Choosing the Beauty of Now

Back in December this article in The Paris Review landed in my inbox and I was intrigued. Several years ago I dove into Victoria Finlay’s well researched book Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox, she searches for the source of pigments artists used and it was a fascinating romp through European art history. Verdigris or vert-de-Grèce or the Green of Greece was made from crushed malachite or oxidized copper deposits.

Katy Kellher in her Paris Review article Verdigris: The Color of Oxidation, Statues, and Impermanence notes that even master painters chose to use verdigris, an impermanent colour. Da Vinci chose to use verdigris knowing “The bright cloaks would turn dark, the soft grass would fade, the foliage turn. But such is the nature of cloth and plants and paint. Such is the nature of beauty.”

This message of living in the moment is timeless and also very now, mindfulness is everywhere. But parents, mothers especially spend a lot of time training our brains to look after everyone else’s upcoming needs: the to-do list, family celebrations, kids clothes being outgrown, planning family vacations, you name it. We train our brains to do the opposite of be in the moment.

I love the idea of photobooks and dream of having the time to create annual family photo mementoes, but it never gets to the top of my to do list. Annual family photos though are important and always get done. So perhaps I am choosing through my actions what is most important. A friend once reassured me saying, “you were in the moment, enjoy it, forget about the photo (book)”.

Now that everyone has a smart phone and photographing your children, documenting their lives has become a de rigueur requirement for all parents.  I’d really like to question that assumption, starting with ‘does it work for you?’. Standing in the check-out line pre-pandemic I watched a mom photograph her toddler, just sitting in the cart with the groceries. Maybe they were creating a time capsule photo of their day but more likely it was one more inconsequential photo for social media, and I’m not sure the story it was meant to tell. I am old enough to remember the days when film came in 24 image rolls, and every photo’s essentialness was questioned, birthdays and celebrations were photo-worthy, trips to buy groceries were not.

Back to Da Vinci, he had to make a choice too: the beauty of now, or settling for something less. I’d argue that we parents do ourselves a disservice, we have been cultured to photograph everything just in case we miss something. We end up so busy taking the perfect photo that we miss the moment we wanted to capture.

On this theme of copper and verdigris and capturing the moment I asked Maygen Kardash of Sneakers and Lipstick to try an arty experiment with her children, using old copper pennies, salt and vinegar to clean the pennies to a sparkle and then to create verdigris. You will also need a bowl, paper towels and a bowl. You can try this at home using shiny copper or aged pennies.

I first saw this experiment on Pinterest as a kitchen table science experiment, specifically to talk about why the copper covered statue of liberty is green! Lady liberty is covered in a copper coating and because of her exposure to the elements and the salt sea spray she has weathered green. Kelleher explains, “She’s green because we live surrounded by oxygen and when oxygen comes into contact with a metal like copper, it begins to tear away the electrons, which allows for the copper atoms to begin reacting with other particles...This crystalline solid appears to the human eye as a light robin’s-egg blue, a turquoise patina, a soft hue somewhere between green and blue.”

STEP 1: Fill 2 small bowls with about 1/4 cup of vinegar and a teaspoon of salt each. Mix thoroughly. (Lemon juice will also work as an acid in this experiment.)

STEP 2: Drop half the pennies into either bowl. If you take just one penny and dip it halfway into the bowl for a slow count to 10 you’ll see the half exposed to the salt and vinegar become shiny. The vinegar and salt dissolves the copper oxide and restores the copper atoms to their shiny state.

STEP 3: Take the pennies from one bowl and rinse them off, if you have any cuts on your fingers you will find out immediately! Let the pennies dry on the paper towel.

Remove the other pennies from the solution but do not rinse them off! Let them air dry on a piece of paper towel.

The un-rinsed pennies should develop a patina of verdigris or oxidation from the acid and oxygen you’ve exposed the copper to.

By the end of this experiment you should have two groups of pennies, half of them shiny and the other half with a patina.

Thank you so much Maygen for exploring science with your children and the wonderful photos provided.

To read more about Copper alloys in sculpture in Canada a great place to start your journey is the Canadian Copper & Brass Development Association.