Category: Avant-Garde

Phoebe Age Seven interprets the first line of the third psalm as an actual question –“How many are my foes?”– though it was apparently intended as an exclamation: “Wow, that’s a lot of foes!” Phoebe Age Seven adds the exclamation point, but you can tell she’s thinking “give me an approximate count” because the center…

It’s not all Psalmtooning around the house these days. The artists known as Freddy Age Ten and Phoebe Age Eight are nothing if not prolific, and their work cannot be confined to any single medium or genre. The resident curators (also known as parents) are constantly finding art scattered around the studio/gallery area. Here are…

Phoebe Age Seven draws her way through the second Psalm. In her earlier psalmtoon work, she showed a strong commitment to unifying the entire page composition. In the second Psalm, for whatever reason, she has apparently abandoned the quest for a unified composition in favor of a looser assemblage of images. The page’s only unity…

I don’t know what other families do for devotions, but at my house we are cartooning our way through the book of Psalms. With world-famous artists like Freddy Age Ten and Phoebe Age Eight living under the same roof, it’s an opportunity not to be missed. The Psalms are a uniquely appropriate book for the…

Freddy Age Nine is well known for his mastery of highly complex compositions, but his recent work has tended toward a stark simplicity. The image below is striking for its vast quantities of white space, so much that the two major figures in it seem to belong to separate drawings. The open triangle at the…

Freddy Age Nine isn’t opposed to math. But as an accomplished visual artist, he knows how to use visual design to add interest and motivation to the routine arithmetical functions required of today’s busy fourth grader. Simple operations can be carried out with this mouse-operated math machine: At the center is the mouse, facing the…

Phoebe Age 7 combines word and image in this celebratory ode. That stylized text is: Kittens in the air Catnip in there lair Soreing over beare And you can see the beare over which they are soreing. The kittens are supported in their soreing project by a colorful assortment of birds. What with the catnip…

It’s one thing to see an artist’s finished works hanging in a gallery, and another thing to live with an artist and see works in progress. When you live with an artist, you never know for sure which bits of clutter might be art, or how to tell the difference between a preliminary sketch and…

By Phoebe Age Six. The young artist who produced this image has described it as either “a kitty who thinks she’s an otter” or “an otter who thinks she’s a kitty.” Well, which is it? Even if we allow for the ambiguity of pictorial representation, it can hardly be seen as both. Indeed, this seems…

Once upon a time in Meowsyland, the cat a-meows-ment park, the cats members were making a plan to eat some birds. They were all cats, you know, and cats love to eat birds. Suddenly, a tiny bird flew up and landed right in front of the main entrance to Meowsyland. “Chirp,” he said. That’s bird…

Once upon a time in Meowsyland, the cat a-meows-ment park known as “The Meowiest Place on Earth,” the cats members were all getting ready for a very busy day. Stripey was the Mayor of Meowsyland, with a big office on Meown Street. He was also the Sheriff and the President. He was also the Boss…