Danielle's First Road Trip

One of my fondest memories growing up was when my Aunt Elena trusted me enough at age 15 1/2 with only a learners permit, to drive her up the California coast from La Mirada all the way thru Big Sur to the Monterrey Peninsula and Pacific Grove. I really wanted that same wonderful experience for my daughter, Dani, who just got her permit, so over the Easter Break with our destination being Santa Barbara, she drove me up the coast in her very 1st car, a Jeep Liberty. Check out the mustard greens above, growing along the coast, gorgeous

Our first stop was in Camerillo at the outlet malls, of course :) to do some serious shopping (above), and then I told her about the cute beach town of Capenteria, so we stopped there as well and checked out the local shops and community art gallery. It's such a charming town with great little cottages everywhere (below).

Below is the Santa Barbara coastline looking towards Ventura.

After we checked into our hotel we had time for a walk along the beach. Unfortunately, some of their beaches are covered with oil lines. That's Dan below sitting on one.

Our hotel, The West Beach Inn (below) was directly across the street from the beach. It was clean and recently remodeled, and had a yummy continental breakfast. I would definitely recommend it.

Santa Barbara has a large homeless population and many of them hang around the pier and look for handouts. Below is a clever solution that many of them have come up with, to spread a blanket on the sand right under the pier and offer opportunities for various coin tosses (see below) like at carnivals and fairs.

My favorite homeless solution was this amazing sculpted mermaid. But I didn't have my purse with me and couldn't give the man any money, so he still grudgingly allowed me to take a picture of it.

The only bummer (besides me getting us turned around and a little bit lost, hee hee) was the last hour coming home. We sat in bumper to bumper traffic for over an hour on the 10 Freeway. Other than that we had a blast! For EXTRA CREDIT: on a piece of paper with your name and period on it, tell me about your favorite road trip destination. If you've never been on one, tell me where you've always wanted to drive too.

Easter 2010

Kids are never too old for an Easter egg hunt, especially when the plastic eggs are loaded with over $100 in bills and change. What the kids don't know is that I collected most of that money from the bottom of the washing machine over the past year. Pretty sneaky, huh? The money was really theirs to begin with, they just forgot to empty their pockets. What's that old saying about finders keepers? But in the end I just had to give it back, but it was distributed 3 ways with Zach's new girlfriend, Candice, a 3rd year Architecture major at Cal Poly Pomona. The day was beautiful and ended with a great big Italian dinner, almost like my mommy used to make.

Off for Spring Break

Before I leave for my annual Spring Break, I wanted to show you what 7th grader Melissa Lanto created for her 3rd quarter final (sorry for the out of focus quality). The assignment was Colored Embossment, and the kids built a plate from cardboard, wire and yarn scraps, along with seed beads and glue, then laid printing paper over top before we sent it through our printing press. Afterwards, the kids were required to add a bit of color. I had just taken them thru a color unit on oil pastels and watercolor. I think Melissa did a wonderful job designing her plate and applying her watercolor. By the way, I will not be posting from April 2 thru April 18 cuz hopefully I'll be having too much fun with my own kids as we enjoy our days off together. I feel another couple of road trips coming on. Stay tuned!

Farewell 3rd Quarter 7th Grade Art Wheel Students!

Look how sweet and calm they appear. I always take 2 shots for the farewell. A "say cheese" for the camera shot and then a "crazy " shot. This group's crazy shot was so wild that I couldn't post it. LOL So you are seeing their much more subdued "say cheese" shot. I'll miss you guys, feel like I'm just getting to know you and it's already time for you to go. Have fun in Ms. Improta's drama class. Alan and Mark, she's gonna love you both! Be good, and come back to me when you can fit in an art class.

Open House Wall Preview 2009-2010

I'm really getting excited to show you my students walls they are putting together for their 3rd Quarter Final for Open House. I believe it's an important part of the art curriculum for the students to learn how to display their pieces so I've turned this into an assignment. So this is a small sneak preview of how they are getting started. Finished photos will be posted next week. Above is the combined efforts of junior Jason Kwon and senior Ashlee Chang. And below we have seniors Jullian Kho and Kate Lee's hand prints that will go under the pieces they've chosen for their wall. If you click on Open House Display on right side you can see what these same walls looked like last school year.

7th Grade Soap Scrubs - Student Art

Look at my 7th graders go! Once again they have produced some beautiful hand felted soap scrubs. Their color choices and surface designs just seem to be getting stronger with each group that makes these. And once again, it's almost time for this batch of kids to leave me, just as I'm really getting to know them. Oh well, one more group to break in before summer vacation. Wow, this year has gone by so quickly. The top 3 soaps belong to Alan Jahic, Sharon Fu and Shannon Chou. And the ones below were made by Sabrina Sanchez, Jonathan Han, Kyle Lu, Isidro Banales, and Marissa Alvarado.

Metamorphosis - Student Art

I am also very late in posting this work that belongs to junior Jason Kwon. He is one of my strongest drawing/painting/design students this year and is looking into art schools for college. He is one of a very few that can pull images out of his head and draw them. That kind of drawing cannot be taught, it is simply a gift. Jason can sit and sketch for hours doing this. Currently he is in my 3rd year Advanced 2-d art class, and I'm hoping to have him back next year in at least two of my other classes. In this assignment the students were asked to bring in two unlike objects and figure out a way to morph them into each other, and then to build an environment around them that made sense. I thought Jason's idea of a spilled ice cream cone was brilliant. You can see senior Jullian Kho's morph that I posted earlier this year if you click under labels on right under Prismancolor or Metamorphosis.

Spring is Here!

After much needed rainfall this season, we are finally starting to warm up, and many of my flowers are in bloom. This is a view of the backyard, you can see how everything has really greened up because of all the rain we've had. My hanging ceramic planters that I've made for demos. in my beginning clay class are really thriving this year with some succulents I planted at the beginning of last summer.

Both my lemon and orange trees have yielded lots of fruit this year, and on the orange tree you can see all the blossoms that will be fruit next winter. I've been eating an orange a day for the last 2 months off this tree. They are so sweet and juicy!

My azaleas aren't as profuse this year as last, I think because I neglected to feed them this year. I hate to fertilize, the hand watering and weeding takes up enough of my free time, but when I do fertilize I like to use bat guano.

This is one of my son's orchid plants that he picked up 3 years ago and this is the second year it has bloomed for him. We should be fertilizing these as well but we don't. We are so bad! Look at how long that stem is below. I just love the little plastic dragonfly clips that come with the plants when you buy them in bloom. They are so cute and they work really well to hold up flyaway hair tendrils at the gym too. LOL Feel real bad about not blogging my camillas this year. They were fabulous, but they are gone now. Maybe I'll get lucky and have a few more stragglers so you can see.

7th Grade Collage Boxes with Stamped Tissue and Wire Pendants - Student Art

So I am nearing the end of another great group of 7th graders, 3rd quarter finals are almost here. The young ones just finished up their colorful collaged boxes that house their pretty stamped tissue paper and lovely wire pendants. What a great gift these are going to make for Mother's Day. The boxes above belong to Nathan Kim and Payal Morari. I really like how Kellie Zhao used a neutral color scheme which creates a powerful statement in the box below. We can just see her pendant peeking out.

Love the cool spring colors that Amy Igarashi chose for her box above. Both Amy and Kellie show a lot of artistic potential and I'm looking forward to having them back for more art classes.

The 3 boxes above belong to Valiera Gasca, Melissa Lanto and Alan Jahic. All 3 of these kids did a beautiful job with their collaging and their craftsmanship.

Here is a peek at Melissa's stamped tissue and pendant, and below you can see how Vivy (Valiera) has wire wrapped her pendant, both girls having done an outstanding job.

And look how Sharon has color coordinated her entire package from the color of her stone to all the colors she brought into her tissue and collage. Beautiful work class!

Interactive Clay Sculptures - Student Art

My Beginning Ceramics students just finished up this complex clay piece that had to be both interactive (movable parts) as well as embellished with mixed media in the finishing stage after coming out of the glaze firing. There were so many outstanding pieces to choose from to post. So I hope you enjoy what I picked out. One of my personal favorites belongs to senior Justin Currlin (above). I think it's brilliant how he incorporated the curved wire between the legs of his octopus. And then for extra points he built a stand to place his piece on. And look at the embellishment on that! I'm hoping that Justin goes on to take more art classes in college.

Next we have senior Heidi Aguilar who went all out on her piece too. Look at the paper collage she has glued on top of the glaze, and the fabulous base she built for her piece to stand on.

In the photo above senior Eugene Kim has done a sensitive and beautiful job embellishing his dragonfly that rests on the tree stump. Both the tree and wings have numerous seed beads glued onto them.

And senior Julie Jung has made a lovely flower chime. My favorite part of her piece is the inside of the flower. She has filled it with lots of nail heads (see photo below).

And senior Janet Hurtado has done this adorable frog whose arms move up and down. And again, look at the great base it's resting on. Soooooooooooooo cute Janet!

Senior Jennifer Su has gone all out on her embellishments so I've provided you with several close-ups so you can appreciate all the time and effort she put into her piece. The little clay heart is really a lid that pops off.

The kids were also to have made clay beads and charms to incorporate with their other added embellishments, so look closely and you will see how Jennifer strung hers in.

These next two belong to seniors Erin Unson and Chris Shishido. Erin put a lot of thought into how hers was going to come together in the finished work and made multiple pieces (above) and Chris pretty much did the same with his piece. Chris' chime reminds me of an island woman. Love the contrast between your glaze and beads Chris.

And lastly, another personal favorite of mine was done by senior Tryphena Liu. Love all the clay as well as bead and wire embellishments that she incorporated. What a fun piece! Great job everyone. You really outdid yourselves with this assignment.

Jane La Fazio - Mixed Media Artist and so much more!

I want to share with you the work of mixed media artist Jane LaFazio and give you her links so you can see her spectacular work. I just love everything she does, and she works in a variety of media, oftentimes combining them in the most amazing ways. She really is quite extraordinary. See what's she's up to at: http://www.plainjanestudio.com/ and http://www.janeville.blogspot.com/ She is a very prolific woman who draws, paints, travels the world, conducts workshops, publishes, is a printmaker, an art quilter, and works in the fiberart and mixed media arenas. I adore her new technique that she calls slow cloth (above) and was inspired by her art quilt "Recycled Circles" below. For EXTRA CREDIT, on any piece of paper, put your name and period and tell me which one of Jane's works you like the most , what medium she's using and why it appeals to you. The more you share with me the more points you will earn.

1st Quarter Final - Student Art

I'm really tardy on posting this piece by senior Anne Guu from my Intermediate 2-d art class. She turned it in for her 1st quarter final grade, and it was such a great example of what I was pushing the kids to do that I felt it was important to show it off. After taking the kids thru units on 1 and 2 point perspective, I turned them loose to explore the school (both inside and out), and find an interesting spot to draw from. Anne chose the area by the food hutch and sat there for a couple weeks composing this piece. They had to draw from either a 1 or 2 viewpoint and show me the foundation structure of the building. But after that they could use artist licence and put in whatever they wanted as long as it made sense. So Anne, being the clever artist that she is, brought in a bit of whimsy along with some color, and totally pulled off what I was after. I call it an added twist and usually give kids extra credit when they go above and beyond the assignment requirements. As always Anne, great job!!! See Perspective Finals on right sidebar to see what alumni Mindy Cho and Amanda Garcia drew last school year.

Oh Boy! This is BIG! Really BIG!!!!!!

I'm so excited, just can't hide it, want to share it with you all. Got a letter from Otis College of Art & Design last Friday telling me that they have selected me as one of the three recipients of their Teacher of the Year Award. WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is big Aunt Stella, just wish mom and Aunt Elena were here so I could share it with them. I think I have finally impressed my two children with what I do. And let me tell you it wasn't easy! Anyways, the letter goes on to say that after their staff has visited hundreds of high schools in California this year, that they have selected me as one of the most dedicated, talented and inspiring local Art Educators with whom they've worked with. WOW!!!!!!!!!! Did I say that already??????????? I was flabbergasted and delighted, and am thrilled to be going to the preview of their Class of 2010 exhibit, followed by a private award ceremony and dinner. OH MY!! Whatever shall I wear??????????? I might have to go shopping. Oh Gus, where are you? HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Peace Offering

To the artists of the Twelve by Twelve Collaborative Art Quilt Project for not checking with you first for posting your gorgeous art pieces. Please see post below this one for more apologies and links to your sites. :)

Twelve by Twelve: A Collaberative Art Quilt Project

I was blogging around the other day and checking out what was new on Kristin LaFlamme's site (see sidebar) and saw that she and her fiber friends had just completed a challenge they set up for themselves. On a 12" by 12" format, using only blue, black and white create an art quilt. These 3 were my favorites. The top one belongs to Kristin, check out all her embellishments! She calls it Broken Dishes.

Love the teacup arrangement as well as her patchwork technique. Artist Teri Stegmiller calls it Stacked Blueware and used misty fuse to hold down her patches.

And Helen Conway calls her piece Stolen. She has done some serious stitch embellishment. Love it! I want to thank all the ladies from the challenge for sending me feedback and comments and allowing me to post their quilts after the fact, I'm sorry, I should have asked permission first, my bad. I also was negligent in the posting of links to their site so you can see all their fabulous work. So here they are: http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/ , www.gericondesigns.com , http://www.terristegmiller.com/ , and http://www.threecreativestudios.com/ Enjoy!!!