bax making, day 5

This is my last day of box making with the Eureka Springs School of the arts, until next year when I do something similar again. There was a Harvard report on what making does to kids' brains. And it is clear that making also affects adult brains in a positive way. We feel differently about ourselves and the world around us when we are creative. Yesterday, as Jerry was attempting to install two sets of hinges on a box, he confessed, "I've never known how hinges work." Now he does. And he knows how to install them using my story stick router table technique. When you've become a maker, or creator, you learn to see the world in a new light. You begin to notice details that you had previously thought unnecessary to your own life.

Human beings are quite used to things being beyond their own understanding. We know that the workings o our own bodies are incomprehensible to most of us. We know that there are thoughts and plans and actions expressed  within others that are incomprehensible to us. But to allow ourselves to become unobservant of simple observable phenomenon diminishes our power of understanding.

Today we will finish work on boxes, and clean up and restore the Clear Spring School wood shop to its prior state of order and arrangement. Students will carry home the boxes they've made and more. As Salomon had noticed, the real value of the student's work is not in the things made but in the student. Our brains are changed and everything about us is changed when we—

Make, fix and create...