photo album of our group's panel)
