Dec. 2009 Newman News

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our friends and family! We hope past year was good for everyone. Our family has definitely had a blessed & busy 2009. Left picture: Lily and her Aunt Ruth, summer 2009.

Jeff’s mother moved to Texas in Nov. 2008 to live with us while she dealt with breast cancer. She responded well to daily chemo pills that shrunk her tumors and continues to keep their growth under control. Hooray! She sold her home in Panama City, FL and rented an apartment near us in June. A month later she adopted Miss Scarlett, a delightful, bouncy Shih-tzu puppy. She’s a real cutie-pie with a spunky and active disposition that makes us laugh all the time.

Jeff was offered a job last summer with a company called NEI and he jumped at the opportunity. He had worked with them when he was with Aculab and developed friendships with many of the people. The company is five minutes from our home (NO COMMUTING!), he often comes home to eat lunch with me, they have awesome employee benefits (incredible in these days), and he LOVES his work!

Our daughter Lily is 19 and attends college full time. After receiving a scholarship for the academic year, she quit her coffee shop job to take more classes in hope of graduating by spring of 2011 with an Associate’s Degree in Game Arts and Animation. Lily is adding several extra art classes and it’s been exciting to watch her develop her creative gifts by learning new skills. She created the little bunny silk screen image to the left. Lily has a new boyfriend, a delightful young man by the name of Andrew Lindwall. He attends UTD where he is working on a degree in Criminal Justice. He and Lily share lots of common interests and get along really well.

My sister Ruth lived in San Antonio, TX for much of the year, the closest she has lived near me since she was 9 years old! We were able to enjoy long visits, go sight-seeing, and just hang out. It was awesome! I adore my little sister and felt so fortunate to have the opportunity to bond and create memories with her of our time together in Texas. Now she is in Boise, Idaho where our brother Eric lives. She is considering buying a home in the Boise area. Eric plans to attend the University of Idaho in January where he will work towards his Master’s in Biology. Our Mom is doing well in Riverton, Wyoming. Mom & I are good friends who enjoy daily talks on the phone with each other. I do plan to get up to see her in the coming year.

Me? Well I’m still the Storyteller in Residence for the Dallas Museum of Art, where I also teach several workshops & camps for both adults and children, and act as a creative consultant for their Community Outreach Education Dept. In March, I‘ll be their Artist of the Month. During this time, I’ll develop projects that merge storytelling with multimedia to create performance art works that involve the interaction & cooperation of the public. I am SUPER excited about this opportunity!

May the New Year bring you & yours many blessings and joy. ~ Jeff , Ann & Lily

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Sculpture Mania!

My camp "Sculpture Mania!" at the Dallas Museum of Art in August was a BLAST to facilitate! I had wonderful kids, a perfect environment and accomplished my main goals. Here are a few of the kids in front of the plaster hands they had painted. What made these plaster hands unique is that they were created by pouring plaster into rubber gloves, sealing them and having them firm up. Kids were able to see how liquid plaster can take the form of a mold (rubber gloves) and become a solid shape. The kids were able to feel the plaster harden through the plastic gloves without all the mess too.

My favorite project was creating a three-dimensional work of art inspired by Jackson Pollock's two-dimensional painting titled, Cathedral. Here we are creating squiggly lines with art wire and "floating" them on thin fishing line woven within an open-sided box.

What made this project so much more meaningful and educational was having the real deal, Jackson's Cathedral right there with us in the gallery for inspiration!

The more lines that were added the better it got. The piece now sits in my dining room. I have some ideas on how to recreate a similar yet more stable, reuseable frame that can have light added as an option for added effect.

More Photos of Sculpture Mania!

This photo is from the first day. We discussed classical sculptures like the marble Roman woman in the backbround and compared it to this plaster Henry Moore piece, "Reclining Mother and Child". It's surface LOOKED like marble, but it wasn't and the mother & her baby's features were much less defined & obvious.

I try to fill every moment with opportunities for learning. Here we are riding one of the museum's huge elevators while also discussing a creative project.

Moving 4-5 year old children through a large museum without mishap can sometimes be a challenge, but with this particulr class it was always a breeze. They were a truly wonderful group of kids, real sweethearts!

Look at us we are living sculptures!

Discovering tinfoil's sculpture making qualities.

I ALWAYS feel so alive and in harmony with the universe when I am exploring the creative worlds of visual art, storytelling and performance art with children AND adults. It is my definition of bliss.

Recent Explorations in Art

I used an old album, newspaper print and phonebook pages with this work I call "Static". It's ugly, but by golly, it's unique! It was inspired by Mark Grotjahn's works like his Big, Big, Big, Big Nose on view at the Dallas Museum of Art's, Private Universes Exhibit.

This is "Transformation...It's Time". The flowers were painted on canvas, cut out and put on this canvas. I have a real clock piece inserted on the hands. This piece is all about allowing oneself to be transformed through the use of one's inner creativity and then bringing that transformation out into the world. My inspiration was from my own creative need to continue to grow and explore my life through the art I make.

Hidden in the depths of this painting are $500.00 bills of play money. If you look closely you can see the money peeking through. I have happy face stickers popping out over them. Traced with a fine pen and requiring the viewer to come in close to read are the words, "Then I'll Be Happy". This work is inspired by Richard Price's Check Painting on view now at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Tell Me A Story is inspired by Christopher Wool and his works where he breaks up words sporadically on huge canvases. I have this one hanging by my desk now. It was fun to make.

I had trouble photographing some of my work. I keep getting a glare. This image is not flattering to the real piece. I collected old bottle caps for the leaves, used copper strips to create the trunk and have old book pages for the background. The frame I picked up at a yard sale for $5!!! It is over one hundred years old and in gorgeous condition. I named this work Discarded Life for it's made from things once valued, if even for a few moments, in a person's life. I love using bottle caps and have several more ideas for their use in future artwork. Now, all I need is time to MAKE it. >sigh<

Rag Bags by Me!

I saw a picture of a bag in a catalogue for $298.00! The bag was "unique" and I thought it was a creative use of material. I said, "I can make one for a lot less." So I promptly made three using 'like new' purses and left over fabric scraps. Here is the first one.

Up close view.

The second one. It looks kind of sad hanging there on the fence.

This one is my favorite!

I was thinking of naming these purses, "Raggedy Purses by Raggedy Ann!" Hah, but I don't want to think of myself as being raggedy...so...I'm still brainstorming... At any rate, I have been using the top purse for two days while running errands and have had lots of feedback. I do believe these bags are marketable and so I may make a few for sale.

My Chicken Chairs

A short time ago, I came upon a yard sale where a guy was selling four chairs. He was selling them for a total of $20.00. They were very study, but the seats had a bit of wear to them. No problem! I happily handed over a twenty dollar bill and brought the four chairs home.

Here is a before picture of one of the chairs. They were all identical. Using recycled wool sweaters that I first felted, I created 'chicken' chairs. This is HENrietta.

This is megHEN.

This is StepHENie.

And this is gretcHEN. She's my favorite. Shhhh...don't tell the others.

Lily turned 19 on July 23!

There's my baby and her boyfriend Andrew. The pesky bunny ears there above her head are Jeff's, he's up to his usual mischief. It doesn't look like he will EVER get tired of doing that. >sigh< See last photo in this post where he is at it again. Oh, and please ignore the messy desk & office behind Lily, I was in the middle of re-organizing everything. It looks way better now, I swear.

Lily is enjoying wielding that knife far too much! She had a Baskin Robbins chocolate and mint chocolate chip icecream cake. It was yummy!

See?

It was plate-licking good! Hah! Lily loves to wear goofy hats. She has a large collection of them. She wore her penquin hat for this special day.

This picture was taken a week before her birthday when we attended the outdoor concert for Justin Caldwell's new CD release. SEE? What did I tell you, there is Jeff with the bunny ears again. I've been married to him for nearly 25 years now, and he has never gotten tired of doing this. I guess it has become a tradition of sorts now.

SMILE.

Lily and Leonidas

Here is a picture of Lily with Leonidas, her cat that she named after the great Spartan king and warrior. We took this photo two days ago.

Lily then went to clean Ophelia's cage. Ophelia is our dwarf rabbit. Lily put the top portion on the floor with the door open. I guess Leonidas was feeling curious, perhaps wondering what it was like to live in a cage, so he crawled in and spent a good long while hanging out in it.

Sniffing at the bars...mmmm...smells like bunny!

Wow! Look at how the ceiling looks with lines running along it. KEWL! So this is what it's like for that pesky little fur ball and attention stealer. Hhhmmm, most interesting.

My DMA summer camp classes. Two down and one to go!

This is picture was taken during the grand finale performance of "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words" summer camp at the Dallas Museum of Art. We are telling a Japanese Kamishibai story called, "The Two Tengu's". We had a wildly busy, active week together sharing stories inspired by artwork in the galleries and the students studio art. One of the main activities was learning about Japanese paper theater called Kamishibai. Between 1920 & 1953, bicycling Japanese storytellers would sell candy and tell stories using picture cards as illustrations. With the advent of TV, Kamishibai lost popularity. The people who worked in this artform then created manga art and then anime.

Good grief what made me decide to wear Pepto-bismal pink pants! After I saw these photos, I got rid of them. Now where was I...

Oh yes, the next two photos are from my ArtCycle! Summer Camp. Students created art using non-traditional and recycled materials. This was a FUN class to teach, especially because this is how I create art at home. Also, the museum has a current exhibit called Private Universes that supplied lots of ideas and inspiration for the class projects. I created several art pieces myself for the camp that illustrated how the exhibited art had inspired me.

Here is a picture of the students as they each take a turn to talk about a favorite piece of artwork they created during their week at camp.

I feel VERY fortunate to have the opportunity to teach summer camp classes at the Dallas Museum of Art. It is awesome to have art from all over the world, created by master artists no less, right there on site for the students to observe and learn about. I found in my ArtCycle camp that nearly all the kids were fans of contemporary artists like Jackson Pollack for instance. How cool is that? These youngsters were aged 9 to 12 and already had a great deal of knowledge about many, many master artists. They were eager and excited to be there everyday and took on the task of creating unique works of art with relish!

It was an honor & a blessing to get to work with the students of both camps. That dear readers is the honest to God TRUTH!

Playing with lighting and photography at the DMA

These photos were taken during a special event at the Dallas Museum of Art. The summer 2009 theme is "Summer Spotlight: Experience the Romance, Drama, Action and Mystery of our Collections". They had a cinamatographer in to do lighting for photos. Here are a few of mine.

It was fun to do these.

Went to a great concert!

Hi everyone, I'm back. Work and life got super intense for several weeks again. It sure has been a struggle to balance both these days. I never, ever feel like I get everything DONE that needs to be done on any given day. Frustrating.

That doesn't mean that I don't have time for fun now & then. Take last night for instance. Jeff, Lily, her boyfriend Andrew and I went to my friend's son, Justin Caldwell's CD release party. He's a gifted, multi-talented musician. Here is more about Justin: http://justincaldwell.com/ I have both of his CD's and they are GOOD! No, they are more than good, they're excellent. He has also been enjoying a good bit of success lately. This is from his website: In addition to his prolific onstage presence, Caldwell engineers and produces his own recordings; a skill developed from years of writing music for film and TV. Most recently, his original music has been featured in national ad campaigns for Nike, Visa, Honda, Tylenol, in the primetime network pilot Dear God, It's Me Traci, and the Australian film Out of Space.

I took a few pictures, but they were blurry. Sheesh. Justin's mom is my friend Gwen. She is a professional storyteller and 1/4 of Once Upon A Times Four, and so am I. The other two members are Genie Hammel and Jiaan Powers. We are four professional storytellers who began meeting once a month for support, coaching and guidance, but it blossomed into much more than that. We have become great friends who now also lead workshops together for librarians and others storytellers who want to enhance their own storytelling skills.

In May we went on a retreat together to Pagosa Springs, CO. Here are a few photos.

Left to right are me, Genie and Jiaan outside a gallery in Sante Fe, NM. We stopped there to stretch our legs and view lovely art during our drive up to Colorado.

Gwen (mom to Justin), Genie and Jiaan who are happy, happy, happy!

Here we are at the house we stayed at in Pagosa Springs. We had been traveling all day and were exhausted, but happy and ready to enjoy a meal together.

I had such a wonderful trip with my friends and feel so blessed to have them in my life. I have the complete photo album of the trip on my Facebook page if you are curious to see more photos.

Oh my gosh, I'm so far behind!

Life has been happening at a record pace these days. A great deal of May was spent working on lesson plans for the three summer camps I'll be teaching at the Dallas Museum of Art. I have also had a festival and a trip to Colorado thrown into the mix.

Here is Lily at the Scarborough Rennaisance Festival we all went to. She is some kind of mystical character. Notice the long sword on her back. Her boyfriend gave that to her.

My sister Ruth joined us. She looked so pretty and oh my, she has gorgeous hair!

Here I am with Lily's griffin on my shoulder. It was hot and I was sort of melting all day long.

Jeff and I. He really loves his kilt - he looks good in it too. Jeff has a wee bit of real Scottish blood flowing though his veins. They wanted him to walk in the parade, but he didn't want to. Maybe next year. This was our fourth festival - we really love going and dressing up. I actually take notes of the shows we go to for my storytelling programs. I learn a lot watching other live performers.

My trip to Houston with Jeff

Jeff had a bowling tournament in Houston a little over a week ago. I went with him and we had a wonderful, mini vacation together. On Saturday while he bowled during the day, I stayed in the hotel room and worked on my lesson plans for the summer camps I'll be teaching at the Dallas Museum of Art. Afterwards in the late afternoon, we went to the The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. IT IS AN AWESOME MUSEUM. It is also incredibly huge. We only had three hours there, but boy did we make the most of it. Here I am in front of a marvelous painting by Matisse. It is so exciting to see paintings by the masters.

Miro.

Pablo Picasso. Weird guy.

What is she looking at I wonder.

The lady has a protruding bottom lip. She must not be wearing her dentures.

What a decadent, lulling figure this yellow man is. It would be fun to create a story with a character based on this image.

We couldn't use flash in the museum, so these images have an odd, beige color to them. We would have taken more, but we were in too much of a hurry trying to see as much of it as possible before they closed. Someday, we need to go back and see all of it!