Transforming School Lunch Into an Incredible Art Project with @dailynapkins
For more cartoon napkin creations from Nina, follow @dailynapkins on Instagram.
Nina Levy (@dailynapkins) estimates that she has made over 2,000 different drawings on the napkins she packs with her children’s lunches. These days, the New York-based artist and professor makes elaborately whimsical color sketches, but she says the saga began much more simply.
“I began doing napkins in the fall of 2006, drawing simple pictures in black Sharpie on napkins for my son when he started staying at nursery school for lunch,” Levy explains. “I was just including a caring message from home and hoping to get him a little extra attention from the teachers supervising his lunch.”
In the beginning, Levy’s two sons would actually use the napkins for their originally intended purpose. Now, they serve a more decorative function. Levy says that even though she doesn’t always make napkins for both boys, they are still usually involved in selecting the subject matter for each drawing.
“If I don’t have a request, I usually try to draw something that I know they have been thinking about recently,” she says. “I am, however, often wrong about what is cool or even acceptable in the minds of seven- and 11-year-old boys.”
For Levy, the drawings are more than just a product of motherly love. They’re also an extension of her craft.
“I view them as a sort of compulsory nightly drawing practice, an enforced pop culture update, and, in my most pretentious moments, a form of sustained performance art,” she says.
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