Cézanne by committee

or: the seemingly random intersecting influences in my life



Watch Three Colours Cézanne online, it's about an hour long; a beautiful documentary of how not to live by committee.
(Netflix also has it.)


Just before school started, we received a reminding email that a curriculum committee made up of colleagues had decided last year that we were not to reference "real" political candidates' names in discussions/instruction/teachable moments nor at any time with the elementary children in our classes during the upcoming election process.
Brilliant.

Instead, we were told to use "mascot" names, as in: dancing animals running for office instead of peeing on trees like in Real Life.
Interpreted this means: fake, fraudulent, deceitful, bogus, cartoony-looney abstractions of ultimate Truth and of Nature; yet again assuming, embracing and reinforcing those two age-old mantras of public education: "Kids are stupid." And: "Teachers are stupider; they'll follow this like lemmings: 'What me, think?'"
I repeat, this policy was developed by fellow educators.

And ultimately, smacks of Disney.
The gauntlet thrown, off we go to a gentler, (?!) more truthful time, to Coconino County.

Herewith, a humble sampling of ensuing campaign posters from the sketchbook:



















If you'll excuse me, me and Ignatz have to go throw some bricks.

new work

in the garden with gustav

the more things change...



a painter
in a garden
with a cat or two
or more
wearing a flowing
robe
every day.












Paradise.


Two books i use in the classroom:

Silver, Gold, and Precious Stones, "Adventures in Art" series


Klimt and His Cat, Berenice Capatti and Shannon White, with lush artwork by Octavia Monaco


Other gorgeous resources for mature audiences, i should probably note, are:
the beautiful Flash site, iklimt.com and in my library: Gustav Klimt, 22 Masterworks by Jane Kallir.



If you have never stood before a real Klimt before, you must.


Homage to Klimt
from the art room,
kid-visions of "cat parties."
Vielen Dank, Gustav.

summer stock

the sweet sound of the absence
of an alarm
for two blessed months

can hardly be
described.
hours are marked instead by

uncaged glory



guarding cornbread



cultivating perfect squash



taking note of small vignettes



not looked at closely
for a long time



fishing for fake lobster



wondering
which comes first, art or life



pondering
yellow gangs,





the beauty of a lost bloom.

odyssey

od·ys·sey (d-s)
n. pl. od·ys·seys
1. An extended adventurous voyage or trip.
2. An intellectual or spiritual quest

These fashion dreams, they never end.
In sleep, my collections fill huge showrooms.
When you walk in, you can hardly see, for the
blinding flash of glitz
on the outfits.

When i was little, the dream went like so:
opening my closet door, i enter and can't choose an
ensemble to save my life; i lose my breath at
the sight of an endless rack of fabulous looks,
the next more exotically beautiful
than the one before,
they just go
on and on,
till infinity, all contained within that
little closet.

I awaken, go back to the beginning:
transform trash into art-handbags and totes.
Re-cycle, re-dream, recreate.
To the trashion, born.

"Every seed is awakened, and all animal life."
-Sitting Bull

a preview, entre nous:

in absentia

end of the school year; always blows me away.
knocks me down, knocks me out.

does anyone else sit like a zombie
for days on end
after it's all said and done?

my friend Deb who is an incredibly fine
hs art teacher- the real deal-
says she does it too.

this year it has taken a month to find a rhythm again.

...rolled directly from the final day, Thursday, into
Monday teaching Godzilla camp to 14
-count 'em- fourteen highly charged-up ten year-old boys, most of whom
i did not know before.

what i did know was:
i was sunk when my first words, which i could barely
utter as i scanned the crew that first day
while the completely foreign feeling of trepidation in my own room
crept up my spine, holding my vocal chords hostage
were:

"Looks like i'm the only girl."

to which they all broke out in
screams of banshees,
pumping fists
in the air,
cheering and jeering with glee at the thought
that a mutiny had already occurred without a shot.
and this just the beginning.

the monster in them remained intensely present for the remainder
of the week as i came to accept my fate:
i was living in a frat house
for the duration.

it was one of the most fun weeks teaching enrichment, ever.

there was not one social "situation", "friend fight", or other relationship
issue requiring my attention nor intervention. this, in stark contrast to the way i spend most normal teaching days: de-escalating conflict, mediating, counseling,
facilitating resolution between parties.

it was the scaly Big Guy himself who fostered peace in the room-
bonds of brotherhood were forged by mutual love of
the King of all monsters.
world peace should be so easy...

my fondest memory of these lost and found boys is in the final few seconds
of camp, as mothers literally pried them from the t.v. screen,
(some hugging the freeze-framed headshot-with-mouth-open-in-a-roar of their hero for dear life)
their fists pumping, yelling "GOJIRA!" over and over at that indelible image,
in their most convincing Japanese pronunciation, no less.
these boys made me proud.

and then they were gone.

Half had never known who Godzilla was on that first day;
their mothers had just signed them up. Almost none knew why the
actors mouths did not quite sync with the audio.
Four days of cultural immersion later, so to speak, Gojira rules.

peace ties

continuing to create ties with messages of peace and justice;
the universe keeps sending people my way who love these.
so these are part of the third intensive batch made in the studio
since January...

can't wait for summer break so i can pick up the threads of
my creative path and knit them together,
in long blocks of time,
again.

"Flowers grow out of dark moments." -Corita Kent




"You must be the change you want to see in the world." -Mahatma Gandhi





"...my country is the whole world." -Virginia Woolf