Week 20: Vacation!

Last week I went with some of my family on our annual trip "Up North" in Michigan to my favorite place, Ludington.  Ludington is on the west coast of Michigan, right on Lake Michigan, and is a really fun and beautiful town.  My family has been vacationing there since I was around seven years old, and it's a tradition that we love to keep!

My maternal grandfather spent his teen years in Ludington while his father worked for the CCCs helping to build the beautiful beach house at Ludington State Park.  As a result, when he was grown with kids of his own, my grandpa took my mom and her siblings to Ludington for a few visits, and my mom and her sister took up the tradition as adults as well.  We rent a cabin north of Ludington on Hamlin Lake, which is connected to Lake Michigan by the Au Sable River.  It's heaven on earth there, my friends!

I spent the week sleeping, sitting on the front porch reading, laying on the beach reading, laying in the hammock reading, hiking (too hard to read and hike), swimming in the pool with my nieces and nephew (also a difficult place to read), eating ice cream, playing games (charades, Yahtzee!, Cabby, Golf - the card game), kayaking, sitting by a campfire, eating s'mores, playing shuffleboard, walking out to the Ludington Lighthouse, watching sunsets...  Heaven.  Here are some photos from the week:

Kayaking with my nieces & nephew & sis

My favorite flavor ice cream at House of
Flavors (best ice cream place) - Eskimo Kisses 

On a sunset beat ride with my Aunt, Uncle, and Fam
(pictured with my nieces)

My lone peanut - on my last leg playing Cabby!

Big waves!! (...Come at a cost...high winds...) 

My nephew hiding from the wind with me on the beach

Changing of the flags from yellow to red....
A bit of a crazy day at the beach!

Skyline Trail at Ludington State Park

More ice cream...

"What?" :D

Carved on a tree on one of the State Park trails

Our favorite tree on the trails -
perfect sitting spot for a rest!

View on the State Park trails - gorgeous!!

S'mores + campfire + ghost stories = magical!
(My uncle's friend tells the best ghost stories!!!)

Hanging in my sister's hammock and
comfortable with my favorite view!

The view from the front porch
of our cabin

My uncle and cousin got some lanterns
that we released one night - it was pretty!

Swimmin' in the pool
(doesn't it look so refreshing?!) 

Sunset on Lake Michigan near the lighthouse

Can you tell why this is my favorite week of the year??  It relaxes me and brings me great peace.  It renews me!  I feel ready for what comes next after spending time there.  Sigh.  I miss it already!

Now it's back to work!!  Six more weeks...

Weeks 17, 18, & 19: The Saline Celtic Festival and after

I apologize for the unexpected leave of absence!  My life for the last few weeks has been consumed almost entirely by the Saline Celtic Festival.  So much so that it has taken me several days after the festival was over before I could even find the time or energy to blog about it!  

Despite the craziness that the Festival brings to my life, I truly love being a part of it.  This year marks my seventh as the Wee Folks Island Chair, where I plan activities for the young visitors to the festival.  Over my seven years with the festival, I have tried to keep things fresh and keep the kids (and their parents!) coming back.  I always have a few crafts and a few different athletic events, and this year I think I hit a sweet spot with the activities! In an effort to keep this post from becoming too long, I thought I'd blog about the crafting activities here and the athletic and other activities on my other blog. (Click link here)

I made this directional sign for the
Island this year and it makes me happy!

Here are the crafts that I offered on the "Island" (it's actually a peninsula, but looks like an island and you have to cross a bridge to get to it):
 

View of the Island's Activities with my back to the river -
all of the crafts happen in the big white tent

Crafts:
Shield Painting - This has been a craft we've done as long as I've been a part of the festival. We cut shields out of cardboard before the festival (we have an awesome friend to the festival who cut all of them this year over the winter!!), poke a couple of holes, and tie a string through for a handle.  Then the kids can paint designs on them, hang them to dry, and then go fight dragons!  This is a constant favorite.
Sword Painting - Similar to shield painting!  Last year was my first year doing these - I thought that the shields seemed incomplete and we needed swords!  I have multiple colors of masking tape that they can wrap around the handle, and they paint the rest.  Also very popular.

Shields, Swords, and Fairy Doors drying

Fairy Doors - This was a new project I decided to do this year.  I cut a sheet of 4' x 8' masonite (wall paneling, actually) into 4" x 6" rectangles, and got sparkly paint, puff paint, and little jewels and buttons and things for kids to attach.  They turned out really great!!

Jeweled Crowns - The crowns have also been around since I took over the Island, but I made a few changes this year.  Traditionally we've used boxwood garland for the crown, with ribbon roses wrapped around them, fabric ribbons down the back, and pony beads tied to the end of the ribbon.  When it comes down to it, all of those elements cost a lot of $$$!  So this year I used pipe cleaners for the crown, curling gift ribbon down the back, and got some awesome jewel beads from The Scrapbox in Ann Arbor (an AWESOME store!) - I still had some pony beads left from previous years, so used those, too.  The crowns turned out looking really nice, and I was able to spend the money I saved on other parts of the festival.  Plus, the kids loved the jewels!  You can see the crowns (made with boxwood garland left from past years) on my adorable nieces here:

I hope you were able to check out the athletics and other activities on my Robot Tuesdays blog!  I'm really proud of the fact that we can offer such a variety of fun and free activities for kids.  The Celtic Festival was actually voted the best Family-Friendly Festival in Washtenaw County in Ann Arbor Family magazine!  My kind co-chairs attributed some of the credit for this to my work on the Island, and I'd be happy if that was the case!  

I had an awesome opportunity this year to display some of my work at the Merchandise Tent out in the main part of the festival.  It was great to have it out there!  I also got to hang out there Friday and Saturday night (when my stuff was all done and packed up!) and watch the bands and the people.  It was lot of fun!

My paintings & photos

I found a 4-leaf clover right in front of my artwork!! :D

View from the Merchandise Tent on Friday night -
it was a beautiful evening!

I went back to the Island on Friday night to
check on things before heading home and saw
this beautiful view of the full moon through
the clouds (plus the castle entrance)!

This week has been spent catching up on sleep, sketching, cleaning (who had time in the run-up to the festival?!?), planning, and preparing for a vacation next week!  I wanted to wrap up here with a quick note on being a part of community events.  People have asked me why, if it wears me out so much, I keep doing the festival year after year.  A big part of that is that it's a creative outlet for me.  I have a lot of fun planning new activities and seeing them executed and the kids enjoying them!  Another big reason, though, is how much I love working with people in my community.  Saline is a unique small city, close to big activity, but far enough away at the same time.  The people I work with on the festival are an amazing and energetic group, who never cease to amaze me with their ideas and passion for bringing it to pass.  We've had bumps in the road over the years, and have all fought to keep the festival running (despite some hesitation on the part of the City Council in years past), and every year is better and better.  It's a rush to bring a festival of this size to fruition each year!  I encourage anyone who is able to find ways to get involved in local events, or even to come up with your own ideas and see what you can make happen!

Week 16: Nightmares

In all my years of painting, I don't recall ever having a nightmare about a painting I was working on.  I've certainly lost sleep over them, worrying about how they were going to turn out or how I could fix a problem or how I could get over the Yips.  But my art has generally stayed out of my dreams.  

Technically, my art has continued to stay out of my dreams - it's someone else's painting that has entered my nightmares of late.

I need to back up a little, though.

A few weeks ago, I got a call from a lady who had some questions about a painting she'd ordered on Etsy.  Very long story short, she brought it to my studio, told me she didn't like the way it had turned out for various reasons, and despite my protestations, convinced me to "fix it" for her.  

Next time I need to be more vehement with my "No."  

The problem, according to the owner of the painting, is that it doesn't match the rug in the room where she had hung the painting.  Also, it's too pink, it wasn't painted to the edges, and she spent a fortune getting it framed and still doesn't like it.

In the end, she emailed me photos of the rug (which is very abstract-ish), and asked me to eliminate much of the Pepto Bismol Pink (my description), paint it to the edges, get rid of the drip marks, and make it match her rug.

Let the nightmares begin.

It's been featured in my nightmares twice now, and while I don't remember much about the content, I know the painting was there, taunting me.

The problem for me is threefold:
First, I feel really weird "fixing," or painting over, someone else's painting.  The owner insisted it was ok, it belonged to her now, so I could do with it what I wanted.  Still.  Weird.
Second, the abstract floral style of the original artist is very dissimilar to anything I would do, so "fixing" it has proven tricky.  
Third, trying to make the painting match the fancy rug has meant adding colors that weren't part of the original theme, so it's become overwhelming and without a theme to tie it together.  

It taunts me.  

Also, this keeps popping into my head:

I took a break from it for a week and a half, and my goal for this coming week is to be miraculously inspired, finish the painting in a blaze of glory, and be rid of my nightmares forever.

And then never ever ever to agree to "fix" someone else's painting ever again.  Ever.  

Week 15: Young Architects Camp

Last week I spent very little time in the studio, but a lot of time in the classroom.  For the past four or five summers I have taught a camp called Young Architects, where we spend a week designing houses and buildings, and then choose a design to build at the end of the week.  On the first day, I teach them basic architecture vocabulary, and we go on a walk around town and see what we can find from our list.  This year I had a few repeat students, so I changed up an old project and we made crazy house facades after our walk:

A lot of the week was spent on our house designs - I have them do a few different ones: One for the facade they made, one for their own dream house, one for a fictional character, and one for a character I make up. The made-up character is to give them a little bit of practice at designing for the needs of an unknown client, such as:
Name: Skip Roper

Profession: Professional Jump Roper

House needs:

-Big indoor gym for jump rope practice (including trampoline room for increasing bounciness)

-Extra rooms for friends who come for Double Dutch competitions

-Storage closets for jump ropes

-Trophy room

  
We also spend some time on a website called architectstudio3d.org, where you can design a house and take a virtual tour.  It's a lot of fun!  It also shows them the steps of house design and experience designing for a client.

Someone asked me if I have a background in architecture, and I had to confess that this camp approaches architecture from the point of view of an artist, not an architect.  (The camp is geared towards 8-12 year-olds, anyway, so we're not doing anything too advanced.)  I don't make them do a scale (though I had one student who did anyway!) or be too precise.  It's just an intro to the idea of designing your own home and then building a maquette (small model) to see what it would look like.  

I also worked on a design for my dream house while my students worked.  I didn't have time to work on building it, but will share it with you when I do!  It was immensely satisfying to take ideas I like and combine them into an awesome house design!!  I highly recommend it.  It felt therapeutic.  Just grab some paper (graph paper if you have it), a ruler, a pencil, and your Pinterest boards (well, if you're like me...), and start laying things out!!  Kinda feels like being a kid again.  

Anyway, here are some photos from the week:

 

It got a little messy! Also, their faces aren't
really tan circles...

One student's house design for Lionel Messi: 

Another student's house - the top floor is a parking garage:

He has a glass elevator on the side

Another house - we use cereal/cracker box cardboard because it's easy for small hands to cut, and if you keep the brown part on the outside it looks fairly uniform.  I used to have students paint their houses, but the cardboard doesn't always fare well...