My Big Awards Night Out

Last night I had the pleasure of receiving The Art Teacher of the Year Award from Otis School of Design in L.A., along with two other recipients, Amy Bouse from Santa Monica High School and Paige Oden from the Orange County High School of the Arts. It was quite a spectacular event starting with dinner and awards at a local Thai restaurant (oh so delicious), and then back to the Westchester campus (next to Marina Del Ray and L.A.X) for the opening of the Annual Student Art Show where over five hundred people where viewing the show and another thousand are expected tonight. There was lots of food and drink with live music wafting in the background (the steak tar tar was to die for). The weather was balmy and all in all it was a lovely evening.

These are the two other recipients, above is Amy with her mother and sister, and below in the foreground is Paige, then Celina Ng, who organized the event, with two other co-workers, Kaitlynn Redell and Carolyn Boteilho.

The hardest part of the evening for me was what the heck to wear, and I especially wanted the shoes to be cool and hip with this crowd, so my best friend Jimmy came up with the idea of putting the brass chains around my boots. He's so creative, he took them off the shoulder straps of a bag I own. Pretty tight, huh? Not bad legs either LOL

There was so much to see and photograph. These are some of the highlights for me. Loved the altered wheel thrown clay pots on the gallery wall and the way they were finished off.

And the rocks on the floor made with cardboard were so life like (below)

And I'm a huge fan of woven structures so this big beauty really caught my eye. Woven from marbleized paper strips, it was such an awesome piece.

I was also really impressed with the quality of the life drawings on the second floor. They were monumental in scale and really caught my eye.

And of course I couldn't pass up a pix of these knitwear designs. I love that the fiber arts are alive and thriving at Otis. Another favorite of mine was the 7th floor that houses the toy design classrooms. The only bummer was that there were so many people crowding the exhibits that I couldn't get a good picture. So if you've got nothing going on tonight you can still catch this fabulous show.