For what it's worth

A gorgeous bouquet of hand-picked wildflowers gifted to me by one of my senior art students!

Well, the end of the year is here, folks - and what a year it's been!!! Last Thursday my beloved senior art students graduated and today is the last of two days with final exam week starting tomorrow for the non-graduating students. Also, my summer studies (for grad school) kick off tomorrow.

At the beginning of this year I was completely convinced that this year would be a doozy with the way it kicked itself off and I can hardly argue that it was anything but that. Following the excitement that was the start of the school year, we also had an earthquake, record-breaking torrential downpours and hurricanes, and all manner of other interruptions of regularly scheduled school days. And that was just the weather!! The rest of the excitement? It came by way of the amazing student artists I am so blessed to spend my days alongside.

Some of my favorite moments of this year were the following...

• That time we made giant fingerprint drawings and embedded scripture into lines of the print
• The photo-to-painting digital renderings that graphic design students whipped out
• When the 2D students made those AMAZING junkmail portraits that they loved to hate and then loved to LOVE once they realized that - YES! They really did that!!!
• Making the giant valentine's cards for one of my advanced students from his fictional octogenarian girlfriend
• Helping my school bring The Sound of Music to life by painting and moving some serious mountains
• Doing my first-ever time-lapse illustration video when I teamed up with my pastor and the new ministry/outreach at my church
• Helping one of my student aides "woo" a gal (who was also another art student) into being his prom date
• Establishing a personal goal to give handmade
• Really giving my students a sampling of installation art with projects like The Ombre Experience and the Packing Tape people sculptures
• And of course? Can't forget to mention my beloved and the (now) infamous RoyGBiv day 

This year was full of surprises and successes and incredibly unexpected challenges. More than anything that I couldn't have begun to anticipate was my incredible adoration for this year's graduating class. I don't know what it is about them but I just have loved this year's senior class. They have been more creative, innovative, and fired up to take the world by storm than any other senior class I have ever had the blessing to work with. While teachers are never supposed to play favorites, I must confess that the class of 2012 includes so very many of my favorites. I know they are all going to charge into the world and do really great things. I absolutely know it and I cannot wait to see how it will all turn out for them.

As for me? Like I said before, I have summer classes that I am doing. I will be taking about 12 credit hours (to be specific) with six of those being studio art courses. I will, of course, do my best to blog my work and art adventures - that will also include a week long painting camp I am doing in partnership with my school's summer program offerings! This pretty much makes up the first half of my summer but the second half will be devoted to gearing up for next school year. My department will be doing curriculum review and accreditation, the student-elected visual arts prefect (basically the senior student who is the head of the visual arts student group) has already presented an incredibly ambitious plan for the senior college mural board that I have to help her finish conceptualizing and then figure out how to fabricate, and (of course) there's all my graduate studies to keep up with and the art direction for two major performance art productions.  *phew* Just enumerating it all like that sure does make my head spin and makes ME want to run off to some deserted tropical island! *ha!*

Anyway, thanks so much for sticking with me this school year. This blog has grown so much in the past year!  Per my stats,  I'm REGULARLY getting readers from international locales and folks whose IP addresses are based out of school districts which means I am definitely connecting the amazing visual art colleagues that I am so blessed to share company with (even though I might never meet them IRL). You all have no idea what it means to me to have you reading/sharing in the things I am doing in my classroom and (possibly?) that you are also using them with your own students. My goal ALWAYS will be just to give back to the art education and visual arts community even though I feel like I will never be able to repay what it has done for me by giving me a place in the world that I am happy to call my own.

Today is my last day of classes with my kids and tomorrow is the start of exams so there is going to be a good break in art education and student work stuff for a good while.  I will do my best to not be too scarce this summer though at least as far as it goes with my own personal studies of the graduate and studio art varieties. Once again, thanks so much for sticking with me through all of my ups and downs of blogging!!! Please don't be shy about "keeping in touch" with me via my comments section or via email (address is along the sidebar over there on the right).