Another Home Depot Chicken Sighting

I can't even begin to tell you how many times I was at the Home Depot over the Thanksgiving break, shopping for this and that, never once seeing those darn chickens.  But then I got lucky, I had a sighting.  Actually I heard them rather then saw them first.  They were making a big ruckus cuz some little kids had spotted them and were taunting the heck out of them.  I calmly went over and in my scariest teacher voice told the kids to get lost , that they were bugging the chickens.  Those young ones looked at me and I could tell what they were thinking "Yeah right, who do you think you are lady?"  Kids these days- no respect!  Then they ran over to their parents and told them about the mean old lady LOL!!  

My Late Summer Garden

Since I don't have a big yard to play in anymore, I give all my attention to my balconies.  These first two shots are on my studio's second floor balcony.  The impatiens and lobelia were beautiful this year, and are continuing to bloom into the fall.  My tree (I think it's called a Carolina, but looks like a ficus) is getting big and falls over whenever the Santa Ana's blow into town.  I recently had Jim drill a hole into stucco wall and anchor that bad boy.  It survived this last weekends onslaught.  Yippee!!  I'm even getting my fushias to grow and bloom because I have a lot of good shade on this balcony.

Below is our second story bedroom balcony that gets full sun.  So on the railing Zach and I planted boysenberry and black raspberry vines.  I lost the raspberry plant, but the boysenberry produced fruit all summer long.  I've got a spider plant that throws off it's babies over the edge for a very pretty look, and my pink and red bougainvillia bloomed all summer long in the far corners.  

But my favorite flower this summer was the lily that Zach gave me for Mother's day.  I planted the bulb in May and it bloomed for me in late June.  Ahh...  :)

Sagger Fired Mounted Clay Sculptures

These wonderful pieces belong to my 2nd year clay kids.  It was their first time to build with porcelain clay and they loved it.  Afterwards we sagger fired them in a trash can and then some of the kids choose to rub metallic compounds over top their surface.  Above senior David Hyun sculpted a moonstone with a cityscape on top.  Then after it came out of the sagger fire he used an ink pen to draw images and text along the side panels.  What a cool piece David.

The students were also required to mount the sculptures on a wooden base that would flow visually with the sculpture.  I love that  David built another cityscape on the wood.  Very clever boy!

Check out this expressive piece above by senior Tiffany Liu.  Love the metallics she rubbed on the body and the sand and shells she embellished with on the wood block.  All the kids were required to sculpt an expressive face into their sculpture.  I definitely think Tiffany's was the most expressive and playful.  Below senior Hanna Woo really stepped out of the single wood block mount by combining several pieces of wood on which to mount her apple.  Hanna actually made the blocks interactive by drilling larger holes thru all the blocks so they could swivel and be re-positioned.  Brilliant idea!!  And because she used various woods, when she rubbed them with finishing oil, they looked fabulous.  Her final move was drizzling paint down the wood to bring in some black for visual flow with sagger colored apple.

Wow you guys, Great Work!!

Happy Thanksgiving to All

From our family to yours, we want to wish you a very Happy Holiday.  I'll be taking a blogging break for the next week, but I'll be back on November 28th.  See you then!

My First Gallery Show

A little tardy getting these pix up from October 15, but oh well, better late then never, right?

Owner Jamie Kough has done a remarkable job with her new gallery space.  She has so many classes and activities for both adults and children, there is always something fun going on here.  It's called The Drawing Board and you can check out her website for a list of shows and activities at www.drawingboard.info 

Jamie has a real eye for display, and I was really pleased with how beautifully she hung my work.  Notice the roses in the foreground from my honey.  Jimmy encouraged me to do the show but unfortunately he wasn't able to attend because his band was playing a show in Vegas, but he sent roses to the gallery and they were there the night of the show when I walked in. :)

There were several other artists there with me but I've tried to crop the pix so you can see my pieces.  It was kind of a retrospective show for me.  I had work there all the way back from 1976.

I brought in clay, fiber, and mosaic pieces...

and made a couple of sales.  Oh yeah!

A few of my art quilts were made in workshops with famous quilter's such as Ricky Tims and Gwen Marston.

I had over 70 good friends, family, faculty, staff, alum and students that came to support me.  I was overwhelmed and felt so loved.  Thank you all for coming by.  You really made this night very special for me.  A special thank you to alumni Andy Hsieh and Rik Slayman for joining me.

And a very special thank you to my babies, Dan, Zach and Julie for dropping in with your significant others. 

And the best part is that Jamie has asked me to bring in more things for her next show.  Fill you in when I know more...

OH YEAH!! I'm back in business - Color Theory - Student Art

It feels so good to have my blog back.  Thanks to junior Emily Yang who figured out my problem and helped me fix it, plus taught me some new stuff too!  So I guess that old saying about teaching an old dog new tricks holds true  LOL 

I've been dying to share what I got out of my new Beginning 2-d kids; these gorgeous, colorful works of art.  The assignment was to design, mix and paint a color wheel, and then to also design, mix and paint a monochromatic, value, and analogous color scheme scale, along with the 3 dominant complementary sets and their neutrals.  A lot of color theory stuff.  They could combine it all on one piece of paper or they could divide it up between 2 papers. 

Above, senior Joseph Chon has combined his into one glorious piece.  Plus he's added a bit of visual texture.  Below sophomore Megan Yeu has executed this amazingly complex work and is also  throwing in some visual texture with a felt tip marker.  

I have so many talented beginners this year and I'm so excited to be working with them.  Above we have senior Michelle Chang with her beautifully painted Theme Park...

and these next two belong to sophomore Jessica Perez, who like Megan, is some real up and coming talent to our art program.  Jessica's color wheel is above and her color schemes below.  She is coming to me with impeccable craftsmanship and solid design skills. 

And then this last one was done by senior Tiffany Yeh, who when she began working on this, blew me out of the water with her drawing and design skills.  Where have you been girl for the past 3 years?  So many of these talented kids wait to take my class till their senior year and then they are gone.  It's just soooo sad!

For EXTRA CREDIT on a multi-colored piece of paper (use your critical thinking skills on how to get a mult-colored paper, there are lots of ways), cut out the shape of a fish, and on one side put your name and period, and on the other side write down the name of the art student from above whose piece(s) you liked the best.  Please hand me your beautiful fish when you walk in the door.  The more work you put into this fish the more points you will earn.  You could even make it 3-dimensional rather then 2-d for more points.  Oh boy, I can't wait to see them!

Blog Down

Got a little problem with my current browser at school where I do all my posting of pix, gonna try to iron out the kinks tonight and tomorrow.  So please say tuned till I get things back up and running.

Thanks,
Deb

7th Grade Soap Scrubs

Farewell little ones, tomorrow is your last day before I give you up to Ms. Improta.  It's been a blast getting to know all 30 of you, I hope you've had as much fun as I've had.  I think David is going to miss all of you even more then me.  He sure has enjoyed getting to teach and demo for you, and giving you a bit of advice along the way.  You young ones be good to Ms. Improta, she has a lot of cool things to teach you.

Your soap scrubs turned out real well.  From top to bottom, left to right:  Helen Park, Anuj Patel, Annie Oh, Manav Gandhi, Shreya Shethand Alison Oh.

I hope you all get a chance to take one of my classes again in your junior and senior years.  See ya around, and come and visit me.

Value Scales - Student Work

These were done by my Intermediate and Advanced 2-d students as a warm up/drawing review at the beginning of the year.  I'm just a little tardy getting them posted.  My Intermediate class had to do a ten step value scale and my Advanced kids a 15 step scale.  They were allowed to be as creative as possible with their subjects that their scales were put into.  The whole thing was done in graphite.

Above we have senior Michael Chen (Art II) with this very clean piece, and below is senior Crislyn Ogawa (Art II) with this very mystic feeling subject.

Junior Sam Arias (Art III) drew this beautifully sensitive alligator above with her crazy, amazing right brain drawing skills, and senior Jessica Liu (Art II) did the dramatic, emotionally charged piece below.

What a great way to start off the year!

My Son's New Blog

I'm so excited, my son has just started his own blog, and I want to share it with you cuz I'm just such a proud mama.  If you haven't been following along recently, my son, Zach, just graduated from Cal Poly Pomona last June as a Plant Science major and has a love of gardening that was instilled in him at a very early age by my mother who babysit for me.  She taught him all aspects of gardening from watering and planting, to weeding and bugs, and his favorite part was watching his little plants grow.  Then with me in our  home, he watched me design with plants.  I would take him with me to the most beautiful nurseries like Rogers Gardens in Corona del Mar, and would let him help me pick plants to put in our yard.

So now that he has a full time job and his own bungalow in Pasadena, he is starting his own garden.  The patch above in the pix is the plot of land attached to his home that the landlord is letting him experiment in.  So if you are interested you can watch him develop this land into a lush vegetable and flowering garden.  His blogsite is http://www.socalvegetablegardener.wordpress.com/. 

Your nana is with you Zach, she is all around you, watching over you and now she will send you bees to pollinate your plants.  We are both so very proud of you and your endeavors.

Good Luck baby! 

The Wonderful World of Tye-Dye Student Work

Oh Boy, did the kids in the Beginning 3-d class have fun learning how to tye-dye.

You can see we used rubber bands, paper clips, clothes pins, staples and string to resist the dyes.  The kids were given the 3 primary colors to dip into as well as black.  These were their results:

Junior Lily Lin

Junior Mark Ilog

Senior Aparna Vancheswaran

Senior Luis Gomez

Junior Sara Shams

Junior Joy Chung

Junior Julia Chanco

Sophomore Alex Rendon

and junior Sheila San Agustin.  Now I know those of you, like me, who grew up in the 1970's are wondering if we do any traditional tye-dye patterns.  Of course,  you can see one below

done by junior Tiffany Lee.  These gorgeous pieces of cloth are going to be the backdrop for a fabric journal the kids will be making a little later in the semester.  In years past they were the foundation for our appliquilts the kids made like the one below by alumni Ashley Chang who graduated in 09.  You might recall that her appliquilt along with this year's senior Kelsey Lee and 09 Alumni Kevin Ni where featured 2 years ago in Quilting Arts Magazine which was a big thrill for us. 

Boo!

Out of my 154 students this year, juniors Sam Arias and Sheila San Agustin captured my attention with their artful costumes.  Way to go girls!

You are scaring me Sam  LOL

Sam is enrolled at Cerritos College in her free time and taking a class called Blood, Gut and Gore.  She wants to work in Hollywood.  I think you will have no problem getting a job Sam, cuz you are GOOD!!!