Riley's been concerned lately with our too-easy dismissal of his creative works from school. Every day, he comes home with one or two, sometimes more, creations that he has constructed in kindergarten. Granted, they're not all masterpieces - some are just assignments that are colored in with blanks filled out using the right letters of numbers. Others, though, are nice works of art for a 6-year-old. A recent project that included a double rainbow, a unicorn, a castle, and a dragon is certainly the stuff of keepsake.

But how much of this should we keep? I think this is a similar question to the one skippy presents about keepsake books. I'm not sure that Riley's formative scribblings are going to be something he's going to want to show to his kids, but is still begs the question, how do we decide which of the things are going to turn out to be important to him when he grows up?

I have a folder of my own junk (and here I use the word "junk" with meaning) from school. I'm not sure any of it means anything to me, apart from a vague recollection of having produced it. Seeing that I haven't seen it in a while, I could possibly go forever without ever wanting to. Recently I was thinking about some notes from a discrete math class in college, but the thought was fleeting, and the information I sought from my notes was easily recovered from the internet.

I think the solution we've arrived at for Riley's complaints - which stem from the fact that there is simply so much material to review that we don't know what to do with it or how to store it and simply end up recycling most of it without oo much thought - is twofold. First, we're obtaining a box for Riley to keep his special papers in. The key point here is that he gets to select which things he thinks are important. And as he grows, I'm sure that will change, and we'll swap out a bunch of stuff. Second, I'm working on a web site where he can easily take photos of his schoolwork with an iPod and upload it to the site. This way, he can take pictures of everything he brings home, so there's nothing missed. And hopefully, eventually, the habit will extend beyond his schoolwork into extraordinary things we do now and then.

It'll be interesting to see what he thinks is important enough to save, and I'm glad that he'll have a way to keep things that he might like to have when he's older.

I used to receive an email newsletter that I don't recall how I signed up for. The premise was to give you a list of daily trending topics. This aspect of the newsletter utterly failed, but the result was even better.

Trending terms in the newsletter were linked to pages that were completely artistic "how is that done?"-style HTML-built sites that seemingly had no purpose but to exist and inspire. I used to look forward to those newsletters, which were otherwise mostly filled with random, untranslatable Swedish text with all of those strange, pretty to look at characters.

Today, the only sites, feeds, and email newsletters I can find that introduce new sites are all oriented around getting someone's message or product in front of people. They're not about web art for the sake of art. I miss web art.

The more I think on it, the more my thoughts head to the inevitable conclusion that real design skills are something granted to you by either a higher power, genetic makeup, or sheer luck. More to the point, neither god nor my genes have granted me any worthwhile natural knack for design, and that the only way to obtain such is by having some epiphany involving hitting my head, doing psychadelics, or divine intervention.

I keep hoping that I'll lay down one night, head full of inspiration that I can do naught with visually, and wake up with a profound understanding of layout, color, and aesthetics that I had lacked the night before. As if the information could sink into my brain by osmosis by laying on the Everest-like mound of design books I've purchased and not yet intuited.

What I need is a formula that I can use to plot beauty. Follow a flowchart to design nirvana. If there was just a path I could follow to get out one great intentional design, I'm sure I could replicate the process. I think.

But I'm discovering that there isn't a process to perfection. You either know the path or you don't. For some the path is a golden road leading directly to perfection. For others the path is windy and filled with briars, but they get to the end of it. For me, woodland animals laughing at my lack of direction.

I'm not ready to give up just yet, though. I might need to study under a guru (where will I find a master??) for a few years, but I'll get it. And when I finally do, I'm sure I won't be able to explain how it works.

We had a conference with Abby's first grade teacher recently, during which she expressed mild concern over Abby's interest in school. She asked us specifically if anything really motivates Abby, since she doesn't seem to do anything more than the necessary work in her academics. While she's perfectly capable of doing the work, she doesn't really get enthusiastic about it.

Abby's always been her own self, and the one thing that she really does get enthused about is art. Abby really likes to draw, and even her teacher remarked that she's significantly advanced compared to her peers. She notices details that they don't and I have noticed that she is able to put abstract images on paper that I wouldn't even have thought of.

There is one particular crayon-coloring that sticks in memory. It was one of those "color this - win lunch" things that they give the kids at Ron's Schoolhouse - a picture of a backpack. I think Berta or I idly asked her to draw some things in around the backpack, not really specifying, but I was really expecting some basic school-related doodles. Instead, Abby drew a bunch of things to scale with the backpack. Some in the foreground, some in the background. There was even someone's foot and leg visible from behind the bag, and it amazed me that she could put the backpack in this whole scene - just see it in her mind and draw it.

So we haven't yet taken Abby's teacher's advice for getting Abby outside art lessons, but I have been trying to think of ways that we can expand her interest in reading and writing by way of art. I was hoping to continue the book writing that we started a long while ago, where she would dictate stories and I would write them in a notebook. Then, she could draw pictures to go along with each story.

Today, Abby came home with a poem she had written, I think as part of her free time, because it wasn't graded or marked-up. Nonetheless, Abby's teacher was extremely complimentary of her work in class. I think this poem is an important step in a long journey of relating written word to art for her. For a six-year-old, I think this poem is outright amazing, even considering that I could simply be a proud dad.

In any case, here is Abby's poem, entitled I Can't Wait.

I can't wait til Christmas.
There is snow all around.
Please, my little dear, 
just lay your head down.
The chimneys are smoking,
lights all around.
Please, my little dear,
lay your head down.

Our house has a lot of bare walls. I think that we don't know how to decorate. One thing that we've thought we could do is get some art to hang around. As it turns out, art is hard.

Recently Abby's elementary school held a student art exhibition. They've been creating art all year based on classical works. One of the artists they were emulating was Piet Mondrian. I knew of Mondrian from his strange paintings of primary-colored straight lines and boxes, but I did not know of anything else he had painted. When I saw his "Grey Tree" exemplar among the 2nd-grade recreations, I was struck by it in a way that I had not thought about art before.

Of course, I can't hang that painting in my house, and it seems kind of absurd to get a poster reproduction of the thing to hang in my livingroom over the fireplace. So apart from Abby's faithful reproductions of classical art, what can I put on display in the house?

Some days after the art show, we stopped at the mall to look in some of the art shops for some decorations. The Chester County Art Association has some kind of workshop set up in the two-unit place that Victoria's Secret moved out of. They not only host classes in there, but also sell some of the artists paintings.

Unfortunately, on the day we visited, the store was closed. We looked through the barred store gates at some of the art inside. In the doorway were these people-sized people cutouts of wood with barcode-like black and white bars painted on their entire surface. A whole group of them. This is certainly not the kind of thing I would want to have as a showpiece in my home. Thankfully, they were labeled, "NFS" (Not For Sale). I wondered idly what the artist would do with them when people got bored of the "we are all barcodes" message.

Afterwards, we trekked to the other corner of the mall, where there is a Deck the Halls store. This store sells prints that you can have framed. I'll summarize with: This store blows.

I guess if you're a college student and you want so posters of beer and classic pinup posters to frame for your dorm, this is the place to go. If you're into that pop art like Michael Parkes' Gargoyles, then this is the place to go. But I simply can't see myself hanging that sort of thing in my house.

I guess I don't know what I'm looking for and I expect to know it when I see it. The problem is that I haven't seen anything yet, and I'm not exactly sure where to look.

I've been in a few people's homes who have art on the walls, and it just feels right. I want my living space to feel that way, too. I've had enough of these bare walls.