Danielle

That is my baby sister-in-law, Danielle, (that you can now see, thank you Kris!)who just graduated from high school. She was co-saludatorian of her class and because of this she was asked to address the audience.
In her speech, she chose to use pieces of art to illustrate her point. (Ha Ha illustrate - art; oh well, the joke is lost in translation, or something like that).

I totally can't do her speech justice because I don't have a copy of it, but she first used a picture of DaVinci's Last Supper that we all know and love:And then she showed us a picture of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" which is:

a urinal that he signed and submitted to the Society of Independent Artists for their 1917 exhibition, which, it had been proclaimed, would exhibit all work submitted. Duchamp was a board member of the Society of Independent Artists and submitted the piece under the name R. Mutt, presumably to hide his involvement with the piece. After much debate by the board members (most of whom did not know Duchamp had submitted it) about whether the piece was or was not art, Fountain was hidden from view during the show.

Basically, Danielle's point was that we should, as Duchamp did, think out of the box and not find beauty or artistic expression only in areas deemed by worldly values as beautiful or artistic. Or, as The Art of Noise said "a work of art, or an effort to create beauty, was always regarded by some people as a personal attack."

Again, no justice is served by my meager and disjointed explanation, but I was really proud of her. For someone who is not going to major in arts, I was really surprised how much she used it in her speech. I just guess she's really well rounded.

Danielle was assigned, as all recent seniors of her high school (for my brother-in-law Andrew who is two years her senior completed one, too) are required to make a scrapbook including family, friends, early years and school life. And of course, this was on display during her graduation party. I didn't expect to have a large part dedicated to me in her scrapbook and I didn't, but she wrote some great things about me. I almost cried. She wrote about how she introduced me to manga and how she really liked to spend time with me. And I really like to spend time with her, also. She just really loves life and is very sure of herself and knows where she is going. She is so smart! I am so glad my husband has a great family I can be a part of.