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Neighbors: Crafting a lesson
Published 3/30/2009 in Features
By SHAJIA AHMAD
When Marilyn Holdeman was a young girl more than 70 years ago, she would sit on her father's lap as he cut open oranges with his pocketknife, creating citrus flowers from the fruit's peel.
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Brad Nading/Telegram — Marilyn Holdeman uses tangerine rinds to create pieces of art as a hobby.
"My father was an invalid and he could do nothing," said Holdeman, whose father became immobile following an early-age onset of rheumatoid arthritis. "He had very little use of his arms, and most of the time, he sat in his chair."
With a small pair of thin and sharp scissors, the Garden City resident and former elementary school teacher of 31 years snips the rind of a small tangerine into an intricate flower, the pliable peel conforming to her desired design.
"It does about anything you want it to do," she said.
The sweet smell of the citrus fruit hangs in the air inside the barn-shaped home at 2018 Parkwood Lane that she shares with her husband, and where her displays of dried tangerine sculptures are scattered across their dining room table. Even a small wood cut-out framing the words "Praise the Lord," is almost completely covered in tangerine rinds.
The outer red-orange shells of the fruits dry in strange shapes after they are cut, some layers curl up while others curl down.
"(The rinds) dry up differently, and it's just beautiful," Holdeman said.
The former school teacher who has taught in Winfield, Wichita and locally at Georgia Matthews Elementary School, is hoping to pass on her organic artwork to art classrooms, including her granddaughter's school in Sharon Springs.
Holdeman will be teaching one of the Wallace County's seventh- and eighth-grade art classes in April with the blessing of Wallace County school's art teacher, Brenda Kirkham.
"I haven't seen the sculptures yet. You know, I'm a very visual person, and they've tried to explain it to me several times, but it doesn't make sense yet," Kirkham said and laughed. "But I'm looking forward to it. It'll be nice to have someone other than me teaching for a day."
The Holdemans, Marilyn and her husband, Jack, are grandparents of six who have both been elementary school teachers for several decades. They said teaching young kids in many different fields of study naturally makes them think of lesson plans using the tangerine sculpting.
In the art classroom, Holdeman hopes students can create still-art pieces, tracing their cut-out tangerine rinds and sketching their dried sculptures days later. In the math arena, students can calculate the surface area of their tangerine sphere and recalculate the area after their sculpture has been cut out and dried.
Of course, they shouldn't forget to "enjoy eating the fruits of (their) labor," amid their projects, she said.
"I want to show them the possibilities open to them," she said. "This is something you can have fun doing."
A box of Cuties clementines sits on the Holdemans' kitchen counter. Marilyn never cuts up more fruit than she and her husband of 50 years can eat, but she looks forward to each opportunity to create something new from the waste that would otherwise get pitched in the garbage bin.
Her husband, Jack, supports her endeavors entirely.
"Because I'm the one who gets to eat the fruit," he said and laughed.
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