This is what the kids at Campamento Estrella (Camp Star) in San Juan Cosala, Mexico had to say today about saving their world:
(Please click on first photo to enlarge all.)
Before I leave to get busy with paper, scissors and glue at Campamento Estrella today, I want to share this crafty tradition passed on by my mother. It was my favorite family tradition.
The Daily Post prompt was traditional.
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Every year, my mom helped us make May baskets to fill with candy and leave on the doorsteps of our friends. As mentioned in an earlier post, we’d ring the doorbell and run. If the recipient caught us, they could kiss or pinch us—their choice.
Some years we bought fancy handled nut cups from the dime store and used them, but I liked best to make my own. One year, my mother showed us something special to use for May baskets. Her family knew how to make these incredible tissue-paper ornaments that, with a cupcake liner filled with candy glued into the bottom, hung down in a web-like form. We’d pin them at the top and when you held them up they would fall down in a lacy accordion effect so they were a foot or two high. The only way you could really get the effect…
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Click on first flower to enlarge all and see slide series.
Glass? No. My friend Jan is the Chihuly of plastic. These beauties are fashioned using a simple votive candle, various cut-up plastic bottles and old CD or DVD discs. She had to make do with my “super match” at my house as I was fresh out of votives.
https://ceenphotography.com/2017/02/26/flower-of-the-day-february-27-2017-camellia/
Some people walk the 500-mile Camino de Santiago trail in Spain, but in the heat and humidity, a few hours walking the dirt rock-strewn paths of the yearly Monte Sano Art Show in Huntsville, Alabama were penance enough for me. For some reason, I took very few photos, but we saw some wonderful and whimsical sights, including the pieces and people shown below.
Hiking the Art Fair
Eenie meenie miney moe––
comfie shoes
and baby toe,
Grannies with their walking sticks,
little doggies giving licks.
Pigs to hang upon the wall
that are not really pigs at all.
mobiles made of spoons and kettles,
bottle caps and other metals,
As families start to walk away,
we also plan to end our day.
Eyes grow sleepy,
hairdos frizz.
This is the kind of day it is.
But as we leave the heat and fuss,
tender moments go home with us.
The End
Home for a nice swim and then out to Thai. Perfect day that began with a hike.
Today’s WordPress prompt was Hike.
Give a bunch of kids a bunch of feathers and just look what they come up with!!!
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/08/23/cees-fun-foto-challenge-feathers/
None of these ladies would formerly have identified themselves as painterly, but when three of them bid for a group art lesson at a local charity auction and invited the rest of us to attend the experience, we all had the chance to test our painterly acumen. As you might notice below, originality was neither called for nor tolerated. The nice lady at the far left directed our efforts, step by step, and the result was what you see far below.
Can you guess which three of these women are named Judy? You’ll recognize Marilyn looking much more like herself than in the Scrub Daddy post. The woman in yellow is my sister Patti, the tall pretty lady between them is my long time friend and college little sister, Patty. Marti, another best friend from college days onwards is next to our teacher and Jackie is in the horizontal stripes that bother my astigmatism no end. I am the too-short haircut between Jackie and Marilyn (sorry, Audrey).
Ta da!!! How many things can you find that we have in common in the photo? Yes, I cheated and made my moon a blood moon and my stars bleeding stars. I plan not to change my career plans as a result of this experience, but it was fun fun fun and I thank Marilyn, Patty and Patti for inviting us all. Eight participants and only 4 names between the eight of us. I once had three Pattys visit me at the same time. I find it a great boost to my ego that I didn’t get their names confused once.
Here are a few of the found art wall pieces I’ve just completed. They are all constructed of material collected on the beach of La Manzanilla during morning walks.
(Click on first photo to enlarge all, then click on arrows to see next photo.)
Dream Jobs
I have been lucky enough to have several “dream jobs” in my lifetime. First of all, I was a teacher. I loved teaching kids and enjoyed the other people I worked with. My first teaching jobs were in Australia and Ethiopia, which additionally gave me the chance to travel and live in “strange” environments–things I had wanted to do since very small.
I taught for ten years before finally deciding I needed to change my life to enable me to find time to write. I then moved to Orange County, California, to live with a dear friend and spent two years studying a number of areas I felt had been neglected in my earlier education. I would go to the library with lists of topics I wanted to know more about: art, artists, places, concepts, psychology, philosophy.
The writing of Carl Jung was of special interest and I allowed synchronicity and the unconscious to guide my life. This took me to Los Angeles and into film school at U.C.L.A., an apprenticeship at a Hollywood agency and eventually to a job working in p.r. and publicity for Bob Hope’s production company. It was a job where I was laid off for 5 months of each year, between shows, and this enabled me to write and travel.
After three years of working here, I married and moved northwards to the Santa Cruz area where I became a silversmith and paper maker. For fourteen years, I traveled and did art shows with my husband. This was as close to working for a traveling circus as I would ever come, and I loved both the studio work and the traveling. The people we would meet in various locations across the U.S. became our friends and we slept in our motor home or van in convention center parking lots from California to Ann Arbor to Boston.
As the area of our travels narrowed to the west coast, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and Colorado, I accepted a “job” as the curator of a new art center in the San Lorenzo Valley near Santa Cruz. Although this was a volunteer position, it was both time-consuming and extremely gratifying as I met and worked with artists throughout the Santa Cruz area. I loved coordinating and hanging eight shows a year as well as teaching classes and handling show themes, admissions, publicity and openings. It was practically a full time job in itself, but we continued to handle a full show schedule ourselves. By then, in addition to my making silver and copper jewelry, Bob and I were making art lamps together. He did the stone and wood work and some of the framework for the sail like shades whereas I made the handmade washi paper and some of the framework for shades and covered the shades.
I’ve been lucky my entire life to always have a job I enjoyed and believed in and this continues to this very day as retirement has brought time to write more and to shift my focus from jewelry and lamps to mixed media assemblage, which I continue to this day. While at the beach, I concentrate on collages of found objects from the beach and city streets. It also gives me time to write this blog which consumes an ever-increasing amount of my time.
Here is a gallery of shots that capture, I hope, my process in collecting, assembling and mounting found objects into my assemblages. If you click on the first picture, it will enlarge the photos and show them to you one by one:
Prompt: Describe your dream job. https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/money-for-nothing/
Pushing and Shoving
“If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”
I’m trying to set up for the art walk this weekend, but it is tricky when you are away from home without the usual display materials. I did a photo shoot this morning, but all of the photos mysteriously disappeared after I edited them. Hmmm. This is a quick shot of a display of retablos set up in the bedroom. I need to avail myself of all available surfaces!
I envy people who can throw things together with great flair, but I’m not one of them. I need to experiment, nudge things around, walk away and come back and have another look, leave the room and walk back in to surprise myself and see if I really like it, seeing it as a stranger of sorts.
When my friend Patty had me come help her arrange things in her new house after her old house blew away in a tornado, she said, “I’m going to have to leave the room while you finish. It drives me crazy watching you fuss!” Ha!!! I always think of this every time I am pushing things this way and that.
I blame this on my mother. From the time I was little, we would wait until my dad went to bed and then rearrange the living room furniture. We’d sit with our backs against big heavy pieces like the piano and push with our legs and backs against the heavy beast to budge it without risking popping a muscle or tendon. Then we’d sit and survey our work, move one thing or another. I think my mom in this way made me a collage artist before I even knew the meaning of the word. It was performance art where we could actually walk around in the assemblage and tug it around.
When I work in the art studio, I usually work on 12 to 20 pieces at a time. I arrange them, then come back the next day and take out one thing, add another. Pieces can take a week to come out right or a year–or, after a year I sometimes take them all apart and start over. I don’t know why a piece finally feels right. I just know when it does.
Yes, when it comes to art, decorating or setting a table–I think “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”
The same goes for cooking! If it doesn’t taste right, I just start adding things until it tastes right. I like lots of flavor in a dish. Subtle just doesn’t do it for me in either decorating or cooking.
The Prompt: Do you have a favorite quote? Tell us what significance it has for you.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 