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.