Autism Awareness Carousel

Latest News and Updates May 2009

Much has happened since my last publication about the Autism Awareness Carousel. We are still at the Drawing Board phase, but at least we've come farther. For example, we now have official T-shirts available:

These shirts sell for $25 but there is usually a 2 for 1 discount when I have my fund-raising craft sales in front of my house on holiday weekends. Stay tuned and I will keep you informed. I will be having two on the Victoria Day Weekend, the first one being Friday, May 15th and the second on Monday the 18th, This is your invitation to show your support by buying my handcrafted merchandise or contributing to my Pennies for Ponies jar. You may also adopt a palm-sized carousel pony for only $4 or 3 for $10. Between late January and the present, I have had several meetings with Tiffany MacDonald at Kerry's Place to brainstorm ideas and make plans about the carousel. So far we've investigated three potential locations: 1.The Abilities Centre at Iroquois Park 2.The old Knob Hill Farm building 3.Cullen Gardens The Abilities Centre was still under construction and the last two places look like they've been abandoned for years, despite the rumours that claim that Cullen Gardens wants to re-open in 2010 with new attractions and our carousel would be a welcome attraction. As for the Knob Hill Farm building, my personal favorite choice because it would be big enough to house EVERYTHING I want to go with the carousel, all its windows and doors were boarded up with plywood. We still haven't been able to get in contact with any of the people from any of these places. Currently, I am working on filling out a ton of paperwork to apply for grants and I would like to thank the people from the Carousel at Missoula Montana, Fort Edmonton Carousel, Brass Ring Entertainment, Carousel Works of Mansfield, Ohio and my friend, Lisa Pisano who spearheaded the campaign to get the Staten Island carousel built. These people have all been a wealth of important and useful information. I also want to thank Life Skills Consultant Tara Enns for providing me with free coaching. Her seven-year-old son, Max, who is an awesome artist, by the way, was recently diagnosed with

Asperger's Syndrome, like me, so she was at her local branch of Kerry's Place where she happened to pick up the latest copy of the Living With Autism newsletter and the first thing she saw when she opened it up was the article about my carousel. We had a great chat. She told me that with any major creative idea, you usually have several ideas coming to you at once and it's hard to organize them all because these three voices speak the loudest: 1.Creative/Visionary 2.Realist 3.Critic and more often than not, your Critic tends to speak the loudest, catastrophizing about everything that could possibly go wrong, trying to choke the life out of your Creative/Visionary voice. We must not let that happen. My Critic is already playing Devil's Advocate about my trip to Sandusky, thanks to this current Swine Flu pandemic. Which brings me to my next topic. I've made up my mind that I'm going to the National Carousel Association Technical Conference in Sandusky, Ohio. I leave for an eleven-hour bus trip on Thursday, May 7th! Sometimes I wonder what I've gotten myself into. The thought of being cooped up so long! But I should be okay as long as I have my Walkman, journal and plenty of reading material. It was only $88 to ride the bus. Air fare is ridiculous; over $500! Anyway, I'm very excited about all the new contacts I'm going to meet, things that I'm going to learn and carousels I'm going to be riding! Last time I was at Cedar Point was at my first NCA convention in 1991. Okay, now for some fun stuff...

The Carousel So Far: Meet the AnimalsThese are some of the animals I've designed:

Aquamarine

Ardith

Clockwise: Anteater Cat in the Hat and Ewetopia sheep, L to R Olive, Gladys and Edna

Above: (left) inspired by some of the European carousels that sometimes feature clowns riding on the backs of pigs, a pig being ridden by my good friend, Doo-Doo. (right) Tiger Bunny, a fanciful hybrid creature!

Above: (Left) Dapple Gray Prancer and (Right) Flower Horse, both influenced by a variety of carvers. Below, this mischievous pooch and his feline accomplice take off with a link of sausages while Pigasus takes off to the Wild Blue Yonder!

Above: (Left) Goat decorated with autism-related symbols and (Right) Sebastian a Stein & Goldstein-inspired jumper with Muller-inspired trappings

Above: (Right) Wicked Lester, a bucking bronco in clear varnish to show the wood grain, my tribute to both KISS and my dad! (Right) Push-Me-Pull-You) a fanciful creature from the original Dr. Doolittle books and movie.

Above: Two of my earlier works (Right) Muller Stander and (Left) Herschell Sky Pinto inspired by aboriginal lore. Both horses are decorated with autism-related symbols. I probably won't use all the designs I create. In fact I am encouraging others to contribute their talent by submitting their own designs for hoses and menagerie figures. You can either draw them yourselves from scratch or decorate unadorned horses from my Design Your Own Carousel Horse book. A different horse also appears every month in my Planet Nilknarf newsletters.

Besides horses and animals we will also be designing and decorating scenery panels and Rounding Boards Here's what I've designed so far:

LOL! You can tell I'm a KISS fan! Please note that I didn't actually paint these for real. I just used a photo of an unpainted rounding board emailed to me from Carousel Works and painted it myself using MS Paint. Pretty cool, huh? Which now brings me to the next topic. Here is the original Floor Plan of the carousel with its adjacent amenities:

Here's what we hope to add in the future:

Hopefully, if we're in a big facility in the first place, like the Knob Hill farm building, adding these facilities should be a breeze, although plans are subject to change depending on circumstances. The project itself would probably start with the help of several volunteers but I am hoping that it will become so successful that we actually become a factory building commissioned carousels for other locations and actually getting paid for it. In fact my overall vision for the carousel is for it to be the cornerstone of a Cultural Arts/Resources complex that helps provide people on the Autism Spectrum, and others who would otherwise fall through the cracks, with meaningful employment. In the meantime I have several

Fund-Raising Ideas:1. T-shirts 2. Design Your Own Carousel Horse colouring books 3. Exhibit of various carousel-related artifacts with donation box 4. Carousel Horse Droppings bags of basswood chips from carving for sale 5. CD's for sale 6. My craft products for sale 7. Adopt-a-Horse 8. First practice horse for raffle 9. Shares for sale, includes document suitable for framing 10. Adopting components such as scenery panels and rounding boards 11. Benefit concerts 12. Buttons 13. Hats

14. Posters 15. Pennies for Ponies schools, businesses, organizations or individuals collect pennies in 2-L pop bottles to raise $ for horses Below You will find a label to cut out and attach to an 2-litre pop bottle:

Pennies for Ponies

On the back of the bottle you may affix a label with information about yourself, your school, business or organization. (I just paste one of my business cards on mine). When your bottle is full just bring it to Kerry's Place or me and I will bring it to Kerry's Place and we will count your pennies and record them in a database. Whoever raises the most pennies will win a pizza party. I don't know when this will be yet but I will keep you posted for further details. This was a very successful program in Missoula, Montana as students from one school actually raised a million pennies; enough to build four horses.

Things I Will NeedIn the meantime I am still looking for carvers and volunteers, not to mention property and workshop space. If anyone knows anything please feel free to contact me at nilknarf64@sympatico.ca Hopefully I will have more information when I come back from the convention. I am also hoping that once construction begins we will have a cinematographer to film a documentary about this project and I would like to put together a nice, big glossy coffee table book. Both the book and DVD shall be sold in our gift shop when the time comes. Updates such as these will be posted every few months as the project progresses. Meanwhile, stay tuned to my Planet Nilknarf newsletters.