::grateful::

I am grateful for:

My dog, Kitty

 My wonderful friends

My family

A fabulous artist's weekend workshop

The beach at sunset

A little time out to play chess

{this moment}

an occasional friday post by me...inspired by soulemama's friday ritual.

watch: Blackfish

image from indiewire.com

I watched Blackfish, a 2013 documentary about Tilikum, an Orca held in captivity, a few weeks ago. Today I heard part of a discussion on NPR about it and I was reminded how moved I was by this film. I recommend you watch it. I would be surprised if anyone comes away from watching this and not wish for the release of all captive Orcas (and dolphins and sealions etc.) everywhere. It's time well spent if you are curious about these animals. I was fascinated by the information about their emotional lives. They have the capacity to experience emotions more broadly and deeply than humans they have language, they have strong bonds.

If you do watch it, or already have, please let me know what you think!

a still from the movie, Orcas in the wild.

2014 Auction Project: Complete and Auctioned Off!

The dream catcher project is complete! This book and print together went for $1,200 this Saturday at our school auction. What a project! I'm pleased to be finished and have it passed on to the new owners. The book was my favorite part from concept to completion. I love the poems the children wrote along with the stamps they carved that related to their words. I took the stamps they made and designed their poem pages with them. This was something I had planned to have the children do on their own. Stamping may seem simple, but it's easy to smudge, and composition is not something that comes out of nowhere. So, in the end I used their stamps and their words and designed their poem pages for them. I used acid free paper in different colors. They wrote their poems by starting with four words: a person, an animal, an action and a natural element. I had them start each sentence with "I am". For example here is Max's poem with his words underlined:

I am the brown bear, I protect my babies and give them life.
I am a lake filled with fish.
I am laughter, strong and joyous.
I am the sister of playfulness connected by a dream.

I've always wanted to write a book! Technically I didn't write it, but I had a hand in the writing and design. And I honestly think I will make more!

Let's not forget the hand bowl! The kids love to play with clay. Who doesn't? We started with clay slabs, traced the kids hands, cut them out, had them stamp designs onto them and then I connected their hands to create a bowl. I made two of these. One broke in the kiln catastrophically. This bowl was auctioned off for $950 this Saturday. Sadly, I did not remember to take a final picture of the bowl, but I have one I shot quickly after it came out of the kiln:

{this moment}

an occasional friday post by me...inspired by soulemama's friday ritual.

2014 School Auction Project: Clay hands

It was a one day project - for the kids. It remains to be seen how many days it will add up to for me to finish this piece. Much more challenging than I thought it would be to put the hands together. If I could do it all again I think I would not. The hand making was a blast for the kids and really only took one hour with the children helping me clean up. The prep work for it was also minimal, maybe 1.75 hours. It took me many hours to put this baby together and I'm not sure I could do it any faster the second time around. With 12 hands and a 17 1/2" diameter kiln I had to put the hands pretty close together. I can tell you I will glaze it all one color and not individually underglaze each hand as I originally planned. In the end, though I think this project is far less time consuming than the print project I am doing with the kids in addition to this.

I surely have my 40 hours of volunteer time by now!

2014 School Auction Project: Phase 2

The kids did such a wonderful job creating their feather stamps. It's time for me to put them together into a dream catcher print. I struggled with this one. Perhaps because there were so many parts and I like things to fit just so. It took me a while to get comfortable with exactly how to execute the design, but I'm on my way now, after hours of playing with the stamps and ink colors, I'm on my way! I'm using acid free paper and ink for this project. I decided to just buy a good quality drawing pad (18"x24") and use the paper from that rather than a single sheet of really good paper. I'm glad I did, I needed a lot of practice and made a lot of errors. Good drawing pads aren't cheap, mind you, but in the end I think it was a wise choice.

This week I will go back into school and have the kids make a stamped page for the book that goes with the dream catcher theme. Hopefully I will be binding this book by Saturday. Hopefully!

Dream Catcher: each child made one feather for this piece. (this isn't the final, it's crooked, I know)