18. The Art Class ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

It was an exciting day! Ida had just bought a new pocketbook at Sears. It had plenty of room! There was even a place to stick her crossword puzzle books! Best of all, it was bright red!

Ida had purchased the masterpiece of consumer art while she was waiting for Charles and Robert to take their block printing class at the Art Museum in Lafayette. Ida had enrolled the boys in the six-week course that had begun just after school was out.

The boys’ instructor was an expert at woodcuts and was slowly making a cut the size of a small table top that depicted a European cathedral. He taught the class of youngsters to make linoleum cuts. Ida had obtained the necessary supplies at the bookstore near the Purdue campus. There were slender boxes that contained wooden handles into which various knives could be inserted. Some of the knives were straight; others were curved. There were tubes of special ink in black, red, and green. There were brayers to spread the ink on a surface such as a glass pane until the ink became tacky enough to roll onto the linoleum block. Then there was the linoleum.

It had presented a problem initially. The instructor had called for the students to acquire battleship linoleum—so named because it was used on battleships. While many homes had flooring of battleship linoleum, Ida had a difficult time finding any. Ultimately, she purchased a big roll from a flooring store in Lafayette. It was dark green.

The boys looked forward to art class each week. The instructor gave just enough explanation and then let the students work at their own pace without much intervention. Robert was making a horizontal rectangular piece measuring about eight inches by six inches that he called “Four Faces.” He had designed four profiles overlapping in a row, each different from the others. The faces were modern—not all the way to Picasso but getting there. For surfaces of the cheeks, chins, noses, foreheads, and necks, Robert used various knives to form lines, dashes, dots, and circles. The knives removed material from the linoleum, which was backed with a coarse burlap weave. Even though the linoleum was thick, the knives were so sharp that they could cut all the way through to the backing. The trick was to cut away enough linoleum that the ink would become applied to the “hills” and not the “valleys”—without cutting past the linoleum and into the burlap. Sometimes a “valley” was shallow, and the ink would touch ridges in the valley. The resultant print would have lines showing the tops of the ridges.

Making the prints was fun! When a student was ready to print from a finished block, he or she rolled the ink on a large glass surface with a brayer until the ink became so tacky that the brayer would hiss each time it was rolled along. Next, the brayer was rolled onto the linoleum surface to apply ink in a thin but substantial layer. The student then carefully placed a sheet of fine quality paper, cut to a size somewhat larger than the linoleum block, onto the block. The paper could not be moved, once it had touched the ink. The student then rubbed the bowl of a teaspoon around and around on the paper with just enough pressure to transfer the ink from the linoleum to the paper without damaging the paper. Ultimately, the paper was peeled off the linoleum, thereby revealing the art.

Robert was always intrigued at how different the art looked from what he had carved. The picture was backwards from the one he had been cutting with the knives! On the day that he made his first print of “Four Faces,” he laughed to see them looking in the opposite direction.

The instructor came by and said, “Your faces are very good. What do they represent?”

“They are facets of one person,” Robert said. “The first face is the one everyone sees. The next is the one only loved ones see. The third is the one that only the person sees, and the fourth is the one that God sees.”

“Well!” the instructor said, nodding, with the thumb and forefinger of his hand on his chin. “I like your explanation! Good!” The instructor walked on.

Several prints could be made from one application of the ink, but, eventually, the ink would become patchy. More ink had to be applied to continue the print making.

The instructor taught the students to number their prints in pencil with a first number indicating the application of the ink, a slash mark, and a second number representing the print made from that application. So 2/4 would mean the fourth print taken from the second ink application.

Working in the presence of other artists gave Charles and Robert the opportunity to witness the expressions of creative minds. The works of art ranged from masterly to spontaneous.

The boys waited for their mother outside the Art Museum’s new addition that held the classrooms and studios. When Ida drove into the parking lot, Charles and Robert dove into the seats for the ride home. They showed their mother that day’s prints, for which she had only praise.

Once they were home, Robert took a seat at the kitchen table while Ida set her old pocketbook beside her new one and began piling the contents of the old one in a heap in the middle of the table.

“What will you do next week?” Ida asked Robert.

“I need to cut out a few of the areas a little more so the ridges don’t show in the print,” he replied. “Then I get to print again!”

Absent-mindedly, he was looking over the items that were rolling downhill from the mound of materials that could never have fit inside the old pocketbook! A Revlon red lipstick in a brassy gold cylinder almost cleared the edge of the table. Several Bic pens and at least one Sheaffer cartridge pen spun this way and that. There were pencils galore, most of them with no eraser left! A brown and yellow tin of “Genuine” Bayer Aspirin slid down. Three hankies, somewhat crumpled but none the worse for wear, clung to the slope of the heap. A Stratton powder compact with mirror and a rose motif slipped out. A plastic bottle of Jergens hand cream and a jar of Noxzema cold cream came out (both headfirst). A baby blue wallet with a snap clasp fell heavily forward. Two pairs of sunglasses—one hopelessly tangled with a clear plastic rain cap with pink trim—lent their bulk to the pile. A small creamy white bottle with a dark coral cap cascaded to the back of the pile: To a Wild Rose by Avon. A stack of dog-eared crossword puzzle booklets fell topsy-turvy. Creased notes in Ida’s dashed-off handwriting stuck out at crazy angles from the booklets. Shopping lists and checklists caught Robert’s eye. Stacks of folded Kleenex tissues, with sheets of stamps adhering to them, tumbled out. A square squeeze-type coin purse advertising a crane service in Muncie did cartwheels. It by no means held all the coins in the pocketbook because pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half dollars rolled every which way. Most of the silver coins were silver all the way through, but some were the new “sandwich” variety with the tell-tale copper edge. There were hairpins by the handful. An opened and somewhat sticky roll of Life Savers joined the accumulation. Somehow, a silver flashlight and a pair of nail clippers were in the mix. A tin of Band-Aid bandages appeared from deep down within the old pocketbook. A spare red vinyl belt uncoiled like a snake. Robert wondered why there should be a belt. Maybe you just never knew when you might need one?

A Valentine’s Day card depicting a rabbit holding a carrot fell forward. “If you carrot all for me, be my Valentine,” the card proclaimed. Before Ida saw what Robert was doing, he turned the card over. In handwriting on the back were these words: “From Mr. Bunny to Mrs. Bunny, Love, Joe.”

Robert stared at the words. He knew that his parents loved one another, but seeing the fact in handwriting was arresting.

Ida glanced over. “Oh,” she said. “I forgot that was in there. I meant to put that in my drawer.”

“Dad gave you a Valentine?” Robert asked.

“Yes, as he does every year,” Ida said in a tone that was not without passion but was not overly expressive either.

Robert smiled slightly. “Mr. and Mrs. Bunny?” he said.

“Our names for each other when we aren’t talking to you,” Ida said, gently taking the card from Robert and setting it to one side.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bunny!” Robert thought, trying to fit the concept within his comprehension of his parents.

“We’ve always thought bunnies are cute,” Ida said. “When he was a boy, your father raised rabbits.”

Seeing that Robert was still musing on the topic, Ida said, “If you ever had the least doubt that your father and mother love each other, you now know better: you know that they do and always will! And we love you and Charles, too. Just don’t let me catch you calling me ‘Mrs. Bunny’ or your father ‘Mr. Bunny.’” Ida burst out laughing. “I would love to see the look on your father’s face if you were to call him ‘Mr. Bunny’—but don’t you ever do that! Those are our names for each other, not your names for us.”

Robert already adored his parents, but, with the revelation of the Valentine’s Day card, he now felt a reverence for them.

Ida began stuffing the new shiny red pocketbook with all her necessities mounded so high on the table—including the card!