Guelph Mercury

It's Earth Day.

And love for our planet blooms even in the most unlikely place.

Here we are at the Psychology, Anthropology and Sociology Building, perhaps the gloomiest building on the whole campus of University of Waterloo with its dimly lit serpentine hallways and its walls thickly constructed, as if wishing to block out the sunlight and sky.

But on the sixth floor there is a surprise: Beautiful art, inspired by nature and handmade by preschoolers who attend a nursery school in the building.

Paper circles represent the planet Earth, covered with layers of paint that look like swirling white clouds on a blue-and-green surface. (The cloud effect is shaving cream, folded into the paint as carefully as you might fold egg whites to make a soufflé, then spread onto the paper and left to dry.)

The children took whole fish that had been bought at a market. They painted them blue, red and green, then pressed them onto paper like a stencil, so that the intricate pattern of fish scales was visible.

Recycling and re-using are a big part of the theme. Plastic fruit baskets — the kind that hold raspberries or blueberries — are pressed onto paint and then onto paper for a geometric grid effect in different colours.

A miniature "tree" is cleverly fashioned out of rolled-up newspapers.

And there is beautiful handmade paper, recycled from old paper that was whirled in the blender with water, dyed and then pressed onto mesh screens to dry.

All of this art has been lovingly framed, labelled and mounted by Mare Appleby, administrative assistant for the psychology department.

She even included quotes from the young artists. My favourite was from four-year-old Dingcheng Ruan.

"I live in Ontario, where we speak Chinese, English, French and a little Spanish. I still don't know my country, but my planet is Earth. Everybody lives on Earth."

Dingcheng and the young artists attend the university's early childhood education centre, which is in the building.

It's not just a preschool centre, but also a "lab school" where psychology students and scholars can visit and observe the children's behaviour for their research.

Before the Earth Day project began, the children "had discussions with teachers about the Earth they live in, and some reflections about how do we take care of the place we live," said centre director Valerie Roza.

The children talked about their connections with the natural world. They discussed the need to re-use and recycle materials so that the planet does not become exhausted, or choked with garbage.

This project helps them to develop an acute consciousness of the world that they will soon inherit from their parents' generation.

"We're always trying to help children show us what they know in different languages," Roza said.

"Art is a language, for young children."

ldamato@therecord.com