The Classic Paper Chain

Who DOESN’T remember making these in grade school. I loved making them by myself. I was not a good team player, because I usually was the one who ended up doing most of the work, because I was smart, creative, and believed I should get the assignments done on time, even if they were just for fun!

One of my most successful grade school days was when I taught at the Derrick Thomas Academy, at the turn of the century (gasp). The kids were CRAZYPANTS, and it was close to a holiday. So I stuck a bottle of glue, three pairs of scissors, and a stack of white copy paper on each table. I demonstrated how to make a paper chain, and how you needed just one dot of glue, then hold the glued ends together for a count of TEN to give them a chance to bond.

I told them this was a contest. They had 30 minutes on my GO. As a table, they had to divide the labor and make the longest chain possible in the alotted time. There would be a PRIZE for the longest one. On your marks…

They LOVED it and worked feverishly for the entire 30 minutes. I was truly shocked! For the last minutes I let two volunteers from each table CAREFULLY stretch out their chain from one end of the room, across to the other side. We then could see how each team stacked up. SO FUN.

These photos are a long chain I made in my studio recently. I was mourning the loss of my teaching job at Falcon High School. I truly loved it, and those students. My colleagues were pretty spectacular, as well. I thought about them as I made the chain quietly, a meditation, like prayer beads. The strips themselves are oil pastel trials they made to experiment and get used to the medium. They wanted to throw them away and get on with the project, but I saved them and cut them into strips, knowing I’d use them somehow.

That their mark-making was a kind of sacred, unabashed act. And by binding them together, I feel like I harnessed their energy and some pretty beautiful memories.