Summer Watercolors

Teaching Art 40 hours a week, takes so much creative energy, that I'm usually too wiped out by the time I come home to make art in the evenings. Luckily, summer break gives me a chance to brush up on my skills as an artist, so I recently dusted off my watercolors and try to capture some of the spots I visited this summer. I attempted a landscape that included water, which was a first for me.

But I wanted my watercolor to be more fluid and spontaneous, so I worked half the size, and spent less than half the time, to simplify and be a little more gestural. These ancient ruins at Hovenweep, provided enough structure to allow me to go really loose with the sky.

Working small means I can start and finish a project in an afternoon. The smaller commitment, the more I'm more likely to pick up my pencils and brushes; and the more times I draw and paint, the faster I can grow. Painting is one thing you can learn how to do before spending the rest of your life learning how to do it better. And as an art teacher who wants to not just talk the talk, but walk the walk, I hope my students can understand the power of life long learning.

 

James Turrell's "Air Apparent" was a must-see on my recent trip to Tempe, Arizona to visit my brother. I love how Turrell creates experiences for the viewer, encourage us to slow down and heighten our awareness. The clouds are moving over our head all the time. The color of the sky is shifting in value and intensity. We could stop and watch and notice, but we're too busy. We can go all day without pausing to just watch and think about the sky. 

With Turrell's work, it's always more about what's going on behind the eye instead of in front. Air Apparent consists of four outdoor walls with benches, with backs that tilt back, allowing visitors to lean back and watch the sky through the square hole in the floating roof. The ceiling itself is shifting colors at an in-perceptible increments. The color of the ceiling affects the perception of the blue of the sky, thanks to a principle of simultaneous contrast. After ten or fifteen minutes of mindful presence in this installation, I felt as refreshed and relaxed as if I had been meditating. Quite the break from flashing images on a phone screen!

The fact that this art piece is open to the public for free, on Arizona State Universities campus, made me wonder why no one else was there. Often universities offer life enriching experiences. I spent much of my 20's as a student, going to International Cinema, visiting the campus art museum, attending clubs, weekly recitals, dances, and student plays. College campuses are cultural hot spots and some students take advantage of the education that is offered beyond the classroom, and others do not. It's too bad. One friend recently told me that they had been to the National Park site in our town for the first time. He'd lived here for almost as long as I had, and I've probably been there twenty times. With minimal research, you could find local library family history centers, line dancing groups, hot yoga classes, bike riding clubs, city arboretums, or kayak outfitters. James Turrell's artwork makes glad for such an opportunity for the Temple community. It reminds me to slow down, pay attention, and live life more fully.

 

America the Beautiful: Roadtrip of Landscapes

Every few years I like to take a 3 week road trip and try to visit a couple dozen National Park sites. This year, I've been able to go to about 40 park sites in about half a year, including Big Bend, Carlsbad Caverns, White Sand Dunes, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Great Sand Dunes, Zion, Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountains. National Monuments and often State Parks are just as impressive, and less crowded, so I've learned not to dismiss those. I love the landscapes of this gorgeous country and I love each one more when I can contrast it with other, different types of beautiful geography. White sands, red rock, underground caverns, mountain tops, amber waves of grain. We've got it all! Here are some of my favorite moments from my recent travel. 

Ramona Read Alouds for Art Class

I've always agreed with the idea that literacy should be integrated into every subject area, which is why I use vocabulary, written assignments and articles as part of our units in Art class. But this is the first year that I've just used non-fiction for the pure joy of literature as a perk of being an art student.

First, let's please acknowledge that Beverly Cleary is a genius. She bridges generations and understands how to create relatable characters. I read the first chapter of Ramona the Pest on the first day of school, just because I knew we'd have time after going over the syllabus and the sharing of summer memories, but also because it tells the story of a child's first day of kindergarten and the newness of it all. I expected to take the book back to the library the next day, but the students loved it so much that I found it to be the perfect sponge activity, to absorb the last five minutes of class, after cleaning up and before the bell. In fact, students were motivated to work more efficiently to get a little story time in. And when artwork could be made independently, I would read while they worked. This was such a relaxing and enjoyable activity for students: laughing out loud a the antics of a fictional little girl, while doing under-paintings or glazing ceramic pieces. 

"Leave your worries at the door" is my attitude. "This class period is your spa portion of the day." And more than once students have told me as they were leaving class that it felt like an hour therapy. For classes that can't keep the drama out of my classroom with their endless bickering or malicious gossip, I found reading to them was my ticket to sanity. It was the only way to keep the garbage out of my room.

Throughout the year, we made our way through more than 1,000 pages between the five or six Ramona books in each of my 5 daily class periods that I would read. When I'd suggest a more age appropriate book for my high school students, the majority insisted at staying with the series. They wanted to know what happened next. With the humanities taking a back seat, it's important to remember how to be human, how to walk around in other people shoes, even fictional eight year old's shoes.

The Learning Tree: Large Wooden Sculpture

I wanted to brighten the dreary patio outside my classroom door with a 10 foot sculpture: The Tree of Learning. This represents the growth and change I expect from my students as they strive to become better versions of themselves. I used three 8'X4' pieces of nice birch wood: two boards for tree shapes, and the 3rd board (and scrap pieces from the first 2 boards) were used to make fluffy tree leaf cloud shapes. 

Once these were cut out and edges sanded, a slit was cut (the width of the board) 4 feet up from the bottom, on one tree, and a slit 4 feet down from the top of the other tree.

Students helped paint every part of the tree front and back in black. There were a handful of students with a little bit of vision who I trusted to follow the marks of dark brown bark (both sides of both trunks and every extra big of root pieces). Then light brown to fill in some gaps and brighten it up. I painted dark green spirals throughout the leafy areas and then students traced with a lighter green, before doing 3rd green which was the lightest and yellowest green. 

Students brushed two layers of deck sealant on both sides of each piece of wood, totally 6 coats (of paint and sealant) on each side of the tree top. With a day to dry between each coat, it was a long process.

I bought a 5 foot pole to put in the ground and strap the tree to, and I made sure that none of the roots were touching dirt directly since that will promote rot. Hopefully we'll get some gravel or pebbles to fill in around the base and that the tree will weather well.