Art in Action

                                
How cool is it to see the art you have done hanging so beautifully in a patrons' home. I did these six pieces as a commission two years ago and was lucky enough to be able to see and photograph them all famed and hung. I especially enjoyed the reflection that showed up in the lower image from the window. I love all the juxtaposition of religious imagery.

What does an orange tree taste like?

I have recently become intrigued by the art of cooking. NPR a few weeks ago did a story on the new cook book by Rene Redzepi called, "Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine. The recipes in this book use ingredients from grass and bark to dry ice and any other thing that might even be considered to be edible. The idea is that if you are in an evergreen forest that has blue berry bushes and a stream running through it that the recipe will reflect that and taste like it's environment. So, I am not by any means a learned chef, but I wanted to try my hand at such a cool endeavor. I live in Arizona where it is hot and dry and there are orange trees everywhere. I therefor decided to make a little orange cake using orange pulp in the mix, and orange meringue topped with a dashing of ground bark from an orange tree with a little leaf to garnish. In short, it was pretty good but not by any means amazing. I would have to say though a worthy  and fun first attempt.

Kids, don't try this at home!

 The first day I worked on this painting I did not wear gloves and ended up with paint up to my elbows.

It's so much fun to get in there and paint with your hands as the paint brush. Takes me back to the days of finger painting as a child.

This isn't your water soluble, basically edible paint though.

Update

I made it into the final round of judging! My painting has been sent off to Salt Lake, with the help of some friends of my mother-in -law, and has officially arrived at the LDS Church Art Museum. I so grateful that they could take it and I didn't have to mail it. I'm sure it would have cost upwards of $100 to mail it. And a side note about getting things framed. Don't try to do it over the holidays as all the framers are on vacation and leave yourself a solid three weeks to have one made if you are going that route. As you can guess I fell into these two traps and almost didn't have a frame for my painting. With a lot of luck and searching seven stores I found a pre-made one that worked pretty darn good. Whew! Now I have to wait to hear if I got judged in to have my painting displayed at the museum....and then I wait to hear it I won anything. I think I will know the end results by April or March. I'm so excited! =)

Student Art Show

            In November we had our first Student Art Show at the Learning Foundation and Performing Arts Charter School, where I work as their art teacher/ bus driver. I teach an elective class of Junior High and High School Students and I do special projects with the 4th - 6th graders. It's a relatively small school being K-12 and only about 300 students. So, as a result, we decided to include the whole school in the art show. Any student who wanted to enter a piece could. We had just over 200 entries. Not bad! We also had a viewers choice award contest so the students could have the chance to win prizes and, we had a silent auction. The silent auction was designed as a fundraiser for the art department as we get very little from the school for the art classes. We were a little nervous at how well the show would go since it was the first one we had ever had but, it was quite well received. We had a lot of people come and awesome support when it came to the silent auction. All the pieces that were up for auction were sold! Yay! We are looking forward to doing another Art Show this spring as well and making it even better than the last one!

Of Vibrancy and Weddings

 I can't help but ogle over these colors.

My husband was a best man at a wedding this last Saturday. I have had the chance to get to know this couple over the past two and a half years since me and A.J. got married. A.J. and the groom Aaron have been best friends for years and years now; something that I can't even begin to imagine as I never lived in more than one place for longer than three or four years. All my childhood friends have long since moved on as I have to new adventures. A part of me really wishes for this kind of connection with people and so I find myself living some childhood dreams through my husband who gave a great best man's speech about falling in love and forgiveness. What great memories we are building with A.J's old friends and my new friends, and such vibrancy and warmth to remember such occasions by.

Making it fun!

I have not as of yet written anything about me teaching art at the Learning Foundation and Performing Art Charter School. I am their Art teacher and Bus Driver. An interesting combo but I enjoy it. The question arose when it was time to have the art students draw a still life; how to make it interesting and fun? I enjoy still lifes myself but kids in general do not. The typical bowl of fruit is what every student dreads. So then it dawned on me. It's almost Halloween, why not put Halloween objects together in a still life. We also, did the still lifes on black paper with chalk pastels for that extra awesome "pop". I drew a couple of sketches for the kids as examples to help demonstrate how to use the pastels on black paper and how to create an interesting composition. I had forgotten how much I enjoy using pastels. I kinda stared to feel addicted to drawing these pictures and I believe I am going to be dragging out my pastels more often. It's amazing how much we learn teaching.

Inspiration

My purple stripey socks are so fun I couldn't help but take lots of pictures of my feet.

Halloween is so great for the imagination.

I began to think about ballerinas with stripey socks.

So, I of course had to pull out my ballet slippers.

I think that stripey socks will definitely be showing up in one of my ballerina paintings before too long.

Peace Reigns

The next painting in my ballerina series. The goal for this series was originally 20 paintings but with all the other projects I've got going and also teaching art at a charter school, it is taking my longer than I had hoped. I have decided that in order to get a little bit of peace back into my life, as this painting suggests, I need to cut back on the number of extra projects I am taking on so that I can focus on getting....oh say.... the rest of this series done in a timely manner. Time goes by too fast and I always try to cram in too many awesome projects. Time to evaluate which projects would be good, which project would be better, and which project would be BEST!

A Young Woman's Influence

I just finished this one and entered it into the LDS Church Art Competition. Now we play the waiting game to see if I even get accepted into the competition. I will know by the end of December.

I was majorly influenced by the Young Women that I work with at church. We have such great Young Women; if you can't tell, I am quite proud of them. The theme for the competition is Make known His wonderful works. The painting illustrates how one young women's influence for good can in turn influence others who in turn influence others for good. It's a beautiful cascade that snowballs and can effect many people. I have seen this with our own girls in our ward how even small acts of service and kindness change peoples lives.