Alchemical Play

I like to play with things, rearrange them, create and change them until the perfect balance is achieved. These are some of my current toys- wooden blocks, balls, doll house cabinet, birdhouses, open squares, an old gaming board, a lens from a broken projector. They are covered in paint and Joss paper, and I have begun to work on the bottom cube with images of alchemical transformation.

Only the windmill is attached, everything else comes apart for playing/ painting/ rearranging. In the box below the windmill there is a square mirror on the 'wall' and a tube with a secret scrolled letter.

I love the colors of the Joss paper and the paints- the basic shapes connecting. The dollhouse cabinet with it's little doors and drawers I envision as a miniature cabinet of curiosities. Other than that, I have no idea where this is headed art-wise, or that it even needs a direction beyond being an adults set of building blocks.

In class, we have been studying Frobel's Gifts and Occupations. The main idea was to gradually introduce items of growing complexity to young children, where upon they could build up knowledge and discover the 'unity of the world'. Beginning with soft woolen colored balls, then hard geometric shapes, interlocking shapes, pattern blocks and so on. Transformation of information, like to like- alchemical thinking. Everything is related, everything at once unique and similar. A graceful philosophy that I rather like- and I love the gifts/occupations aspect of it.

These are my Frobelian toys of the moment. They mean whatever I want them to, I can arrange them however I like- but they are still governed by the rules of nature. No matter how much I should like to stand the little yellow house on it's point, it's not going to happen without glue. The purple ball balances on the lens as long as it wants to- sometimes it gets 'tired' and rolls off.

Perhaps this is a metaphor for right now- our lives are made of so many 'gifts and occupations' that we can combine however we like. Sometimes we spend to much time and energy trying to force the yellow house onto it's point, when instead we should move it elsewhere, try it on it's side or just get some glue.