How Time Does Fly!

Hey Arties!

It has been an absolutely crazy and busy year for me, with a lot of things taking me away from my artful path. I am hoping I can get back into the swing of things now that I have actually started my business here in Annapolis, MD.

The quick update/highlights:

I taught my first after school program and had 12 students sign up in less than 24 hours.

I took on a few private students for a 4 week class.

I worked with a local school by assisting them with an anti-bullying program and implemented a "Peace fence" as a school wide art installation. The pickets are based on the 5 Human Values of Peace, Love, Truth, Non Violence and Right Actions. The youngest child was 18 months old and the oldest was 12 years old.

I worked with the school on their bi-annual auction. I designed and implemented 4 of the 7 projects from start to finish.

This project is a picnic table that converts to a bench. The children painted both sides of it, with the bench side having tulips, ladybugs and turtles and the picnic side have a similar theme with the addition of a checkers board and a tic-tac-toe board. They also painted garden rocks for the game pieces as turtles and ladybugs, with a crown on the opposite side for when they are "kinged."

It sold for $1675

Up next is the Slippery Fish table. It has part of the lyrics to a song the children sing. Each child painted a fish to represent the fish in the song. 

It sold for $750

The upper elementary students spent some time at the botanical gardens studying leaf patterns. They took those patterns and burnished them into copper and silver metal which was then attached to rounds cut from the plywood before being reinserted. The final result looks like hammered metal.

It sold for $750

Finally there is the Illuminated Letters from another elementary class. Each child used the first letter of their name and an animal starting with that letter to decorate their individual canvas pieces. The complete set of letters was then attached to a larger canvas and paper vines were added between the letters to continue the pattern from the custom from made from a chair rail. 

It sold for $2300

I was very pleased that in total these art projects raised $5,475 for the school. The community honored me by allowing me to work with their children and seemed very pleased with the quality of the pieces.

The school honored me with a sweet bracelet that states one of my favorite sayings.... "Not my circus. Not my monkeys."

Like I said, I have been busy and have even gotten in a few cigar boxes and altered books. But my best piece was "21 Cents that Chain Us" which was submitted to Smack Mellon as an artist response to the events in Ferguson. 

I think things have calmed down a bit and I am committed to limiting my time spent on other things and focusing on my art the rest of the year. I will try my best to have at least one post a week for the rest of the year. 

Until next time, keep creating!

CJ