I heard about this guy in Norway trying to collect a million giraffes. The funny thing is I heard about it from a guy I'd never had contact with prior to the Comment Gobbler story, and as it turns out, lives about 20 minutes from me. So the news traveled from Norway to Cleveland to the Mentor area through a REALLY long string and a couple of rusty cans and here I am shouting it from the rooftops so all of you can hear about it as well.
The project is really fun and it's easy to contribute. Heck, I've done it twice now, Lauren has done it, and thanks to the awesome William Porter, the administrator for the Mentor city schools K-8 program, the art teachers in Mentor will be doing it with their students. I'm hoping to get the Akron zoo involved, and I've shouted the project into the ears of all the moms and dads I know who would be likely to do this with their kids. I know a lot of you have artistic abilities, Linda, Laurita, Melissa, Estrella, Anne Tyler Lord, just to name a few, so I'm hoping that you'll all contribute a giraffe and put the link into the comment thread so we can see it.
Even if you don't contribute I guarantee you'll get a kick out of looking at the giraffes and hopefully pass the site on to other people so they can send in their giraffes. When I went poking around I was delighted by some of the VERY creative ideas; a guy who drew on his foot and used his toes for the giraffe horns, a woman who photographed a stain on her shirt that looked like a giraffe, some people who made a giant paper mache statue of a giraffe; really cool ideas.
Ola Helland's only rule is that the giraffe has to be hand made. [no photos of actual giraffes] Once you make it, take a photo and upload it to the One Million Giraffes website. Easy peasy. To show their support, his mom and dad even did it.
A couple of really cool things will come out of this project. One is that the Ha Gamle Prestegard art museum will be showing a selection of the giraffes from June 12-August 29 in their gallery. The other is that a lot of people will have a few minutes of fun creating something silly and knowing that the silly thing they created will be archived forever with 999,999 other silly things where it will spend eternity frolicking with others of its kind to its warm little giraffe heart's content.
So go on, set your inner child free and take a few minutes to make a giraffe. You know you want to.
Link to my notecard giraffe, Link to Lauren's giraffe, Link to my cereal giraffe.
Link to Estrella's giraffe
