Skip to main content

what have I been up to?

Art glorious art!  Oh how I love my job!  Children, Art, Children, Art...throw in a little nature and I am in heaven.  I recently curated our annual art show for the students and after weeks of labor and months of planning it went off without a hitch.  Here are a few photos to celebrate its success:
The picture above is an example of some of the children's seasonal explorations
And here is a sampling of a classroom space study, complete with a collaborative robot and solar system...
 In this picture you can see both our study of watercolor media and the powerful immergent project of worry dolls that evolved over several months in the studio.  Each doll is accompanied by an original story from the artist.
 These are a few of the self portraits and interviews we did using water soluble oil pastels.  Every child in the school made one and I compiled yearbooks using their photos, portraits and interviews to sell at the show.
 Here is another angle of the space display...
 And here is a photo of the Autumn door we created as a mural in the style of Tony Ortega, 95% of the artistry on this door was done by children aged 3-5.  How great is that!
The school spent several months learning about Egypt.  Here is a sphinx that we made with the help of my dear friend and sculptor, Amy Laugesen.
 And here is the pyramid and palm trees we made during our Egyptian immersion.
 These are some of the beautiful oil pastels created by the students
 and a few more surrounding one of the murals we made with Tony Ortega this year in the studio.
 And this captivating piece of art was done by my budding resident artist BODHI who is also one of the students I get to work with...can we all say "PROUD".
And here I am moments before the show.  Proud of the show but my greatest reward is that if you ask any of our students if they are an artist they will say YES without hesitation or doubt.  They are celebrated, inspiring, creative artists and I hope that truth will plant itself deep in their hearts and continue to grow throughout their days.

Comments

This is SO WONDERFUL! How wonderful that you have tapped, and nurtured, the creative spirit of these children! Amazing, all of it!!!
Wind said…
I am completely inspired!!! I am going to get some black (construction?) paper or something similar to create frames and I want to cover the walls with Cedars art! She will love it! Thank you honey!
ProfoundAlchemy said…
"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."





— Albert Einstein

Popular posts from this blog

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.

connection

It has been an interesting few weeks.  I have been contemplating connection a great deal as a basic need of being human.  I watch my fellows rushing from one place to the next, gathering technology to themselves like talismans of protection against the emptiness of separation- a perpetual flutter of texts and calls and music and smart phones and GPS and more.  Yet so many of us are longing for the central cord of union- with one another, with ourselves, with life.  It's as if we are frightened of being disappointed, so we retreat deeper and deeper into the tight orbit of self.  My teacher recently filled me in on a little secret...the meaning of life is to LIVE IT .  That isn't tidy or safe.  It is messy and vulnerable and unpredictable and unknown.  And yet LIFE extends an invitation to us in every moment asking us to unleash the breathtaking beauty hidden in our hearts and experience, EXPERIENCE, experience life.  Life isn't singular. ...