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

Teaching and Creating in my Little Town

Fish Sketch

I am teaching art again this winter to fifth graders in our school district.  I have taught in New Meadows, McCall, and this year it is the little town of Donnelly.  Each year, I am surprised at how much I enjoy this project - I did not like children even when I was a child myself, preferring the company of adults. I was the kind of mom who loved her own, but wasn't looking for a playgroup to join... I view this as a healing in my life; the enjoyment of being with and interacting with children. 

For this years project, we are creating fabric banners 3' x 5' in size.  Pretty large, but I want them to have something super fun to take home with them! (many thanks to Lori of Granny's Attic - I wouldn't have the fabric for this without her generous donations!) The theme is centered on stream rehabilitation, trout, and trout habitat in our area.  We are working with a text entitled, appropriately enough, "Trout" - you can see one of the beautiful photographs in this book at the bottom of my photograph here.  I was captivated by that large hazel-colored fish eye and it was the first thing I drew in my thumbnail sketch that will become my own banner.  The photo is not great, but above the fish eye you can see a trail of bubbles leading to the surface, some waving stream grass and a few pine trees.  Next to the "eye" is a full sized trout nosing downward and into a pile of trout eggs resting in the pebbled stream bottom.  I really like this sketch and I am looking forward to translating it into fabric on my banner working alongside my enthusiastic, welcoming and intelligent fifth grade class.  Having met only once so far with my class, I am already charmed by them and looking forward to more.  They are really into this project and that makes it even more fun!

Farm Fresh Eggs!

Donnelly is a quiet, charming little town.  One of the focal points of the town is the charming and tasty respite of Flight of Fancy coffee shop (best pecan and maple bars ever) with it's wonderful little Glory Bee market.  I stopped into the market on my way back from teaching to pick up some eggs, and this is what I found:

I love it.  AND, they are the prettiest, nicest eggs I've found in this here valley.

Queen Bee Night Cream with Royal Jelly

On other fronts, I am still building my ETSY store with my Thea's Bee Beautiful  products.  I just posted listings for my Everyday Lip Balm and Everyday Lip and First Aid Balm.  Part of the process of doing these listings is discovering all the photos I need in order to properly display and showcase a listing.  A few days ago, I found I needed a photo of my Queen Bee Night Cream with Royal Jelly in both the 1 oz. and travel size for my website updates.  It was a brilliant sunny day and I needed an excuse for a walk by the river with my trusty dog anyway.  So I packed my travel basket with product, my camera, and ...  for some mysterious reason...  this fabulous crystal globe my mother-in-law gave me years ago.  And darn if it wasn't just the perfect thing.  Look at this photo:  The light was zinging through the globe and was entirely too bright.  Solution?  Put a jar of night cream in front of the shaft of light! The jar seems to glow from within which is what it also does for your skin.

I've chatted quite a bit now.  I so enjoy writing these blogs and know they tend to be lengthy, so I thank you for opening and reading them!  I leave you with another picture I took during the Queen Bee photo shoot of an old sheep herder bridge across the Payette River: