Thinking of Home

Rock Falls Post Office, Illinois

This is a photograph of the post office in my hometown. The nicest people work here. They have known me since I first moved to Japan and my mom started sending me care packages. Since then, they have followed me around the world and back home again.  They are always friendly and helpful. They always give me a smile despite my asking them to weigh everything and give me every option for mailing it. :)  B delivers mail to my mother's house. She is the kind of person who bakes us muffins when times are tough and delivers packages to my mom's door because she can't walk out to the mailbox. Whenever I visit other post offices, I remember why I appreciate the people at the Rock Falls Post Office so much. When I am there, I am reminded that I am at home.

Kelly's theme is "I'm really not wasting time." One way that I like to waste time is by going through the endless number of photos on my computer and picking some to edit. Lately, it seems, I never make time to do that though. Thanks Kelly for giving me a reason to play. I took this photo this summer when I was at home. It is actually five photos of the same thing at different exposures. I used HDR Pro Photoshop to combine the images into one HDR (high dynamic range) image.

Trying to Make it to Friday

Taking Sandy's theme of The Hamster Wheel of Life. I used black marker to plot out my journey from Monday to Friday. The week I started this drawing was the week I got my new cats, you can see them hiding, and leaving their little footprints all over my life.

Exploring Colors on ColourLovers

Heather's book is about "exploration", and her previous entry depicts her exploration of shapes and colors within a grid on the page.  Keeping with my own goal of learning something new with each sketch, and being inspired by her own exploration I decided to explore color palettes in ColourLovers.  I know there are reasons why some colors go together and some don't - but the problem is that I don't know what those reasons are. So instead of learning about colors, I just headed over to ColourLovers and browsed for palates that were put together by other people.  I then applied them to my YouTube channel avatar to see what I liked best.  Pages on my mac allowed me to import the palate then quickly swap out colors using the color inspector.  I think I like the muted grey one the best.  Thanks, Heather for the inspiration.

Visual Etymology: Serenity

I was working in Leigh's book (theme: serenity) in the midst of colds, sore throats, two PD days, CWW, and life's "stuff." Thanks for the nudge, Leigh.

When I first started to think about serenity, I thought about the what it means to me, times I felt serene -- and started mapping out a plan. A window theme came up -- seeing Mom in the window waiting for me to come home when I was younger;  always seeing the candles in the window (electric, folks, no fire danger) at Christmastime. Ah, serenity.

But I'm always thinking of my classroom (blessing and curse), and the windows were a dead end visually for me. Roadblock.

I started by bridging back to my last sketchbook entry (using oil pastels for the first time with Barbara, which needed way more practice, just like I teach my students). I loved the concentric nature of the drawings in my sketchbook. Why not torture myself with doing something I'm not good at yet? Wait -- is this theme serenity?

But then I really started just thinking about the word. Where does it come from? What are words related to serenity? Scott Riley and our teams in MS RLA are hoping to nail down some cool word study plans around etymology this year, so I wondered if I looked up the Latin, could I create an image to associate with what the roots really mean?

Serenity and serenade are cognates. Who knew? And when we look at that connection, we find that when a man serenades a woman, it's usually associated with night and peacefulness. Happy Anniversary, Michael! What great timing. Still waiting for that song, though.

It's turned into a cool idea for the classroom and would help us all visualize the Latin rather than memorizing boring lists or charts. 

Here's how it turned out, with elements of the word, its cognates, and the meaning of the roots, but it's built all around what the kids would make into an unforgettable image. Why would it work? Because they'd make their own meaning of the...well, meaning.

Serendipity? No relation, unfortunately.

The theme of Linda Blaize's book (Jonaca's mom) is "What's in your backyard?". I LOVE gardening and have two patios plastered with potted plants. Jim and I chose this particular apartment partly because of the two massive patios. Jim knows that I need this kind of space to pursue a hobby that makes me very content. Anyway, the beautiful tree and chinese lantern on my lower patio inspired this quilt piece. In fact, I told Heather and Becky that I was so inspired by the theme that I think I'll go on to create an entire quilt with trees and palms and birds!! You can't tell from the pic, but the blue background is a gorgeous silk piece, so nice la! Anyway I'm all buzzed because I haven't wanted to start a quilt project since we've been overseas (this is our 10th year). Thanks Linda for your great theme and I hope I'll be able to follow through with a quilt!

Prague CZ

This week I was inspired by Patrick's book, In the Distance, to go back to special place that we both have in common, Prague.  Sifting through our photos with Lisa and Isabelle, we relived those special years, and it made me wonder why don't we do this more often. In trying to capture this in artistic form, I used a fun online tool called shape collage. Thanks, Patrick, for inadvertently nudging us to remember those important moments in the distant past that helped define us who we are today.

Watercolor Quilt

My theme is exploration. Doing a sketch book is not something I normally do. I've typically not been someone who draws or paints, so I chose the theme exploration to inspire me to get out of my comfort zone and make some art. My sketches this week are watercolor quilts. There are two because I owe Heidi a sketch from last year. Her theme last year included textiles which reminded me of quilts which led to this. Each square was a kind of exploration. I did the top sketch first and I learned a few things and I made Heidi's sketch even better.

Looking forward to exploring with all of you.

Reverse Ekphrasis: Music Into Art

I loved teaching ekphrasis in high school -- having students look at pieces of art and then write poetry about them (or sometimes studying published examples of the written art). Cool examples include poetry inspired by art such as William Carlos Williams' The Fall of Icarus;  after contemplating Brueghel's painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Williams'  eyes turned to the corner, away from the farmer, where most people look, to the legs splashing into the water. He writes:

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

But this sketchbook could do more. I imagined using music as the inspiration for us to create art. Where the painting inspired the writing before, now the writing inspires the painting, or in the case of my first sketch, oil pastels.

One of my favorite memories with Michael is of a small concert in Baltimore I attended just before moving to Singapore. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's film Once (a musical movie) was one of my favorites, and the two were on stage in my own hometown. I wanted to freeze that moment in time, seeing them in person and hearing their heartfelt music -- soon enough, we found out the concert had been professionally recorded, and we raced to buy it on iTunes. I often find myself going back to one song they performed that night (and that Glen had performed years earlier with his band, The Frames.

"Star Star" centers me. There's a point in the song where he surprises you. It fills me with the wonder of a child and is my go-to song when I'm having a tough day as a grown-up.

Quite simply, it's my song.

But I was stuck with how I'd make it into art. I wrote the lyrics down. I made lists to generate images, like the verbs he used, the repeated images (sorry, I'm an RLA teacher)...and then I threw my pencil down, thinking, I don't want to do Starry Night like Van Gogh. I'm teaching my students how to avoid cliche, for goodness sake!

So I went into Barbara's art studio, played the song for a few of her students, and told her the story. She guided me to the oil pastels. We talked about paper and color; the rules of thirds and negative space; freedom to screw up.

Freedom to get my fingers dirty as I smudge everything. Freedom to not fill the whole thing in. Freedom to make movement visible and messy. Freedom to press hard on the oil pastel. Yes, I need to be told to let go, on occasion.

Which was the point of the song, oddly enough. Funny how art can bring us back to the images in the music that inspired us in the first place. Barbara "taught me how to shine, shine." Thank you, Barbara. And thank you, Glen.

Serenity

This year, I decided on the theme of Serenity to really delve into what gives us peace in our lives, piggy-backing on my theme from last year: Choosing A Positive Attitude.  I thought that if I figured out where I find tranquility, my "bucket will be full" and a positive attitude will follow.  Ironically, one of the greatest places for me to find serenity is in living simply, yet this page is far from simple.  In fact, it's rather cluttered.  Looking back at the page's contents, each piece represents a path to serenity, so I am going to refrain from self-criticism, and embrace the myriad of images and what each represents.

Singapore

a truly wonderful professional and personal place to reside.

Family

Books

a way to retreat

Ticket

love of movies and cheesy TV

Friendship

Travel

including the planning and journey 

Taxis

freedom of car ownership and hitting parked cars in Ikea's parking lot...

Crab

eating out and channeling my inner cook

Scrapbooking

a way for my Type-A personality to be creative (thanks Amy!!)