Elementary, My Dear Thea

5th Grade Art in the Gym

I just completed my 3rd year of teaching 5th grade art in public schools funded by Idaho Commission on the Arts. It is such a rewarding experience and I am feeling especially grateful this year that the project is completed.  My classroom teacher, our local art's commission director, and I decided on a very large project this year that demanded a lot from everyone involved. The theme was Stream Restoration and Trout. The project was a 3' x 5' banner involving the topic and yards and yards of fabric, hand sewing, machine sewing, and lots of fast moving hands, elbows, and crawling around on the floor. Thank goodness, an empty classroom provided the space for all of us to get down and get to it. And thank goodness for all the people who donated time, materials, and encouragement! Yikes. I had one very scary moment at the beginning of project construction. Preliminary sketches were done (I'm always so impressed with the variety and imagination shown in my student projects), all the banners were stretched out on the floor ... big, blank, muslin 3' x 5' canvases waiting to be covered in colorful, large (yards and yards and yards!) swaths of fabric. I panicked. I did NOT have enough fabric to cover 19 such large projects! I started searching for donations as soon as I left the school that day and was humbled and gratified by the generous response. Particular thanks go to Granny's Attic here in McCall, Flight of Fancy in Donnelly, and Keep Me in Stitches, also of McCall. Without you, this project would have gone through a redraft or two!

On Night's Plutonian Shore

Each year, too, I am reminded of the enormous responsibility our school teachers have; not only to provide their students with an education, but also to guide and assist them in all manner of topics and situations - often on the fly - that require flexibility and creativity in their responses. What an accomplishment it is to complete an entire school year!

Plutonian Detail

During my teaching time, I kept my own art projects small and just did things spontaneously. I had always wanted to do a piece based on Garrison Keillor's annual Halloween reading of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" - when Garrison says the phrase, "... on night's Plutonian shore..." in his low, gravelly voice, I just swoon. This image is what I came up with - no preliminary sketch, just making it from: commercial prints, hand dyes, glitter flat ribbon, black leather sequins, charcoal glass beads, mica chips, and some hand stitching in black pearl cotton. It was more fun than should be had!

Another project made me feel just plum happy to be working on it - bright springy colors and a photograph printed on fabric that I took last summer canoeing up the North Fork of the Payette River:

Hollyhock Detail

Hollyhock

 And this next one? Don't know yet! Just know it will be really fun to do because I have been wanting to use pieces of hornet nests in my compositions for years - now is the time. This will be a warm up for a much larger piece I have in mind. It's good to practice with new materials a bit before you go whole hog. The photograph is one I took in my yard last fall and you can just see a hornet nest swinging in the upper right corner in an aspen tree - that same hornet nest is now in my studio, a piece of which you see in the lower left of this photograph. Beautiful, gray, striated papery stuff that just yells to be used in my fiber art!

Fabric and Nest Material

Springtime in the Rockies

It was 16 degrees when I got up this morning.  It's about 30 degrees right now at 3:30 p.m.  Even for this mile high city, it is a LATE spring.  Thank goodness for friends to go walking with - we save each others sanity by assuring each other that YES - it is okay to be cranky right now.  But not to kill yourself.  I took the photo below just minutes ago at the McCall airport.  Can you even believe it?

I combated winter blues this morning by making a stockpot full of cheery salsa and canning it.  From six quarts of canned tomatoes, some onions, garlic, carrots and cilantro, I got 14 pints of canned salsa and 2 quarts of it in the fridge.  Isn't it pretty?  I so love salsa.  I'll take a jar to my daughter in Boise when I go on Monday as a thank you for staying with her.  Sometimes she shares it with her boyfriend...  and sometimes she doesn't.

Here is a picture to really cheer up a gray day:  "Desert Music" is another commission piece I completed last fall and am very happy with (so is the client, thank goodness).  I use a lot of hand-dyed fabrics from Judy Robertson - they are some of the best hand dyed fabrics I have ever seen.  To see her selections, click on this link and check it out:  www.justimagination.com  Not only is Judy's fabric amazing, she is wonderful to chat with and order from.                              

 

I do not often work in a non-square format so this piece was challenging for me in that way.  In the border, the light gray pieces are accented with a copper washer, a black leather sequin stacked on top, and a turquoise bead on top of that, used to anchor the stack down.  In the picture at right, you can just see this stack in the light gray point.  I am especially happy with the flames and the corn in this piece. 

Looking at the time, I see I just have enough time to go into the studio and work for a bit before husband and dog come home from the work site.  I'm so grateful he still has a work site to go to!