Judgement call?

Recently I received a phone call from a young woman who has just moved here from another location. She was very friendly on the phone. She has a degree in art education and had been talking and asking about art opportunities here. My name came up quite often as THE person to talk to about art in Carroll. Anyway she said she had been all over my website and noticed that I do "crafty things" with kids and was wondering if I would be interested in her coming in and team teaching with me but on an art level.

 Am I being too sensitive?  Because I was kind of offended.

All she had to go by was my summer classes which I will admit are more crafts based because parents don't want to commit to 6 or more weeks of classes in the summer. Plus I really enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of summer craft classes as do the kids.

During the school year it's all art. Every lesson reviews the basics- line, shape, form, color- we discuss horizon lines , foreground, middle ground and background- we make sure to draw what we see. We use watercolors, pastels, ink, acrylic paint, pencils and charcoal. We discuss famous artists and what it was like to produce work in their day and what their style of art is called and then try to imitate it.

Please don't label me as craftsy.

Or artsy-fartsy.

Or arsty-craftsy.

I paint. I draw. I create.
I am a creative person and I like to share my creativity with kids.

sidewalk chalk- here today and washed away by rain tomorrow

Just thought I would post pictures of the sidewalk chalk pieces we created last week- before the rains came and washed them all away.

Where the sidewalk ends...

 and becomes a msterpiece! I love sidewalks. When I was a kid the sidewalk was like far away from our front door and close enough to the street to feel like you were someplace else. We always had a lot of yard around our house and the front yard in the Des Moines house was three steps above the sidewalk so there were steps at the end of our front walk. Best place ever to hang out and play. We didn't have a fence but a 30" cement retaining wall all around the front yard. The sidewalk is where we played hopscotch, and jacks and jump-rope. We dragged our dolls out and pretended they lived in apartments -each step a different apartment. There were flower dolls to be made out of hollyhocks and tooth picks and crowns out of white and purple clover. And when the people next door remodeled their house we discovered that there was 'chalk' in the walls just waiting for us to peel the paper away and draw with it.

When my kids were young the sidewalk and driveway represented a huge canvas just waiting for us to make our marks. On really hot days all it took was a bucket of water and a paint brush. Pictures would magically disappear so we could start all over again. We used sidewalk chalk by the pound. The cement around our house was always filled with colors and images.

 Last week I ordered a case of sidewalk chalk. For the next two weeks my students and I are going outside the studio to draw on the sidewalk. Of course I won't let them draw just anything. My students will be re-creating some of Van Gogh's masterpieces on the sidewalk. Here is the first third of Van Gogh's "Iris" from 1889.