Octavio Ocampo’s Illusions – I

Octavio Ocampo is an artist famous for paintings in which smaller images are brought together to form a larger image. It is spellbinding to see how perfectly the details blend into the bigger picture. Ocampo calls this his “metamorphic” style.

All of Ocampo’s paintings below are optical illusions where flowers, birds, butterflies and leaves come together to form the image of a woman’s face.

Come back to see more of Ocampo’s illusions.

Lady With A Hat

This is a classic recipe that’s fun to make, fun to eat, and has funny names to go with it! This makes two servings, but you can make as many as you want. Just make sure you use the same number of eggs as bread slices.

What you need:

2 eggs
2 slices of bread
Cooking Oil/Butter

What to do:

Take a round plastic lid that is only a couple of sizes smaller than the bread slice. With the sharp edge of the lid, cut a hole into each of the bread slices. Grease a pan with oil or butter. Toast one side of the bread on the pan. Turn the bread over, and break an egg into the center of the hole. Cook until the egg is ready. Toast both sides of the bread cut-outs. Serve along with the bread and egg.

You can sprinkle the egg with salt and pepper if you like. You can also use cookie cutters to cut out different shapes in the bread slices. Get creative!

Three Wishes

Yapper and Snapper read a bedtime story about a boy with a magic lamp.

The boy makes three wishes. Snapper loves the story.

Yapper and Snapper go to sleep. Snapper dreams that he has the magic lamp. He says, “I wish for gold to fall from the sky!” He rubs the lamp.

Gold falls on his head!

“Ow, that hurt,” says Snapper.

A spaceship takes all the gold.

“Drat!” says Snapper.

Snapper makes a new wish, “I wish for a very, very tall house!”

He rubs the lamp. His house starts to grow.

Blasternaut and G.C. save Snapper. He feels silly.

He was so scared. His friends were not scared at all.

Snapper makes his last wish. “I want to look like a scary monster!”

He runs after his friends.

Snapper yells, “Boo!”

“Hi Snapper,” says Blasternaut.

“Are you okay?” says G.C.

Snapper is sad. His wish did not come true. Then he looks in a window.

“Help, Mommy!” he yells.

Snapper falls out of bed.

“You had a bad dream,” says Yapper. “Do you want to read about the magic lamp again?”

“No way!” says Snapper.

The Woodcarver’s Gift

A Native American tale (Tlingit)

As retold by Cristy West

In the Queen Charlotte Islands, there was a young chief whose wife fell sick and died shortly after their marriage. The young chief was deeply saddened. No one could console him.

Then a wood carver from that village came to the chief and offered to carve an image of the wife who had died. He was skilled at making the totem poles and masks for that clan and knew the ways of Shagoon, the spirit beings and ancestors. The carver said, “I have seen your wife. I have seen the two of you walking together. If you will allow me, I would like to carve her image.” The young chief agreed.

The carver took a piece of red cedar and began working on it. The carver made a likeness of the wife. Then he dressed it in the same fashion as the wife had dressed.

When he was finished, he went to the young chief and said, “Now you can come and have a look.”

When the chief went inside the carver’s hut, he saw his wife sitting there just as she always looked. He was very happy.

“What do I owe you for making this?” he asked the carver.

“It is because I felt badly for you that I made it. Do not pay me too much.” But the chief paid him well.

The chief took the statue home and dressed it in his wife’s clothes and put her marten-skin robe over the shoulders. He felt that his wife had come back to him. He talked to the image and treated it just as he had treated his wife.

One day as he was sitting very close to the image, he felt it move. He thought it must just be his imagination. But still he was not sure and every day he went back and examined it closely. He thought that at some time it would come to life.

After a while, members of the village came to see the image. Many could not believe it was not the woman herself until they had examined it closely.

The image became more and more alive in the imagination of the young chief even though it did not move or speak. Then one day it gave forth a sound from its chest and the chief knew that it must be ill. When he moved it from its place, they found a small cedar-tree growing from the floor. They left it there to grow.

Every day the image of the young woman appeared to be more like a human being. People from other villages heard the story and came to see the statue and the cedar tree growing near it. They were astonished. In all this time the statue never moved or talked very much but the husband began dreaming about what she wanted to tell him. She became alive in his dreams. In this way the chief was healed and his sadness passed.

That cedar tree beside the statue became a very large tree. It is because of this that the cedars on the Queen Charlotte Islands are said to be so good. When people there look for red cedar trees and find a good one, they say, “This looks like the baby of the chief’s wife.”

Source: This story is adapted from the tale, “The Image that Came to Life,” found in John R. Swanton’s Tlingit Myths and Legend, Washington, Smithsonian, 1909.

Cristy West PhD is a storyteller, writer, and creative arts therapist living in Washington, D.C. She is the editor and program coordinator for the Spirit of Trees website.
The retelling was taken from the Spirit of Trees website.

The Lady in White

As Retold by Cristy West

Every day, from spring until fall, young Bethushka took her flock of sheep to graze near a grove of birches. In her pocket was a spindle for spinning flax into thread. But she much preferred to roam and explore in the woods. Sometimes she went down to see what new wildflowers had bloomed in the meadow. And occasionally she would make up a little dance, just for the fun of it, and twirled about under the trees.

One spring day a beautiful woman suddenly appeared before her. She had long blond hair and was dressed in a silky white dress and she wore a wreath of flowers on her head.

“I see you like to dance!” said the woman.

“Oh yes,” said Bethuska, “I could dance the whole day! But my mother had given me this flax to spin.”

“Tomorrow is another day,” said the lady, “Come, dance with me! I will teach you some steps!”

So Bethushka lept up and joined the lady. Laughing and singing, they danced through the trees and out into the field. So light were their steps that the grass was neither trampled nor bent. Near evening the lady vanished as suddenly as she had appeared.

Bethushka gathered her flock and headed homeward. When her mother asked about her spinning, she pretended to have misplaced the spool. She said nothing about the lady in white.

The next day Bethuska went back to the same place, this time determined to do her spinning. Again the lady appeared. “Will you dance?”

“I cannot. I must do my spinning. Or else my mother will be angry with me.”

“If you will dance with me, I’ll help you to spin.”

So once again, Bethuska joined the lady and together they danced through the day. Near sunset, the beautiful lady smiled, waved her arms and lo!, like magic, the spool was filled with fine linen thread. That evening Bethuska’s mother was pleased to see the thread. But still Bethuska said nothing about about the dancing.

The third day the Lady in White was waiting for Bethushka near the woods. They danced as never before – pirouetting and curtseying, skipping and swooping, whirling and laughing, skimming over the ground as lightly as the wind. When the day was over, the Lady in White spun the flax again.

“You are a fine dancer, Bethushka! I have enjoyed myself!” – and she handed Bethusha a pouch with a mysterious pattern embroidered on the outside. “Take good care of this,” said the lady. Bethushka peeked inside and saw that it was filled with dried yellow birch leaves.

When Bethuska arrived home, she gave her mother the new spool of thread. This time her mother looked at it more carefully.

“Where did you get this from? Surely you did not spin it yourself?”

So Betushka told the whole story of meeting up with the beautiful lady dressed in the long white dress.

“Why, Bethushka – that was the Wild Lady of the Birch Grove! It’s very good luck to meet up with her!”

“She taught me some wonderful dances!” exclaimed Bethushka “And look- she gave me this pretty little pouch filled up with old birch leaves!” But when Bethushka emptied out the pouch for her mother, her mouth fell open in astonishment. The birch leaves were made of solid gold.

Source: Retelling based on “The Wild Woman of the Birch Wood” in Anne Pellowski’s Hidden Stories in Plants (1990, Macmillan) and “The Wood Fairy” in Virginia Haviland’s Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Czechoslovakia (Little Brown, 1959).

Cristy West PhD is a storyteller, writer, and creative arts therapist living in Washington, D.C. She is the editor and program coordinator for the Spirit of Trees website.
The Lady in White is taken from the Spirit of Trees website.

Fun Facts: The Breathtaking Body

Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.

Every hour one billion cells in the body must be replaced.

Each day 400 gallons of recycled blood are pumped through the kidneys.

The strongest bone in the body is the thighbone (called femur), and it’s hollow!

The blood circulates through the body three times every minute.

In adults, the surface area of the lungs is roughly the same as that of one side of a tennis court.

The average person’s skin weighs twice as much as their brain.

Every person has a unique tongue print.

The stomach produces a new lining every 3 days to avoid digesting itself with its own acids.

On an average, the human body is half an inch taller in the mornings than in the evenings.

Mirth on Earth

What do you call a cute volcano?

Lava-ble!

How do you cut the sea in half?

With a sea-saw!

What did the limestone say to the geologist?

Don’t take me for granite!

What did the Atlantic Ocean say to the Pacific Ocean?

Nothing. They just waved.

What is a tornado’s favorite game?

Twister.

Why can Mount Everest hear everything you say?

Because it’s covered in mountaineers (mountain ears)!

Why did the tree not want to play checkers?

Because it was a chess-nut!

What kind of shorts do clouds use?

Thunderwear!

How does a rose ride a bike?

By pushing its petals!

What did Summer say to Spring?

Help! I’m going to fall!

How Julian Beever Does It

The important thing to understand about Beever’s drawings is that they only look real when seen from a particular angle. For example, here is a chalk drawing Julian Beever made for the Live8 campaign:

The same drawing, when viewed from the wrong angle, looks like this:

Before Beever starts work on a pavement drawing, he draws detailed sketches of the image on paper. Then, he sets up a camera on the sidewalk. The camera marks the point from which the image will look its best. Julian Beever continuously looks through the camera while working (a few hundred times), in order to make sure the drawing is coming out correctly. He begins with an outline of the image in white chalk, and then carefully draws the image and shades it in with color.

You can see the entire process in this video that Aveeno Fountain of Youth created. Here, Julian Beever is working on a chalk drawing they paid him to do.
Place: New York Union Square
Date: Jan 25, 2007.

Though this time-lapse video shows Beever finishing his work in minutes, sometimes he takes as long as 3 days to complete a sidewalk drawing!

Julian Beever pretends to dip his toe into the completed drawing:

(Photo provided by Aveeno. [AP Photos])

See more of Julian Beever’s work.

Julian Beever’s Illusions on the Sidewalk

These optical illusions were all drawn by Julian Beever, and they have all been on pavements in different parts of the world. Have you ever heard of Julian Beever? People call him Pavement Picasso. Take a look at his drawings and you’ll know why:

As much as it looks like the seal has popped out of a hole in the ground, this entire image, except for the people, is a drawing on the sidewalk.

Here are some more:

Batman to the rescue!

And finally:

Weren’t those amazing?

Find out how Julian Beever does it.

The Bones of Djulung

A folktale from the Philippines

From “Folk Lore,” by A. F. Mackenzie
(from The Lilac Fairy Book , by Andrew Lang)

IN a beautiful island that lies in the southern seas, there once lived a family of seven sisters. Their father and mother were dead, and they had no brothers, so the eldest girl ruled over the rest, and they all did as she told them. One sister had to clean the house, a second carried water from the spring in the forest, a third cooked their food, while to the youngest fell the hardest task of all, for she had to cut and bring home the wood which was to keep the fire continually burning.
One morning, as she was struggling home with her bundle on her back, she thought that the river which flowed past their hut looked so cool that she decided to bathe in it, instead of taking her usual nap. Quickly piling up her load by the fire, and thrusting some sticks into the flame, she ran down to the river and jumped in. She dove and swam and floated in the dark forest, noticing nothing else. After a while she began to look about her, and her eyes fell on a little fish that was so colorful and bright, he seemed to be made out of a rainbow.

The girl decided to keep him as a pet, and the next time the fish swam by, she put out her hand and caught him. Then she went to a cave in front of which a stream fell over some rocks into a pond. Here she put her little fish, whose name was Djulung-djulung, and promising to return soon and bring him some dinner, she went away.

By the time she got home, the rice for their dinner was ready, and the eldest sister gave the other six their portions in wooden bowls. But the youngest did not finish hers, and when no one was looking, stole off to the fountain in the forest where the little fish was swimming about. She fed the fish the rest of her dinner and promised to return the next day.

The girl did not tell her sisters about the fish, but every day she saved half of her rice to give him. Over time, the fish grew fat and big while the girl grew thin and weak, and the loads of wood felt heavier every day, and at last her sisters noticed it.

Together, they decided to watch her to see what she did, and one of them followed her to the fountain where Djulung lived, and saw her give him all the rice she had saved from her breakfast. Hurrying home the sister told the others what she had seen. The eldest sister went and caught the fish, and he was boiled for supper, but the youngest sister was away in the woods, and did not know anything about it.

Next morning she went as usual to the cave and called out to Djulung, but he did not answer her call. She called him again and again, and then threw herself on her knees by the edge, and peered into the dark water, but the trees cast such a deep shadow that she could not see through it.

“Djulung cannot be dead, or his body would be floating on the surface,” she said to herself, and rising to her feet she started walking home, feeling all of a sudden strangely tired.

Managing to reach the hut with difficulty, she threw herself down in a corner, where she slept so soundly that for days no one was able to wake her.

Finally, early one morning, a cock began to crow so loud that she could sleep no longer; and as he continued to crow she seemed to understand what he was saying: Djulung was dead, killed and eaten by her sisters, and his bones lay buried under the kitchen fire. Very softly she got up, picked up the large stone under the fire, and creeping out, carried the bones to the cave by the fountain, where she dug a hole and buried them. And as she scooped out the hole with a stick she sang a song, asking the bones to grow till they became a tree -a tree that reached up so high into the heavens that its leaves would fall across the sea into another island, whose king would pick them up.

As there was no Djulung to give her rice to, the girl soon became fat again, and as she was able to do her work as of old, her sisters did not worry about her. They never guessed that when she went into the forest to gather her sticks, she always visited the tree, which grew taller and more wonderful everyday. Never was such a tree seen before. Its trunk was of iron, its leaves were of silk, its flowers of gold, and its fruit of diamonds, and one evening, though the girl did not know it, a soft breeze took one of the leaves, and blew it, across the sea to the feet of one of the king’s attendants.

When the king saw the leaf he declared he would never rest until he had found the tree which bore it, even if he had to spend the rest of his life visiting the islands that lay all round. Happily for him, he began with the island that was nearest, and in the forest there he suddenly saw standing before him the iron tree, its boughs covered with shining leaves like the one he carried with him.

“But what sort of a tree is it, and how did it get here?” he asked the attendants he had with him. No one could answer him, but as they were about to leave the forest a little boy went by, and the king stopped and asked him whether there was anyone living in the neighbourhood whom he could ask about the tree.

“Seven girls live in a hut down there,” replied the boy, pointing with his finger to where the sun was setting.

“Then go and bring them here, and I will wait,” said the king, and the boy ran off and told the sisters that a great chief, with strings of jewels round his neck, had sent for them.

Pleased and excited, the six elder sisters followed the boy at once, but the youngest, who was busy, and who did not care about strangers, stayed behind, to finish the work she was doing. The king welcomed the girls eagerly, and asked them all sorts of questions about the tree, but as they had never even heard of its existence, they could tell him nothing. “And if we, who live close by the forest, do not know, you can be sure no one does,” added the eldest, who was rather upset to find that this was all that the king wanted of them.

“But the boy told me there were seven of you, and there are only six here,” said the king.
“Oh, the youngest is at home, but she is always half asleep, and is of no use except to cut wood for the fire,” they all replied.

“That may be, but perhaps she dreams,” answered the king. “Anyway, I will speak to her as well.” He signalled to one of his attendants, who followed the path that the boy had taken to the hut.

Soon the man returned, with the girl walking behind him. And as soon as she reached the tree it bowed itself to the earth before her, and she stretched out her hand and picked some of its leaves and flowers and gave them to the king.
“The maiden who can work such wonders is fit to be the wife of the greatest chief,” he said, and so he married her, and took her with him across the sea to his own home, where they lived happy ever after.

(adapted for easy reading)