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!

George Jetson Goes to Houston

Remember the "The Jetson's"? I loved that cartoon. Our hotel was in an upscale community in Houston. We were located by super fancy stores, the Galleria Mall, Furriers, we saw lots of limo's driving folks around.

I noticed that the streetlights and signs seemed to float over the intersections - COOL! This was taken during the day - it is way cooler at night.

Best dang restaurant ever - The New York Delicatessen. They bring a dish with three different kinds of pickles to much on while you look over the menu. The food was VERY New York, very traditionally Jewish and soooooooo good!!! We went there for dinner. Liked it so much we went back for breakfast the next day.

While we were eating breakfast, a super long Humvee Limo drove up. Who was in it? A few lovely Arab women dressed in Western, designer clothes and their children. They all rode in the limo to the restaurant for breakfast.

Not all of Houston is lovely.

While leaving Houston, we drove past miles & miles of this. Very ugly! I wonder what the cancer rate is in the population who live near this area.