Work of Art Challenge Complete

Okay.  So our first Work of Art Challenge has come to a close.  Big thanks to all the participants.  Granted there were only four of us, but we are the pioneers, so that makes us awesome. I actually learned a lot about myself through this project.  For one, I learned that if I’m not inspired having a project to do can really suck the life right out of you. I loved receiving the entries and getting my husband and cousin to sit down for an art day.  I also LOVE the idea that I will be sending Alien Army out to new friends.  As far as my participation in the challenge,  I really struggled in the beginning.  I kept going back and forth on whether to go with something political or personal and I ended up feeling really anxious with the whole thing.  Eventually I just kind of surrendered and the project became fun again.

I am thinking for the next challenge it might be something more to the effect of “who wants to make something in exchange for alien army?!”  More like artist trading cards. We’ll see.  Regardless, I am honored that Mary, one of very favorite art bloggers  and her friend Tina joined the challenge.  And a BIG thank you to Ev, who always stands by me and is  open to new things.

Here are the projects!

1. By Tina Grey

Tina wrote the following about her piece:

My headline was from the November 16 edition of the New York Times online: “After Giving Up Job for Occupy Protest, Questions for Future”.  It was about a man named Tim Weldon, who holds a master’s degree, quitting his job helping people with disabilities find jobs to work on a think tank for the Occupy Wall Street protest full-time.  The article follows him on his last day of work where he is helping a man with Down’s Syndrome find work at a pizza place.  The man brings a CD of children singing patriotic songs to play in Tim’s car while they drive around town getting him ready for his first day of work.  Tim says he has never considered himself patriotic before but is moved to tears by the CD because, for him,  his involvement in the protest has taught him what patriotism is all about.

The article and video moved me to create this little piece.  I used newspaper, acrylics and ink.  The tents are, of course, removable.

2.  By Mary of MaryMaking.blogspot.com

Mary wrote:

I debated about what type of headline to focus my piece around: political satire, nature based,ect. Ultimately I decided to create a piece centered around our local paper, Sun’s headline, “Remembering the Victims and Their Lives.” Just to give you a background: On Wednesday October 12th, a man in a dispute with his ex-wife about the custody of their son,  walked into the hair salon where she worked and shot and killed her and 6 others (injuring another) and killed another man sitting in his car outside. Seal Beach has been described as “Mayberry By the Sea”. So as you can imagine, this tragedy has been devastating for this tight knit community.

My mixed media piece (watercolor, acrylic, chalk pastel and newspaper) is meant to honor the 8 lives lost as well as to remind us all to be kind to each other and to treasure the lives we have.

3. By Evan Cherry

Evan said:

“I saw this article in the paper about Occupy Wall Street and it inspired me to make this project.  I enjoyed making it.”

4.  By Meri Cherry

My headline was “When Did the Rules Change?” from an article in The New York Times Magazine.  It’s about the road to success and how it used to be that if you worked hard and followed the rules you were almost guaranteed a successful life.  Now, it is much more challenging to achieve success even if you have a college degree.  There are so many other factors; outsourcing to India and China, technology, etc.  Today, we need specific sought after skills and the ability to go with the ups and downs of life.  I recently had an experience with a graphic designer friend who criticized my decision to use CrowdSpring.com for a logo.  Crowdspring, which I HIGHLY recommend, is a place to post graphic design projects for a fee of your choice, and artists from all over the world submit proposals.  The winning designer receives the money.  Anyway, my friend felt really strongly that it wasn’t fair to the design industry to support this kind of ideology. I thought about it a lot.  When I saw this article I thought it was a good fit.  I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this.  I think it’s a fascinating conversation.  My project is meant to show the game of life and all the different ways people choose to travel the road to success.

Thanks again for everyone’s participation!  Great experience.

Collage Self Portraits

I LOVE this project.  It was so much fun to make and the kids had a good laugh at the results.  We call them whacky, yet beautiful.  Just like people.  I got the idea from an art project I saw at a friends house.  I embellished it a bit here and there.  I’d love to give the creator credit, but I don’t know who she is.  The steps are pretty easy.  Basically, take a 9×17 piece of construction paper and hold horizontally.  I pre cut heads, necks and chests for all the kids.  I gave step by step directions for gluing them down.  For the chest, the kids picked a pattern paper and glued on the template, then cut around the template.  This kind of cutting is great for kindergarteners because there is a guide/barrier for cutting.  After the body parts were glued down we added the border, which was made from pre-cut small squares from old magazines.  I tried to pick colorful magazine covers for this part so the paper was a little thicker.  After, I set up tons of magazine faces of girls, boys, men and women on the floor and the kids got to choose which ones they wanted to cut from.  This was crucial because looking through magazines with a group of 16 five years olds is not the greatest.  This way they could focus right in on the facial features they wanted to use.  After all the facial features were glued on, Brigitte helped the kids find letters in the mags to spell their names and paste to their shirts.  Last but definitely not least, the kids directed me on the hairstyle they wanted and I cut it out.  A few did it themselves.  I was okay with this since we had already spent a nice amount of time on the other parts.  Another way to do it would be to paint on the hair.  The likeness to the designers on some of these is pretty hilariously spot on.  Super fun project and a great keepsake at home.  I want to frame mine in a lucite box frame.

This was my sample.

Art Studio For Kids

I finally completed the art studio I’ve been working on transforming for the past few weeks.  This project came out of nowhere/my morning pages and poof, there it was.  I had no idea how much I’d enjoy this process and how much I would learn from it.  I really had to trust myself and my vision and I did just that.  It was truly amazing.  I hope the family loves it as much as I do!!!

Special thanks to Ev for drilling, consulting and loving me through my doubts.  Thanks to Ted for his super duper uber camera for the after shots and thanks to my friend Chrissy, for being a good one.

Beauty is Everywhere

One of the greatest learnings from doing The Artist’s Way has been seeing beauty in unexpected places and then doing something about it.  Somehow my morning pages have inspired me to slow down, notice things and create.  I look at these photos and feel uplifted.  They are so happy and colorful.

My class had an amazing time today creating their Mother’s Day projects from egg cartons and water colors.  We’re about halfway done.  More photos to come upon completion.  I don’t want any moms snooping around here prematurely.

Good Morning

I’m off to the farmer’s market.  Fresh and delicious post to come.  In the meantime, I came across these amazing Golden Press cards I’ve been saving forever in hopes to someday border my future son or daughter’s room with them.  The whole pack is called A Shufflebook by Richard Hefter and Martin Sephen Moskof.  I’ve never seen them anywhere else.  The whole pack is amazing.   Here are some of my favs.

Starting

My morning pages made me do it.  And my love of art blogs.  And my thinking that if she can do it, I can do it.  Granted I thought the same thing when a group of friends were going rock repelling in Israel, and as it turned out, I definitely COULD NOT do it.  But this I can do.  I’m writing to share my love of art and craft and to gently pressure myself into creativity.

So, my first project to share I made with my new best friend, Duct Tape.  I mean, this stuff rules.  It comes in every color.  You can get it easily at Michael’s, which happens to be just down the street from my house and it’s awesome.  I started off a few weeks ago by making duct tape bracelets, which my kindergartners are now obsessed with.  Last night I graduated to something a little larger.  I made a duct tape carrying case.  I’m not sure what I’ll keep in it yet.  Possibly, duct tape.  I might also make a bunch and use them in my classroom for book carriers to place on the tables.  Anyway, here’s a photo.  I think it came out pretty cool.

If you want to do one yourself, it’s pretty simple.  Here are the directions.

What you need:

duct tape, a brown shopping bag from the market, scissors

1. Cut the brown bag in half.  You can do this in anyway you want really.  This is just how I did it.

2.  Choose your pattern and cover one side in duct tape.  I made the side panels with blue and the front panels with yellow and hot pink.

3.  Turn the bag over and do the same to the other side.  I did mine all in silver.

4.  You might need to fold over excess tape on either side our you can cut it.

5.  Cover the handles with tape.  This part is a little tricky but I have faith in you.  Just cut off the excess part and fold over the edges.  It’s ok if it’s not perfect.  What ever is?

6.  Cut the bottom panel from the bottom of the shopping bag and cover with tape.

7.  Take the bottom panel and tape it into the bottom from the inside by kind of bending the tape so it hits the seem and touches the bottom and side panels.  This part takes a little patience.

8.  And viola!  You’ve got your duct tape carrying case.  You can add stickers, sharpie pictures, jewels, whatever you want.

After doing this once you’ll probably notice that you can make really anything out of duct tape.  I plan on making a little tube top and skirt next in a cool striped pattern.  I’ll post step by step photos for that one.

Enjoy!