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This book is playful. It is an invitation to a party. Imaginative and beguiling, it is also deceptive: not one if its pages preaches about art; yet none teaches anything else.
So begins 100 Ways To Have Fun With An Alligator, unlike any other art activity book on the market. First published in 1969, it is a product of that boundary breaking era, but its ideas are so fresh they beckon us even today.
The projects in this book use materials as mundane as paper and cloth, as available as shadows and one's own voice, and as minimally challenging as a camera. Some involve hands-on techniques such as drawing, painting, sculpting and collage, while others are more theatrical: celebrating a poet's birthday and free associating about a color. Other fascinating ideas include: screening an industrial film and asking students to match music to it, designing a card asking for something without words and - of course - 100 ways to have fun with an alligator, which include buy him some rose-colored glasses and teach him to make lasagna.
In the introduction, Albert Bush-Brown, a former president of the Rhode Island School of Design says of Art:
Everyone is invited. There should be banners and flags, shadows and lights, beacons and fountains, with lots of color and pictures on the walls. There should be games to play, poems to read, surprises, toys and musical instruments to bang and blow. You would be invited. The invitations would be works of art; your acceptance would decorate the hall.
This is the spirit of 100 Ways to Have Fun With An Alligator.
