Saturday, March 23, 2013

School Residency


I did an Artist Residency at the Waterford Elementary School the week of March 18. What a great school -- enthusiastic teachers and students, and a wonderful school climate.

Food was the theme I was asked to plan for, so I created a group of experiences that used a diversity of materials and media (here's a look at the display in the hallway that I put up on the last day):


Kindergarteners drew on bananas with toothpicks, writing their names and drawing. Later in the week they made letters using vegetables and then made designs on bread rolls that were consumed at our culminating activity.

First Graders made and painted big paper mache fruit.

Second Graders designed their own seed packets and decorated bread rolls.


Third Graders made veggie creatures and then made scenes and stories with them.

Fourth Graders made collages based on the paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.


Fifth Graders made Additive Monsters by imagining what some chemical additives might look like.


On Friday we had a culminating activity with Stone Soup (partially made with stock from the remains of the two large sacks of vegetables we used to make Veggie ABC's and Veggie Creatures), cooked by the school's Fabulous Food Services person, Wendy Fearon (who also made and cooked the bread dough we used to form rolls). Each class brought blankets, and we all sat on the floor in the gym and had a picnic.

I met with each class three times during the week (we had a snow day on Tuesday, so that scrunched the schedule a bit; I will go back to the school sometime this year to spend the day showing students what I make in the studio and talking about what it's like to be a studio artist), but I always wish there were time to do things more slowly and spend more thinking and talking time with the projects. Nevertheless, we all enjoyed ourselves thoroughly!


Saturday, March 9, 2013

Overview of The Parade Thus Far

I created a Slideshare Presentation about The Parade, to try to sum up where I've been up to this point.

I've been working with Riki Moss, (who is working on her own parade) to create a collaborative installation that will begin with a website exploring the issues we're treating in our artwork and in our thoughts about how we humans interact with the world around us.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Animals!

I've been thinking about animals a great deal of late, which is interesting because I am not an "animal person" -- I don't have pets and am not drawn to nature photography or trying to catch sight of wildlife when I'm out kayaking or walking in the woods. It is that I think other animals, like humans, have their own space, their own lives, their own rights -- one of which should be to be free of human oppression and the assumption that we have a right to their territories, their resources, and their bodies.


So animals are appearing with greater frequency in the Parade. Although other previous pieces in the Parade have been animals, the newer ones are (mostly) four-legged, instead of 2-legged.


The Dancing Bear is an exception, but really bears DO stand up on their hind legs on occasion... And I love the Inuit carvings of dancing bears, and this is an homage to them.



This creature was made from a piece of a rotted baseball bat, and came with this intriguing fragment of text.



On another note, I have FINALLY updated my website with a link to this blog and my current Resume, Paintings (with all the Priests I could find images for), Installations, and Exhibitions. It had been over ten years on some pages...