Art Babies Right

Welcome to the Art Babies Project!

AN ART BABY IS a small card, 2 ½ by 3 ½ inches, the same size as a playing card, on which I have drawn a picture of a plump unisex baby. There is a Basic Nude Art Baby plus many altered, adorned and embellished AB's like the above: Fig Leaf, On Pointe, Left Handed and Inner Parts. See the Art Babies Registers for many more varieties. Art Babies are free.

Responsible persons may acquire one or more AB's from the Art Babies Registers. They agree to care for and subsequently place the AB, either as-is or enhanced, in a location where he or she is likely to be found by another responsible person.

Our goal is simply to dispatch many Art Babies to many places and to document their acquisition, placement and discovery in the Art Babies Registers at www.faultlinestudio.com. We have no greater mission. This isn't Art with a capital A, which seems silly since they're called Art Babies. I considered calling them Silly Babies but that sounded too much like collectibles for little girls or gummy candies in a tiny box. So, silly or not, Art Babies they are.

Each dispatch, each acquisition, each subsequent placement and each finding is its own reward. Eventually the global distribution of Art Babies, as documented in the Art Babies Registers, will make us all feel good about something.

So, here's the deal:

1. Look through the Art Babies Registers and choose the AB(s) you want. If a particular AB is already taken don't fret. You can have its twin with his or her own unique ID number. Every AB is an original.

2. Send me a snail or email request for the Art Baby(s) you've chosen. Include the ID number and variety. Don't forget your name and mailing address. Send to:

    Don Anderson
    1567 McKinnon Avenue
    San Francisco, CA 94124
    or click here: donanderson@faultlinestudio.com

3. I will snail mail you your Art Baby.

4. Name your Art Baby. Apply any enhancements that strike your fancy (colored pencil, marker and collage work well) and care for him or her until you are ready to place.

5. Then, when you're out and about, place of your Art Baby where you think he or she might encounter an appreciative finder. The farther from home the better. However, don't hem and haw or become overly attached. You must dispose of your AB for our project to flourish. Remember to enter your Baby's name, your name and the disposal date on the Finders Instructions attached to the back of your AB.

There is some risk. Your Art Baby may be lost, or found by someone unsympathetic—even by a meanie. However, do not waffle—place your baby wisely and trust to providence. Remember, you can always get a new AB and try again.

6. After you place your AB send me an informational snail or email at either address above. Include the ID number of your Art Baby, the name you gave him or her, the city and country where you placed your baby, the date, and the circumstances. Example:

"Art Baby #1234; Named Agatha; Placed at Stuttgart, Germany; 3/3/06; Left her seated in first class on the Orient Express eastbound."

7. When I receive your mail I will post the information in the Art Babies Registers at www.faultlinestudio.com. Photos of you and / or the placement are encouraged — I'll include them in an issue of Art Baby News.

8. When I receive information from the finder I will notify you and up-date the Register.

I will not post any addresses to the Register or share address information with anyone. However, I will forward a brief message from one 'parent' to another if requested. You never know — participation might lead to friendship, romance or a swap of living quarters for your next vacation.

Your ideas about the project and for new varieties of AB are welcome.

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For Global Sheep, Wherever Ewe Go, There Ewe Are

Art Babies was inspired by a feature story in the Friday, July 14, 2000 issue of The San Francisco Chronicle. Written by Heather Knight and with the above clever headline:

"If, in the course of your world travels, you should happen to spot a tiny, plaster sheep sitting on a bolt in the Eiffel Tower, on top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, on the bottom of the Ganges River in India or at hundreds of other famous spots around the globe, take a moment to offer true thanks to the Hartmans' of Burlingame.

The family of six, led by their artist dad, James, began this wacky international sheep phenomenon in 1995. That November, James traveled to Missouri to visit his 84-year-old mother. He helped sort through her boxes of collectable antiques and found one piece that immediately caught his eye: a thumb-sized, finely painted sheep.

"I was struck by it because it had such detail," said James, 49. "Nobody takes the time to do that anymore. They must have used a brush with one bristle."

His 10 siblings also admired the little lamb. They wanted James to make a mold of the sheep and give one to each family member. He complied, but didn't stop there.

Eager to find a millennium-themed art project, James truly broke the mold when he declared his goal: Make 2,000 sheep — and hand-paint them all — by 2000.

The Hartman family had sheep-painting parties for their friends, forming assembly lines with one person painting the white fleece, another the green grass, another the peach face and legs and another the eyes and smile. They became proficient enough to spend only 10 minutes per sheep.

But the effort wasn't just a local one. They sent kits of 100 sheep and travel-sized shampoo bottles of paint to relatives around the country. They spent their Thanksgivings painting sheep and their Christmases, too. And they surpassed their goal — they painted more than 2,600 sheep.

But the really weird part began when the family started taking small groups of sheep on day trips with them. They photographed herds in Carmel, at the base of Lombard Street in San Francisco and in puddles of water in Mendocino.

In 1998, their daughter, Genevieve, took a batch with her on a high school trip to Paris. She and her classmates photographed themselves hiding sheep at the top of the Eiffel Tower, behind a painting at Versailles and in the Louvre. (Their teacher hid a sheep in her cleavage, and yes, there's a picture to prove it.)

Soon, friends, friends of friends and even complete strangers wanted to take sheep with them on their vacations. Photos they took of themselves hiding the teeny sheep in various global locations now fill a giant scrapbook at the Hartmans' house.

A friend would say, "Oh, I'm going to Croatia" and we'd say, "Take a sheep to Croatia!"

The sheep can now be found on every continent — even Antarctica. They're in a tree in Boca Raton, in a sarcophagus in New York City's Museum of Modern Art, at a fly fishing spot in New Zealand, inside Placido Domingo’s dressing room, at the top of G2 in the Himalayas, at a church in Hawaii, at Albert Einstein's home in Princeton, N. J., in the bedroom of Christopher Columbus' son in the Dominican Republic, in a castle in Wales, in a garden in Luxemburg, at Sydney Harbor in Australia and in the Duomo in Florence.

More sheep can be found in South Africa, Cuba, Vietnam, Fiji, Hong Kong and Brazil. One lucky sheep was even blessed by the Pope. Matthew Siorek, James' nephew, planted 50 sheep around his hometown of Chicago. They can be found in the city’s Picasso Art Institute, behind the center field scoreboard at Wrigley Field, behind the bar at "The Green Mill," a jazz house once owned by Al Capone, and on a plot of farmland where Hartman ancestors settled after moving from Wales.

"It’s all about participation," said Hartman’s wife, Catherine. "Everybody can help. There's a certain type of person who's drawn to creative, fun, adventurous things like this. Each sheep began to take on its own personality, with slightly different facial expressions and slightly different colors. One lamb wears sunglasses and a couple are the "Black sheep of the family." They also have different phrases written on the bottom, including "Meryl Sheep," "Fleece Navidad," "Sheepless in Seattle," "Sheep Car Named Desire," "Ewe Ought To Be In Pictures" and "Nothing Spells Lovin' Like Mutton In The Oven."

[I thought the Global Sheep project was dormant, but see the up-date in Art Baby News #4]

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