“Guarding Art, 2015”
Chicago Art Institute
5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″
Toys are inherently celebratory…
or they should be.
They come in all sorts of forms, from trains and blocks to games and puzzles, from puppets to science kits to balsa airplanes.
The best toys require active engagement, whether the user is trying to build a cantilever bridge, is searching for the one piece of a puzzle with a tiny amount of red in the upper left corner, or is having an in-depth philosophical discussion with a purple dragon named Pi. In short, toys encourage play, and play is magic.
Play is the perfect marriage of joy, imagination, creativity, intuition, knowledge, logic, and community–in short, all the qualities that make humans human.
Cambria Toy Talk explores toys and play and celebrates joy.
ARTICLES:
March is such a good, forceful, energetic verb (and the name of the month), so what better month to focus on volunteerism. March 13th is Good Samaritan Day, although we tend to celebrate things by the week, by the month, and … Continue reading → If you haven’t noticed, American’s love kitsch. Pink Flamingos. Genuine souvenir plates from places like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. Black velvet paintings of Jesus and Elvis on top of a semi with flames shooting out of the tail pipes. … Continue reading → Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Newton! If you have stopped in Whistle Stop Books or the Cambria Toy Station in the last few years, there is a good chance you stopped for a minute and played with the … Continue reading → Before robots… Before computers… There were clockmakers… The next time you are driving north through eastern Pennsylvania, add a trip to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and take a look at the Automaton by machinist and clockmaker Henri Maillardet, c. … Continue reading → In 1562, Diego Gutierrez and Hieronymus Cock created a map of the Spanish Empire for King Phillip II. Gutierrez was a cartographer and cosmographer for the Casa de Contración (a government agency tasked with trying to control Spanish exploration and settlement); Cock … Continue reading → If you have stopped in the Cambria Toy Station, you already know that we are a very small store (although we do manage to pack a lot in to the available space). When we started the shop, we wanted to … Continue reading → Feeling stressed? There is a simple solution that will cost you a whole lot less than stress-related medical bills or years of therapy. Try coloring. Go to you local toy store or book store and pick up a coloring book; swing by … Continue reading → Disney, best known for magic, had a particular method of magic in Mary Poppins that has always fascinated me…chalk art…sidewalk art…street art. In the movie, Mary Poppins and company fall through the art and into a land where carousel horses … Continue reading → My parents didn’t buy me a set of alphabet blocks when I was a kid. They didn’t have to. I played with my mother’s set of blocks, blocks dating from the early 1930s. They were wonderful blocks. In addition to … Continue reading → My grandparents had a large concrete pad behind their house that was routinely marred by chalk from the last snow to the first snow. Hopscotch and foursquare lines in white chalk, lines that had to be redrawn a couple of … Continue reading →
Be Kind…Volunteer
Another calendar attraction (Curiosity Calendar, January 29-February 4)
January Geek Week: Physics, Michio Kaku, Lewis Carroll, and Legos.
Inventors All…Automatons, Da Vinci’s Mechanics, and a hint of Steampunk (January 8-14, 2017)
Maps are Us (January 1-7, 2017)
Creative Pages:
The Art of Color
Colored Chalk
The Lowly ABC Block
Summer Pastimes
