Every Monday night I spend the evening being a little artist with some super awesome kids. They live in a local transitional shelter for single mothers and their children, here in the city. Tonight, as a "thinking outside the box" painting series, we all wore fake mustaches and painted our favorite animals with mustaches. At first I got some funny looks as I busted out the 'staches, but before long creativity took over and they had fun with it. Animals with mustaches were a little too out there for some of the kids. When they asked, "do I have to put a mustache on it?" I said, "nope." I'm never down to stifle one's personal vision. Just as long as I can get 'em to think a little differently, I've succeeded. Two weeks ago we learned the color wheel and how to mix our paints to create secondary colors. Tonight, I heard them discussing how to make colors...and guiding each other with what they had learned. Man, kids are great. I love Monday nights.
Just recently myself and two other artists, Robert Baker and Jen Waler, were given the opportunity to do a very, very last minute show. We all had roughly one week to create a new body of work. For the first time, I worked in a relatively smaller scale than I am accustomed to...mainly so that I could carry the pieces around with me at all times to work on them. Lunch break at work: drawing. Breakfast at a restaurant with boyfriend: drawing. But, it got finished and hung and I was pretty happy with the results. The unsold pieces will soon be available on etsy.
