TAGGED by Rosa

Well this is a first for me! Rosa tagged me yesterday. The way that this works is to reveal 8 things about yourself that new friends and Internet contacts may not know about you. So I hope these will tell a little about myself.

1. I am a huge greyhound aficionado. I currently have two with perhaps one more to be added to the pack. One look in the eyes of this noble breed sent me to the deep end. I will always have greyts in my life from now on.

2. I have taken courses in animal communication and have found that I have helped some good friends through difficult times with their animals.

3. I have a MS in Food Microbiology and in my former life worked for Abbott Labs as a research scientist in the fermentation area.

4. I am a dance Mom. Well I don't dance but my children do. I take them to and from their venues and enjoy their performances (I go to 8 or 9 performances of their Nutcracker every year).

5. I enjoy nonfiction especially anything about George Washington. I think last year there were 4 or 5 new biographies about him and I read every one. He is my idol.

6. Oh here is one for you, I studied martial arts for about 5 years and earned a black belt in a form of Tai Kwon Do.

7. This should be no surprise to anyone but I am a pig. My art studio constantly looks like a tornado went through it. I thrive on chaos.

8. I studied 5 years of Spanish in high school (in AP Spanish) and two years in college. When we got to reading Don Quixote in old Spanish, I gave up on a Spanish minor and stuck to a minor in chemistry. Believe it or not, Chemistry was easier! But the Spanish came in so handy when I traveled through out Spain back in the early 90s.

OK there you have it. Not very exciting. I am thinking the things I picked to tell about myself tell just as much as the actual items.

I would love to tag the Granola Poet. He just fascinates me!

Back tomorrow with my found art.

k

Found Art Tuesday 7-17-07: JUMP

Killing two birds with one stone is often how I operate. This weeks found art project was no exception. The mini collage project for Claire's art class became my found art for this week. I demonstrated the project in stages and when I was finished, I had my found art piece. I wanted to accomplish several things with this project: 1. to introduce the kids to collage and mixed media,

2. to encourage the kids to have fun with this art form at any time,

3. to give them a small project that they can finish and actually use.

So altered coasters came to mind. I detailed the steps for them by demonstrating each phase. Gesso the coaster, add some paint and scribbles, overlay with a telephone book page, age that page by removing some of it with masking tape, paint the page, use a rubber stamp to stamp a letter of the alphabet, look through magazines or old books for something that begins with that letter, adhere that cut out image. I decided to use modge podge for the glue (recommendation of the kids art teacher) and it worked fine when I did it a home. The modge podge will seal the work and they can use it as a coaster if they want to. So here is my "J" coaster. The title is of course...JUMP. Simple but it accomplished several goals that I had for myself this Tuesday :)

The kids had a blast getting all messy. I promise to scan Claire's soon. I ran out of coasters nd she used a small piece of matte board. I love the colors she used.

k

Carabosse 7-16-07

In-between working on the little collage project for my daughter's art class, I finally finished a work for the Gallery in the Garden show, July 28th. I was so inspired by the Sleeping Beauty performance that my children were in in June, that I decided to create a couple of the characters from the ballet. Mind you, these are my interpretations. The dancers did not look like this :)

Carabosse is a mixture of excitement and danger. She can be beautiful and ugly and very wicked. This mixed media and collage is 11 by 14. I used acrylics, inks, found papers and objects, oil pastels, and markers. I actually drew the image of Carabosse on some old leather looking scrapbook paper, cut her out and then collaged her to the work. I added color to her face using my pastels and acrylic paints (the oil pastels are water soluble and mix nicely with the paint). I gave her some serious eye make-up (just like the dancer who became Carabosse on stage) and added a spider to her crown. Since Sleeping Beauty is a French fairy tale, I drew her dress on the page of a French text book. The birds were found images. The window was hand drawn, again on scrapbook paper and collaged to the work. The vines were either hand drawn or I used a rubber stamp for some of them. In the background I have a portion of the Sleeping Beauty program and a ticket from the performance. My kids fell in love with her. I told them if they had a 100 bucks that she was theirs. I am such a mean Mom!

Next work is a depiction of the song bird fairy or Fairy of the Song Birds. She is in progress and I hope to complete her by this weekend.

k

Mixed media project for Claire's Art Class

I decided to give my daughter Claire some art classes this summer. An art teacher from her school is giving 3 day workshops (June, July and August) for 3 hrs each of those days. Claire has been practicing her drawing skills and she has been introduced to oil paints. I am thinking she is a chip off the old block. I will have to scan some of her work and post it here one of these days. Claire is shown here in her Sunday Best.

Claire's teacher knows that I am a mixed media artist and she asked me to talk about the process to the class. I did one better and came up with a simple project for the kids to try. I am thinking that because I have to create some samples that will be shown next Tues, that I will do the found art project using the same materials. I've decided to get these youngsters started using a coaster as a substrate. And we will go from there.. It should be fun, especially because the process is so free.

More to follow as I make the samples.

k

Uninspired and Tired 7-10-07

Well today is found art day and I have just been so uninspired! I think the taxi driving is getting to me. I have a show coming up July 28th and I wanted to get at least 3-4 more paintings done. Guess what..I am still on the first! I just can't seem to finish it. It is all laid out and the work is progressing nicely...it is just that I feel drained. Maybe part of it is that I have been setting up a database for my artwork, sales, customers/patrons. I am using Access and so far most of my work has been coming up to speed on the software. I am not a relational database whiz but I can appreciate how useful it will be once I have it set up properly. I have also been playing around in Microsoft's Publisher. Cool program. This is the flyer I made for my upcoming show. I have finally arrived in the new century with this software!

Maybe next week for found art...

k

Found Art Tuesday: 7-2-07 BLUE

This past week was just "one" of those weeks. You know the kind...where all you want to do is scream.... Now that summer is in full swing, it seems that I have less time than during the school year. I spend most of the day in the car and when I am not transporting children to their dance camps, I am transporting children to other activities, walking dogs, or running ridiculous errands. So my found art piece reflects those feelings of stress.

The work is called Mood Indigo. I made it up of an old deco piece which I had scanned into my puter as archive material. I cut and collaged the elements that I wanted. Then I pulled out odds and ends on the table where I work. Those were added for good measure. Elements were added based on my level of frustration :( The smallish picture in the upper right hand corner is a picture of a lady weeping and the words: What bugs you? You can guess why I used the Screamer, and the mesh like material indicates entrapment. This was all done on a coaster from Chili's.