new art series

making your own art is about personal expression. i struggle with that. i don't like to dive into my feelings or experiences, i guess i prefer to talk about them.
being surrounded by great working artists in the past months, and knowing that being a working artist will enhance my skills as an art teacher, i decided to explore my interests. i typically draw fun cartoons, or paint scenes that have little meaning when i think about it.
i have always been intrigued by the older man's face. i have done a lot of cartooning and pencil drawings, and i want to do more. i started trying to think of why. i typically answered with "old man have wrinkles that are really interesting to draw". but now i am thinking it's a little more deeper than that. i grew up on the same street with an amazing man: Bob Tracey. he was in his 70's when i was growing up on early street, and we had an amazing bond. we'd sit on a bench in the park and talk. he has met every president since kennedy, and he was named citizen of the nation by a president, he served in 2 wars and earned a purple heart. he inspired me to volunteer, to go for what i want, to have pride. this lead me to believe that maybe those wrinkles i adore so much represent stories of the man's past. for every wrinkle is an amazing story that needs to be told.
so i have decided to do an intense art study on older men. men that tell great stories. i want to paint, collage, draw, photograph these men. the man in the picture above is a man i was taught by today for an art teacher development day. he told great stories inbetween teaching us techniques in drawing, so i decided he would be my first candidate. i am uncomfortable about asking people that i don't know to take their pictures-let alone portraits, but i got the courage today, i told him my purpose and he was honored. i was start soon on his first portrait, and future portraits i hope to also make are bob tracey and my grandfather.

Our honeybee population

Have you noticed we haven't seen as many bees around in the past year? Being that I worked at Botanical Gardens, we took notice because they were a part of our daily lives and affecting our plants. We teach lessons on honeybees, and things were changing...
There were theories about where they were, one of them being that cell phone signals were confusing the bees so they weren't able to return to their hives. I found out tonight, that was a false statement made by a doctor in Britain.
On PBS's Nature, I learned that 1/3 of our honeybee population in the past year has disappeared. Have you thought about what bees help make in our daily lives? Besides the obvious-honey, they also pollinate our flowers-which produces fruit and vegetables. The honey contributes to our peanut butter, breads, desserts, etc.
The cause of this all-CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder is said to be a combination of problems. Ranging from pesticides, virus, and malnutrition. These things make the bees sick and disoriented, and at times the bee travels up to 3 miles away from their hive to pollinate and they are too weak or confused to return to the hive.
There are just certain things that grab my attention, and this was one of them. Here is a link if you want to learn more: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/bees/.


Side note: I saw "Into the Wild" last night, an absolutely fabulous movie. It's about this college grad that dreams of going to Alaska-no money, no partner, just him and nature. It was a great realization of what we depend on in life. "Money makes us cautious" is one thing he said, but at the same time, love is a big part of being happy in life. I highly recommend seeing the movie.

Now carved

Temp's is a skull with sunglasses, mine is a witch on a broomstick, and Sal's is a cat on a broomstick. It was fun!!

We've made our decision

the final choices for temp, me and sal

Pumpkins!

so many choices!

Saturday

Temp looks like a model here!
Good times!
Old buddies!
Reunion!
Laughter with good friends! Happy B-day Emilie!

bowling w/ my buddies

good times!

Garfield

1st mobile blog. this is sal curled up in a box reminscent of Garfield

Altered Books

Temp and I were feeling creative, so we decided to start a new project idea. A couple of months ago, I saw a set of encyclopedias on the side of the road that were extremely outdated-yet in good condition. We picked them up and brought them home in hopes of doing this altered books project with my students. Now, since I know my classes, I am teaching all one class to 127 students, and 1 set of encyclopedias won't cover all of them. So Temp and I each took one for ourselves.
Altered Books is when somebody recycles a book that typically could otherwise be thrown in the landfill-or it could be new, and makes it their own. From cover to cover, they can rip, paint, glue, collage, cut, disassemble, whatever they want to that book to make it their own.
I have decided to make mine more of a journal or scrapbook. I have memories of old boyfriend letters, invitations, photos, newspapers that span important events in my life dating back to the 80's. I was a scrapbooker at the age of 7, and people probably don't know that about me.
Anyway, I have a lot of loose stuff that I wanted to catalog, and this is my opportunity. I am going to combine my art skills with my memories and come up with a giant yearbook of my life! (Not in any special order). Each time I make new pages, I am going to blog about it. Enjoy!