I Like School: Tree Version

I like sitting outside and seeing old buildings and trees.

Trees in the distance, and trees to give shade where you sit.

Old trees and reading are a wonderful thing.

Zinnias

My biggest and most colorful project to date.  Chalk Pastels.

The orange and blue contrast area here is probably my favorite.

Pens

Accordions?
Pens fight with pencils
One allows mistakes,
the other demands perfection.

At the mercy of the hand
manipulating it.

Frustrated by scribbled out mistakes.

Chewed, turned, cracked, lost, and forgotten.

A flying acrobat in fidgety hands.

The silent listener of our inner thoughts.

Hand held distractions one click, twist,
and flick at a time.

Running out of ink just in the

Pens are like accordions…well, not really.

Floating Arrhythmia

Blindfolded Finger Painting

Water Color

 

So glad not to be watching a heart monitor this Father's Day.

Happy Father's Day Dad!

 

Hope it's swell :)

Change Attitude

Journaling and reflection from class writing assignment:

I found that if I slowed down in my writing, focused on making my handwriting neater my thoughts became better developed and easier to articulate in my writing. I have never liked my handwriting and often type to get around this shortcoming, as I see it. However, handwriting and typing create very different results for me when I work. I tend to want to be a perfectionist, and typing makes everything as good as I can make it. I also know that I am not a good speller, and often avoid words or make ridiculous guesses when I am hand writing something. I tend to express myself with words and fluid ideas when I am typing, but felt challenged today when writing to get similar results with handwriting.

Friday Night Thesis

What do you do on Friday Nights in the Summer?

Here's my research paper for Creativity: Theory and Practice. It hasn't been carefully proofread or finished. But is a start. We'll see what changes. Certainly something will


Thesis Paragraph
The pursuit of achieving the highest level of success requires many pieces to work together. Achieving these best results can often come with a price tag. Long hours, repeated tries, failed and abandoned projects pile up along the way. Yet when we do not hold back, we often find our true passions and experience the most satisfying results of all our strenuous effort. Not giving a project or experience our all can come from a variety of reasons. The fear of failure, others judging us, social constraints or laziness all become hurdles that either challenge us to go further or stop us in our tracks. The variety of creative axioms all challenge the artist to express their art through many avenues. I would like to suggest that three axioms work together in art and in teaching. The concepts to “Be Extravagant”, “Honor Obsession”, and “Don’t Hold Back” all find their place in traditional artistic expression as well as in the art of teaching. I will examine the attitude of a purposeful, passionate pursuit of what we love, do, create and learn. Two twentieth century artists, Georgia O’Keeffe and Jackson Pollock, both challenged the art world with their bold and relentless artistic expressions. While their artwork was controversial and questioned, their refusal be limited by the constraints of their time transformed themselves and art. Similarly, the challenges that teachers face to go along with the established system can often hinder natural enthusiasm and talent. Educators that push the boundaries and teach extravagantly create memorable experiences for their students and push the quality of educational standards higher as a result.

My Mother's Clothes

A free write prompt turned into a poem.

Function over form, that is my mother’s style.

Conservative fashionista with simplicity guiding the way.

Any hint of worry or fret about what to wear,

Disappears with a swift and simple decision to trust the basics.

Each label and tag is a replica of another.

“No dry cleaning needed, wash and dry”

Simplicity explains the clothes hung out on the line.

Avoiding too much.  Too fancy, too loose, too tight, too short.

The go-to favorites become classics in their own right.

Walking shoes that have traversed every sidewalk in the neighborhood,

Along with the streets in foreign lands.

A simple haircut, simply done, leaving time for other simple joy’s in life.