Lost in stars and tea leaves

You cannot depend on your eyes...

when your imagination is out of focus.

-Mark Twain

Dreams are powerful things.  They are the things that have driven so many needed changes that happen here in this world.  Just the same, they can be very dangerous.  It is in dreams that anything can happen and it's easy to give in to the temptation of existing in a world that is only of imagination.  As quickly 

as a dream can be wonderful, it can also turn into a nightmare.  And because it seems so real, it's easy to believe that what is happening will be neverending and imprison you.

Practice what you preach

Two more masks down, two more to go - one of which I cannot even begin to understand how I'm going to make happen.  You'd think two completed would be enough, right?  Well... it's not.  Like too many times in life, I want more.  I WANT MORE.

*SIGH of (near) defeat*

I'm getting to the point I knew was coming when the only solution for a major design issue is divine intervention alone.  This point isn't anything like what I anticipated it to be.  It's worse.

At the bottom of my work email, I have the following quote in the signature line...

"Pray the unthinkable.  Attempt the impossible."

I can't remember where the quote originated but I believe it was from a book I recently finished by Mark Batterson called "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day."  For all intents and purposes, it's a Christian-based motivational and self-help book.  I mean, I'm sure Mr. Batterson could argue against such a conclusion but I'm trying to put his amazing piece of literature in the simplest terms possible - especially with regard to nonbelievers.

I've been doing these masks for so long they've become a part of me.  When people ask me about my work, mask making is the first thing I think about.  If people ask me about how I would create a piece to illuminate x, y, or z subject matter, I immediately go to how it would be interpreted in mask form.  *shrug* I don't know what to do with myself?  I mean, there's definitely some reason (I don't understand) that I'm so compelled to make them but at the same time, I'm not trying to be "that Christian artist who makes the masks."  Still... if that's what the Lord wants me to do right now?  That's the only thing I can and will be able to do.

I have railed against God's calling to me for too much of my life and the one thing I know for sure - no matter how stubborn and bullheaded I definitely am -  is that I cannot do it without the will of God.  I've got to be doing what He wants me to do.  I must be committed to doing whatever He commands even if it feels impossible and appears insurmountable.  And whatever I do in Him will be so but I have to be willing to have faith in Him and truly act in it.  My actions need to be indicative of belief in His ability to be within me and all I do.

My goal with these masks is to create something that blows people away and gives them a tangible illustration of the Lord's almighty power.  Others are called to minister with their words and services but I know I am called to minister by creating art that glorifies Him.

Old habits. Die hard.

It's true what they say...

You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

I feel sorry for people who live their lives looking through eyes that are only willing to see things in one color and of one way.  If God truly created each of us in His own likeness and it's obvious that each and every one of us are unique in how we look, talk, act, dress, etc.... why is there so much judgement in the world of things that honestly don't matter?  People who live and breathe to condemn others based upon things that cannot be helped are doing anything but living.  The hatred that stirs and brews inside of them eats them from the inside out and every day that they believe they are living well, they are actually decaying themselves.  It's like a death wish or the worst kind of cancer you could never imagine because it's the kind that you don't know is killing you.

Series: Negatives of Positives

Other than being a high school art teacher, I'm also a professional photographer (here and here).  The market is flooded these days with all kinds prosumer-type photographers but I've been using the photographic medium for nearly ten years now to create pictures.  That means I've been in the business way back before digital photography was so affordable and film was king.

Over Thanksgiving break last week, I dove head first into photography work with portrait jobs and also my own endeavors and I got to thinking about how the photographic medium isn't the same without the use of actual film.  Granted, it's nice to have the instant gratification of the pictures popping up immediately on your camera's LCD but overall? It really lacks a certain something in wait time of actually getting rolls of film developed.  And because I'm such a "geek" of things of yesteryear, I got the harebrained idea to take some of my favorite digital shots and transform them into the filmstrips that they might have been long ago.

Here's what I came up with...

I created the above using digital images of my favorite positive moments and memories (hence the name of the series - Negatives of Positives) but then I transformed them to appear as negative strips using both photography and photoshop skills.  The images above are supposed to appear as if they are being illuminated on a lightbox/light table.  I took some creative license and tweaked some of the ways the colors showed up but overall I'm really pleased with how they came out and I will definitely do some more of these and include them all in my portfolio.

Student WiPs: Cartoon busts

Since the 3D class is a foundational course and most students come to me with very little advanced visual art understanding/technique, I try and give them a course that is explorative (is that even a word?) in nature.   They work with as many different types of materials/mediums as I can figure out of the budget but one of the most popular of all is when we work with clay.  We have a kiln and I used it last year but I'm still not great at it and hate using student work as "guinea pigs" that potentially become ruined because I don't know how to fire the kiln correctly. (But I am getting better and will be firing it up within the next few weeks.)  Anyway, I favor air-dry clay for the students and one of my favorite brands is called Boneware.  It comes in gray, white, and red but I always get the red because (I believe) it's usually the cheapest.

Before I came, they did clay egghead sculptures in the style of Robert Arneson.  It's a good inspiration to take and follow because the egg shape is simple enough and students can really explore the human expression of the face but after doing it one time around with the kids, it was clear that it wasn't enough.  The students wanted more room to do more heavily detailed work and I wanted to give them more creative freedom than what the egg shapes allowed.  Enter: claymation art.

I really brainstormed to come up with something that would not be overly unfair with regard to the students' limited/novice skillsets but still forced them to focus on the subtle details that lent themselves to facial expressions.  Human figure/form was out because it was a little too far out of what would have been fair to ask them to reach but then I got to thinking about cartoon characters.  They were mostly of simple shapes (to teach form) but still would require them to create facial expressions in order to properly bring the character to life.  And doing cartoons in bust-style was a fun take on the ol' classic of so many of the classic and legendary bust sculptures of so many in art history.  So I kicked the idea off in the Spring of last year and it went reasonably well but I learned from my mistakes (and the ones I let the students make) and really improved for this time around.  Bear in mind that these were sculpted and I gave them almost a full week to dry and they will be fully painted and detailed within the next week.

Materials and tools used included the following:

- Sculpture House Boneware clay

- Boxwood tools sculpting tools, class set

- Buckets of water at each table

- Small individual wooden platforms (these are rinsed/washed and reused every semester)

- Gallon storage bags with the slide zippers (one per student) and wet paper towels to keep the clay workable until the student was finished

I'll post pictures of the finished works in coming weeks but thought  it would be neat to show them in this state.