The Auction Project

The teens in my Art and Design class put together this fabulous piece of Portland with Mt. Hood in the background for the school auction. I divided a photo into 16 sections, and they each created one piece of the total collage. They worked with magazine pages and were told to interpret rather than copy the original photo.

It was so exciting to watch the piece come together. Since they were working on such small details up close, they didn't have a sense of how the final picture would look. They were all pretty stunned at the final unveiling. What I especially love about the piece is that you can see their individual styles if you inspect the piece up close, yet they came together beautifully into a very professional looking polished piece.

If you would like to bid on the piece, it's available in the online auction and the proceeds go to support a fantastic alternative school. The piece is matted and framed and very impressive, if I do say so myself.

Click here to see it and bid.

Working with What's Working

Entering the fourth week of Flora's class (I'm a bit behind on assignments), we have been adding more layers and now have an even bigger mess. Flora calls this the ugly teenage stage. She has a refreshing way of looking at things though. Rather than focusing on what isn't working at this stage, she tells us to look for what is working and do more of it.

Here's all the craziness in one of my canvases:

I can't say I'm finding a whole lot that I love about it, but I do like this shape:

And the freshness of this area:

So those will be my starting points when I approach it next time. It's funny that I always approach my students' work in that sort of positive light, looking for what is working in a piece, but when it comes to my own, my thoughts turn negative and I'm critical about what doesn't work. I'll give this a whirl.

I really love the spiritual quality of Flora's approach and the lessons that come through painting--acceptance, letting go, being flexible, staying present. Some days I'm much better at those things than others.