Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The Return of the ...Part 3

So I couldn't continue that last post after that last piece, I just...*sigh* anyway..

This is the last image I have loaded up on my computer, so I will endeavor to get more images loaded up at a later date. But this is 6 inches wide by 11 inches tall. Its about a quarter inch thick and made of pure chocolate. The image is from a Japanese cartoon called Card Captor Sakura about a little girl that accidentally awakens a book full of magical cards each with their own unique power and the little girl names Sakura is responsible for capturing all the cards and putting them back in the book to keep them from making mischief. My daughter loves this cartoon and she wanted a Card Captor Sakura themed birthday party and she wants to be Card Captur Sakura for Halloween. So this card was a piece that went on top of the birthday cake (which was in the shape of the book from the show) and I will have more pictures of that to put on here later once I get them down loaded. I am currently making her costume for her and will have that done soon.

Sooooo that's all I have for now and I will see you again on the next episode of MORE WORK WORK WORK!!!

I'm Back Part 2

So carrying on with this such and such bla bla bla stuff.

This was fun,  I did this back in digital imaging sophomore year, we needed to take an image of another piece of artwork and insert another image into it using photoshop. This painting is by Angelica Kauffmann and its called Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as her Treasures. Its one of my favorite paintings because it speaks to me as a mother who values children above all other things. So it was fun to insert my face in place of Cornelia's.

This was a sculpture that I did with my daughter when we were walking home one day. It was fall of 2011 and there were all these large lovely fall leaves on the ground. So we just picked up a whole bunch of ones we thought were pretty and brought them home. I had this old black mask that reminded me of the leave shape and some pretty colored yarn like fall. So Emily and I used my glue gun, yard, wire, and some sheer green fabric that was embroidered with vines and leaves to create this autumn fairy looking creature. This is not a complete picture of the sculpture, but its the one reference I have on my computer right now. I will endeavor to get a full pic of it up soon.

This was a fun ink and colored pencil drawing that I did. The image is really dark because I took it with a crappy camera (I have a new camera now). But despite how dark it looks I like that about it, because it feels more real to me when I think about how much a love Seattle and what it has meant to me.







This was an accordion style book that I made for my friends birthday present. It was also apart of an assignment for my book arts class spring semester of my junior year. I had all these lovely blank cards that had pretty red flowers embellished on the covers of all the cards and I thought about using the blank insides of the cards as picture frames for images that I found in a art catalog of some pretty paintings that I felt my friend would like. I bound the entire compilation in a fitted sleeve that closed with a jewelry chain that wrapped around an encased crystal bead to keep it all together. This was really fun and I am looking forward to making more of these in the future.

This is a painting that I did in my Biological Anthropology class when I went to Cascadia Community College. We were learning about malnutrition and how that has affected people all over the world. I was moved by the affect that this had on children, that the education and understanding of how food works and the nutritional needs of the human body are not understood and/or unavailable. That these are things we take for granted and that when I think about how I am just one person on this giant planet, but in a society so fortunate in the case of food that we feel nothing when we simply throw away our left overs, but that there are children in other parts of the world that when they physically can't move due to lack of food are believed that they are about to turn into snakes and are then taken out and left in the wilderness. The  people that do that believe that if they go out the next day and the child is gone then it has become a snake and are left to wonder if the next time they see a snake that if it is their child. Yet what is obvious is that the children are then left helpless to defend themselves against predators and are likely eaten alive. Makes me cry every time I think about it. So I had to respond, I had to speak up and say something in the best way I could, through art. So I understand this painting is very heavy handed, and a hit over the head, but it was a sense of desperation and despair that I painted this with and a desire to want to bash the world over the head and scream in the face of apathy and say WE CAN SAVE THEM IF WE ONLY GOT TOGETHER AND TRIED DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!! Children should NEVER  have to suffer like this, NEVER EVER EVER EVER!!!!!







Did You Miss Me!!

Well Hello,

Today is October 10th in the crazy insane year of 2012. This year is full of wonder, excitement, terror, turmoil, panic, and workworkwork. I just turned 29 years old, my daughter just turned 5, my daughter just started kindergarten, I'm in my senior year of college (as my fifth year of college in a row), I am claiming four disciplines for graduation (drawing, painting, print, and sculpture), I have a part time job with a great boss and co-workers that could give him a promotion after graduation, my husband just quit his job because we decided to purchase our own business (its a game store), I am taking care of merchandising and marketing for the business, we only have one car, I have an one and a half hour commute each morning to get to school on time and I work every single day of the week. So the thought of having to try to update this blog on top of all that is quite daunting as I hate things like face book or anything that involves putting your person on display because I like to keep  most things private, at the same time I recognize that the world is against me on that and the best I can hope for is to be deliberate about what I am willing to share and in how much detail.

The purpose for this post is to update this blog with information about my art practice, pieces that I've made, and the crazy roller coaster ride that will be this journey going forward. So to start this I am putting up all the older pictures that I have on my computer with information and then future posts will have more current information, once I figure out how my new camera works.

So first thing I'd like to share is!









This is a mural that I did for Maywood Hills Elementary School. It came about while I was getting my Associates from Cascadia Community College. I established communications with the Northshore school District and offered to paint a mural for them to be kicked off on Martin Luther King Jr's Day of Service on January 18th 2010. Maywood contacted me for a mural and I worked with the principle to determine a space and content for the painting. We knew that we wanted influential figures to be in the design and we wanted the students to have buy in with the design as well. The principle related the desire for which figures to be included with Martin Luther King Jr. based on their involvement with civil and human rights issues. The figures chosen were Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Caesar Chavez (I don't have a pic of that portion of the wall for some reason). For the students I created a home work assignment that simply asked them to either write or draw about what was their favorite thing about school. Out of 500 students I got about 60-65% of the assignments back and was able to put all of their ideas into the design.

The entire mural is about 700 square feet and is on two sides of a breezeway wall. We even painted the end caps. The grid method was used to transfer the drawing onto the surface of the walls. Parts of the design were in collaboration with Miriam Keith who was also attending Cascaida Community College at the same time.

The process for getting it all together was fun, I called Rodda Paint Corporate out of Oregon and told them about the project and asked if there was anyway they could help us. They were very generous and donated all the paint from the bone yards of their stores, and were able to provide some materials like brushes and buckets and such. So huge major whoopie thanks to Rodda Paint for all their help!

We worked it out with the teachers of all the classrooms to have their students come out in groups of eight or ten and we would designate sections of the design for them to choose from for painting. In most cases they got to pick the color they wanted to paint with. This was great because we got to talk to them about the design, their color choices, and how they thought everything would go together. They were very excited to see the ideas they shared visualized in the design.

For the initial Day of Service we had about eight volunteers come out, and that was mostly to remove the old artwork and boards from the breeze way and wash down the walls to get ready for primer. I also had a few more volunteers for getting the wall primed, but close to two months in it was just Miriam and me going out there. We had budgeted about three months to get the project done, but due to lack of volunteers we went past the deadline and it was my responsibility to finish. This was a very valuable lesson because the mural became another job for me and I was out there five days a week, rain or shine or snow, (thank goodness it was covered) for 5 to 6 hours at a time for an additional three months after the deadline to make sure that it got finished. I will never forget that experience because I learned so many things about the joy of teaching art to children, the satisfaction of finishing such a large project, and the passion and desire to continue to do public work that affects the community.

I now realize how long this post has gone on, aaannnnd I am thinking that I will just post some of my other stuff in another one so there because its my blog and I do what I want! :P

*hugs*