Category: Beaver Art

This is November’s issue of Cricket, a darling publication for preschoolers. Do you think it’s cute enough?

Beaver bicycle wizard Robert Rust spotted it for me and suggested I go look up the article. I did what I always do and beg friends to find it for me. Robin of Napa found the inside.

Which means preschoolers everywhere will already be smarter than the New York Times! Because this year it reported that beavers live INSIDE the dam.

And because the word SNUG and the pictures are so cuddly I have a new phrase to go with it. Bear with me. “Coorie Doon“ is a scottish saying which means to snuggle down in the covers and get cozy. It’s what mom’s would tell their babies in the cradle for centuries. And it’s ironically also what coal miners had to do in the low mines where they worked to navigate the shafts  Songwriter Matt McGinn combineed the two in the 60’s with a song that has melted my heart all week. Please let it melt yours.

As you well know I tend to spend fall flipping thru the internet(s) looking for pretty things so I can ask people politely to please donate to the beaver festival. My rule on asking tends to be not until February when the sting of the holidays has started to wear off but yesterday I saw this and everything changed.

The image is on a ceramic coaster created by an artist named Karolina in Poland. There four in all but I think this is the most lovely. Of course I wrote her right away and told her that was the loveliest beaver image I have ever seen and about the festival. I also posted her creation around the beaver world and know  it made an impression. How could it not?She has other designs too and plans to offer more. Go check them out, Karolina says that she lives right near a forest in Poland and that when she saw beavers herself they were magical. Which makes perfect sense because what that design is.

Just pure magic.

The real problem with working the same beaver gig for 17 years is that you have shared and developed and misappropriated so many graphics and artwork over the years that you can’t remember what the file is called anymore and looking for anything in your monster keyboard anymore called “keystone” or “Species” or “archway” is HILARIOUS and causes your entire motherboard to emit smoke from the keyboard.

Recently I was trying to find this picture again and could not for the life of me remember what it was called or when it was from. The image of the girl is from a US artist whose name I can’t recall and the archway is from a graphic I borrowed and the water and fish are things I embedded and the stickers are from Mark Poulin from 2015  the year we did the button activity.

I finally figured out that the elusive image is filed with the name “With Stickers” which I’m sure I will promptly forget again. The base image is out on the internet various credited to a 14 year old girl painting, a greek art instructor and assorted origins. I guess that artist is lost to the layers of time although I think I did write her once suggestion she do the artwork again with fresh water species. You can guess how well that worked.