Garden Part One

The garden is a song of color

The flower garden is now mostly yellow with all sizes of sunflower and black eyed Susans and calendulas in bloom. Some pink roses are budding again and there is still much bee balm- pink purple and red.

Did a heavy weeding in there today - pulled up the cilantro and the arugula , long past flower, spent daisys and clover, wayward grasses, overzealous morning glories and mallow gone to seed.

upcoming schedule

And besides the open studios, we have a Nature Studies workshop this Saturday 7/19 from 11am-4pm - open to basically all ages. Drawing and painting plein d'air, flora and fauna identification and illustration and nature crafts. And then a ceramics intensive the following 2 Saturdays, also from 11am-4pm. I believe that we will add another class or two in August.

Thanks again everyone for all the support and great feedback. We made tons of art, learned stuff, and got lots of new ideas for the future.

Carnage

We left out our rod puppets (aka paper mache heads on a stick) and someone thought they were tasty! Probably a racoon critic/artist. But it sure looks macabre.

It's been a week since Masks and Puppets; I hear that some kids are walking around with their masks on, some are staying in character, and some have set up the mask display. Cool.

We are in the process of figuring out what we didn't get to, what we will do again, what we'll try and if we can do another class in August.

I also am hearing good feedback from Clay, Daisys, Rocks - thanks! and everyone your ceramics are ready to be glazed so come any Friday or Saturday afternoons. I am adding Fridays from 2-6pm as more ceramics studio time. Yay me. I've got a glaze kiln cooling now and am excited to spend my day between the ceramics studio and the garden.

"I've survived! Not for long..."

The week is over

We worked hard and made good stuff

And, I hope, had fun.

Last day, wrap it up day, finish and yet bunches of new ideas come tumbling out.

Each person had to describe the attitude and name and voice of their head before it became a rod puppet (which in retrospect resembles a club - I am sorry parents) - voices came out, grunty or hissy or no voice at all. They had many eyes or "dead" eyes or eyes that were blotchy and needed to be redone.
We painted our ceramics, with palettes of primary colors and black and white for hues and shades and got the names of the colors down - not just blue but Ultramarine Blue, Titanium White, Mars Black. I rarely think of painting as hard work; I could paint for days, but sometimes you just need a large brush to get it done.

Hudson gave us the beat and the silly walks manifested. Sun or rain the masks marched.

I wish that the performance of choice wasn't usually fighting or eating each other, but hey they're young boys - I prefered the silly jokes, pizza and chicken butt banter, and audience Q&A that was in the rehearsals - but perhaps my tastes are more refined than the average kid.

And even though we didn't get enough into it, the act of putting on masks is part of a whole shamanic experience; maybe we should do more ritual and history lessons. There are a bunch more stories to read to really show the importance of these art forms. Because masks are larger than life and puppets makes us laugh or act up our act out as if we were someone or something else; we stretch ourselves beyond ourselves to an alternate character. I would like to spend more time playing these roles. I want to add some movement activities to help characters dance and perhaps we should make each child bring a daily joke . But I am really impressed with all the masks and puppets and characters that the boys created. There was a lot of art and color and energy and shapes and learning and sometimes rebellion.

Thanks to all the kids and their folks who drove daily to the boonies. Thanks for coming.

And just because this week is over doesn't mean all the creativity stops. The Urth Arts non-walls stay up all the time.

One at A Time - day 3 week 2

we paraded and
performed stage and audience
etiquette.Bang Crash!













Finishing Masks - choose
an instrument and get your
Silly Walk focused.











We made our T-Shirts and got our sticks from the woods and read many stories and made our puppets interact. Mostly the puppets fought, sometimes they ordered pizza, sometimes they loved each other. We all laughed alot.

Painted what will be heads, we'll see if characters come forth.



















It's a great disservice to a kid to teach them that performance is about applause. With Masks and Puppets we are dealing with a medium that is thousands of years old while blogging is less than 10 years old.

punch and judy, masks and SOCK puppets

is there anything a bunch of boys love more than things hitting each other. So Bryan's Punch and Judy were a big hit. "Punch him again Judy!" "That's what they are supposed to do - hit each other"
But really the day went quite well, with the thunder rumbling in the distance and the kds getting into their characters of Ghoul or Alien or who knows what but a good guy.
I spent my afternoon making paper mache heads becuase I fear letting these boys loose with too much goo and also we need them to dry by tomorrow.
Their sketches are wonderful and we need more drums.