my role

I haven't been here for a while... off playing the role I think God put me on this planet to play... the role of the squeaky wheel.

I hate this role. I really try to avoid it most of the time. I try to stay in my classroom, mind my own business, keep my head down and my mouth shut... but it is so danged hard when you bump up to bureaucratic mubbly-jub.

We have staff development meetings every Wednesday afternoon. Some are worth going to, some not. I have taught myself to do breathing exercises through the trying meetings... I used to knit, but was told I could not do that any more. I'm usually okay there. Learned not to roll my eyes, keep my mouth shut, fill in the evaluation sheet in a non-committal way... I survive.

But this year we have staff meetings twice a month after the staff development meetings. These meetings are technically after school and for the last several weeks I have one appointment or another after school on Wednesday... so while I make the first meeting, I have not been attending the latter. Personally I find it no big loss, but my principal stopped me Wednesday and asked me about it.

I told her I had doctor appointments...
She said, Every Wednesday?
I told her I was working through chronic pain issues.
She said I needed to make these meetings.
I told her I could go to most of my appointments after school on Wednesday, or I could take one day off a month...
She told me she would send me a meeting schedule
and today, I sent her my doctor appointment schedule for September... honestly, some of these appointments I scheduled two months ago...

but here is the thing, the first meeting I missed I asked what had gone on and was told she (the principal) told us about the new initiative to improve teacher attendance... if we have perfect attendance for a nine week period we get to wear jeans the last day of the quarter... oh, goody! And that they watched the blood born pathogens film. The next day I got the film from the nurse, watched it... and tried to forget I had ever heard the blue jeans thing...
the second meeting I missed... yesterday's meeting... the meeting where you needed to sign in to prove that you were there... announced that the vice principal had moved on to greener pastures, that the student advisor had moved into the asst. principal role, and that the last eighth grade teacher was finally found... and oh, we could all stay for going-away cake. I understand this took 45 minutes.

I hate to have my time wasted... hate it. I began to feel my self-control crack... So while I did send my appointment schedule as an attachment to the principal, I couldn't quite help telling her that I had been told last night's meeting announced Mr. B's departure and some cheerful going-away cake and that I trusted in the future meetings would be about meatier stuff...

You know, tomorrow she will want to have a talk with me. I think I am rather looking forward to it.

love and peace

play

I played today... oh, I worked too, but I began by playing and ended playing and in the middle, while I was working I was thinking about playing... so I pretty much played all day.

Last week while browsing altered art I found a site... here it is.. that had a altered page challenge. They challenged the viewer to take a book page, find words that make a poem and then decorate/alter the page to make it also an object of art... Today I did just that with a page from a discarded Goosebumps book... My poem, if you can't read it is:
Wow. I can fly!
weird
actually can fly
arms stretched out
sailed
through the air
he whimpered
"come back, Don't fly."
I laughed.

Anyway for a play-around, I am pretty impressed with the outcome. Took my original to a 7th Language arts teacher who, I know, likes to teach a poetry unit and she loved the idea...

Then I moved on to playing around with my altered book/art journal I've decided to do. Realising more and more, I just need to do this and quit worrying about raising to some bar I've set....
The painting began after school.... I am not a complete slacker...we had 'curriculum night'... no one ever visits my room, so I always treat these as personal art nights... I worked on the first two pages... beginning them much like I would begin a piece of furniture.

big funny plants, a turquoise sky... yellow ground, because I did not have the colors I like the best... words that I am only half happy with... few details... but I think as I push this around they will come.

by 6:55 this is what I had done and I needed to pack up to get out the door. I don't like the orange letters... I think a minty green would suit me better... and the yellow ground needs to be mellowed out. Also I think I may experiment with a glaze of some kind and some kind of collage action to give it more depth and interest...

This is fun and I will try bringing it home and working on it over the weekend, in between babysitting and putting everything away in my kitchen (new counter tops tomorrow!!!) Mostly I want to keep this 'just see what happens' frame of mind as I go through this process... in fact I want to see this as a process rather than a product... maybe as it gets done I will see that I have grown towards some new jumping off place...

Anyway, late. I ate a burger and fries with a chocolate milkshake while I watched a re-run of Gray's... I nearly never eat that way, but smelled french fries on the way home and I was hooked... my head if full of color and problem solving, my belly is full of fried food and calories and tomorrow is Friday. I'd go for a walk if I had any ambition at all... but I think I will just hit the shower and go to bed... so I can begin to look at art again tomorrow fresh and alive.

small discovery

I have been on an art making jag... the classes, school starting and the art that is related to that... being back in my classroom with room to work and great lighting. Plus right now I have some time... my schedule really kicks in next week and for the last two I have had time to play, to think and to work a little.

This is from a collage I started in July... I've been looking at it, looking at all of them really and struggling about what I could do, where I could start. I wanted something from these beginnings... that undefinable 'something' that we get ourselves hung on all too often... That's why I like painting furniture.. I don't feel a need to be inspired... I just have fun...and it always turns out wonderful.

So today, standing at my work table I was looking at these collages playing around with one( I thought I had an inspired idea, even though I knew I was copied an idea... why, why why?) and all of the sudden I thought, 'oh, heck, just do what you know... so on one I gessoed out a background that left a tree, on another I gessoed out an area and left a house... and on this one I left a bird, and all of the sudden I felt like I was cooking.

I need to remember I do not have to reinvent myself... I need to remember that trying to reinvent myself is a) trying; and we all know that is not how it works.. and b) I am perfect just the way I am and that if I do not start right here, I will never reach the perfect that I am becoming.....

I've been here before, but it was never art related.

So anyway, what do I like to paint? Chickens. Big leafy plants and cactus. Jaguars with teeth and stiff legs. Like Rousseau and Matisse with a little bit of Suzi Klotz contemporary, off beat southwest thrown in... primitive, flat, with outlines... so that is where I begin. Right here where my comfort zone is, where I know what I am doing, where it is fun.

today

Today I painted a table for my daughter. She is in Michigan visiting the in-laws, having fun on a farm near Lake Michigan. She will be home Tuesday. I felt 'deadline' looming... time to paint with no boys, no interruptions....

I began yesterday by painting the table a shade of brick orange. In church today, while pondering the Jesus walks on water story (I get something different every time I read that one) I sketched a design on the back of the bulletin.

My design was basically this. A square in the middle with a line running through it and a border line, that had this decorative square in the corner.

After I put in the lines I put four clumps of ZZ plant and wrapped a vine-type plant around the center line.

I filled in the background with a light blue, trying for lots of brush strokes and surface blended colors.

The other day I bought this dragonfly stamp... I couldn't help myself... I added it in.

But I thought the table still looked too plain... I stamped 'Dreams' onto one side....

and 'Dragonfly' onto the other.... still it needed more oomph....

so I pulled out my caulk pastels, filed them onto the table surface, and rubbed them in.

Tomorrow I need to go back and put a sealer coat on... I think before I do I will hit it a bit with my colored pencils to define some areas, put in some little detail...

If I'd had more time, I might have worked harder at mixing paints and not fallen back on the caulk... on the other hand, since the classes I have taken in the last week, I feel freed to mix it up quite a bit... I am interested to see how the table will look with the sealer, I am using a polyurethane, since it will be their main kitchen table... what I hope is that the sealer will bring the colors out more and make the whole piece more vivid....

happy to you

It is nearly 6 a.m. the morning of the 10th in Geneve, Switzerland... when she finally awakens it will be her birthday... and like so many of them since she has grown, I will be here and she will be there.

But I wish her a happy day, a joy-filled year, and a lifetime of blessings to see her through the tough times.

Happy to you, Roo.

I love you as much now as the first time I saw you.

love,

Mom

Art Unraveled: Part 2

Ooooo, two days of art classes... don't know if it is that or the caffeinated beverage I drank before class started tonight, but I am completely jazzed.

Plaster. Wax. Texture. Color. Possibilities, possibilities, possibilities.

Part of the fun is doing.... of course that is always part of the fun... starting something knowing nothing and discovering this works and that needs to be completely scraped away or covered up.... of course it is wonderful when you see that something you have done seems to be working out, or when you think of what you could do if you had your entire storehouse of this'n'thats to work into the piece.... but then you begin to wander around the room. You see that this lady over here has woven a ribbon into her piece and you stand and chat, ask questions and watch her work for a minute... then you stray to the woman who has nothing colored yet, but she has pressed these things into hers and you again quiz her on how she did this, where she could go from there... or the woman behind whose colors ran like a rainy day on the window. Lovely, you say. The wire... there are so many options to the wire, or instead of the wire... and it does not have to be a book you discover... it could be anything. Anything. A purse? Well, maybe no... at least not an entire purse, or anyway not a purse that would be overly functional... And I'm not interested in making a purse, really... but I could, that's all.

I didn't take any pictures, though I took my camera. (the excuse) My hands were completely filthy within minutes of starting... and there wasn't much to clean them off with... but the real reason is I was just too busy. So sorry. Maybe when I get whatever I have started finished... or at least to stage two... maybe I will take pictures then... but this thing, book, I started today is just for play. I have other ideas now that I have walked about the room.

I want to hold onto this.... this excitement, this memory of walking the room, talking to people, asking questions... this feeling that if I just would let myself I could unzip this bodysuit that says I'm thus and so, and let my real butterfly free, I could soar.

Art Unraveled

Today I played hookie from my teaching job and drove across town to the Embassy Suites to attend an encaustic class at Art Unraveled... what fun.

I have been enthralled with encaustics for six or seven years, since I saw my first encaustic painting in a gallery in Ketchum, ID. And since I found out what it was called I have been saying, I want to take an encaustic class... Well, it has taken quite some time, but I finally made it.


I took my camera and had planned on taking many pictures of the process, but only one was taken... once I got going on a piece it took hold of me and I thought of nothing else. This was my first one... at one point there was lots more on here, but I scraped a bunch off and ended up here. I love the bug and the dragon fly stamps.

These are the two pieces I made today. What I learned is I can begin this using white beeswax only and add in colored wax as I feel more confident... that most of your color can come from pastels, collage, and stamping.

While I was in Kentucky last month I picked up three grape leaves the insects had eaten out. I've been saving them in my journal just for this occasion. Now all three are preserved in wax.

I loved the bug pictures.... and they fit so well with the skeletal leaves... In this picture you can begin to see the translucence.

Here is another bug... I played around with adding color to this guy... see where I stamped Be Free... the other picture says Enter Here...

I go to work tomorrow, but tomorrow night I have another Art Unraveled class. Maybe I will use my camera more.

begun

Seems like I have been doing a lot of beginning lately.... beginning to take stock once again, beginning to remodel my bathroom, beginning to say yes to whatever is in the moment.... and beginning a bit of a business venture and of course, remodeling my kitchen.



First, the business venture... my friend Kel came for water aerobics, followed by dinner and wine at my place on Friday... as we sat and re-hashed out hopes and dreams she ran her hands over my dining room table (has a moon and trippin' chickens on it) and said, I love this table... and I said, Wait a minute!... ran down the hall and brought out the old bathroom scale I painted last week.... and she loved it too... in fact she said, We can sell these... she said she likes to market (I hate to market)... I can be the creator and she can be the sales guru... anyway we are going to go for it... first of all one-of's... then, if we get some wind under out wings, maybe a bit more... fun, huh?

Oddly enough both of us, without having discussed it first have decided we just want to have fun... we are sooooo tired of trying.

Above is a cabinet door I painted years ago... I love this cabinet even though it has a semi-broken door...the cat did it... and since I painted it I have known one of things I love to do is this kind of super stylized painting.



And then there is the kitchen....


Yesterday my great friend and contractor V. came over and we pulled out the cabinet I have always hated in the dining room and the cabinets above the stove... even though the place looks a wreck, I love the openness that has been created. Going to paint the walls the palest glass blue to match the glass tiled wall....

Here is V. today... masking and texturizing because this area is going to be much more open.... we found a hood on line at Fabyka ... V. was very impressed with the quality and price... I have ordered it and within the week should have it for installation.

Cannot wait to have this all done and have a big party! It will be so great! I might even be able to bake a decent batch of cookies for once... (I have always blamed the stove.)