Show

I recently put up a show in Sunnyside. There was actually a theme and everything. The theme was "education" The guy who put on the show, thought it woulds be sooo cool to have a show all about my life as an art teacher. I thought that sounded really challenging and really personal. So I did create a bunch of new art for the show, but made sure that it was pretty and colorful and not revealing of the frustration that I may have felt.

I ended up doing roads and mountains... mostly because cycling and hiking are one thing that made life really enjoyable in Sunnyside for the first few years and survivable for the last. These are my version of my favorite hills roads and mountains.



Milkweed seeds... why... because they are pretty. I like lines... swirly, flowing, snapping, drifting.... You can also make a metaphor for sewing seeds in the minds of our students... I did three of these.

I ended up drawing six flowers, but what made them fun is the paper I drew them on. I made it myself. For the Five years that I was in Sunnyside, I kept every expulsion and suspension notice that I received. They were so fascinating, because they all came with explanations of the indecent. Some of them were hilarious, some were laughably pathetic, others pathetic and others.... heart breaking. It was quite a tragic collection. Reasons ranged from throwing desks and cursing, to tardiness or failure to be prepared, to mooning, to homicide. Anyway, I shredded them, and made paper from them. They were a horrible surface to work on (hence the roughness of the texture), but the irony was worth it and the metaphor, hopeful. (students growing and blossoming despite their mistakes... despite our mistakes, despite adolescence (truly the biggest miracle) children are resilient!)



I played with this one on the computer... this is the first time I have tried that. Quite fun.