Day Five: Wednesday: The drawing at the Jesse Lee Day School

Our day just keeps getting younger. At the rate we are going, we will end up drawing in a maternity ward by the early afternoon with the distinct possibility of doing or final drawings of the day next to a pool of primordial ooze. Our contact at the museum, Carolina, had softly belted out key words to describe where we would be drawing: church, preschool, progressive, outside, teachers, snack time and so on. None of it made much sense, until we arrived at a large and well-staffed preschool built into a church that resides across the street from the museum. We were chauffeured past a collection of young folks circling, riding and sliding on play apparatus to a wall in the back. We were told that a "spring" theme would be much appreciated and we set about to represent this season. Right next to the wall was a scrappy little tree that someday will have a hint of grand... and we did our best to draw a representation of it in its upcoming adolescence. Approaching the tree, in the drawing, are small children riding deer. One of them is wearing a sombrero (not the deer, that would make no sense.) The small children are tying cut roses onto the lower branches of the tree. As has been the custom while we are making the mural, the classes of students will come out for some question and answer sessions. Because of the age of our young reporters, it turned more into a statement and response session. When the teacher prompted the first group to ask any question they wanted, the only statement we heard was one boy pointing at a long strip of tape that I was working with that was being moved about by the wind and declaring with excitement usually reserved for the spotting of rare animals - "The tape is wiggling!!!"

It went downhill from there.

We had a great time making the drawing and somewhere throughout Ridgefield is a substantial collection of photographs taken of all these young art lovers in front of the work in progress.