This concerns me.....

The Teaching Tolerance website is a good place to go and assess your own teaching practices and ideologies. This new article really saddened me. I invite you to sign this petition in support of this educator. No matter what your perspective is on this tragic event, teachers should not be fired for dealing with current and contemporary topics in their classrooms.






Change.org|Online Petition Template

An invitation to visit "Somewhere Off Center"

It is currently spare and bare, but I can now invite everyone to visit my new blog dedicated to fine art and illustration titled "Somewhere Off Center"  The first post and works of art are up. Follow the link or paste http://sallyctaylor.blogspot.com/ into your browser.  Either one will get you there.  I hope my current followers will continue to follow my artistic journey on this new site.  I will be tweaking, organizing and improving it over the next several days.

Cheers!

Illustration Friday - Stay

 

Stay With Me

(while I monkey around with my career)

Collage and graphite

9.25 x 5 inches

Big changes have happened in my life since my last post.  I did something even I couldn't have anticipated.  I resigned my high school art teaching position.  This was one of the hardest decisions I have made in a long time, and I know a lot of people think I must be off my rocker.  Maybe I am...  I absolutely love teaching.  I work very hard to be good at it, and I can only hope that the effort is understood and appreciated by those who retain my services as an educator.  The students always get it, maybe not at first, but eventually and reliably.  I miss them already and we are only half way through the summer.  

But change is good even if it is hard.  As Newton tells us, a body in motion tends to stay in motion, and I am no exception to that rule.  The current plan is:

1. Make art full time -  It is a now or never opportunity to promote myself as a professional artist.  Teaching gave me freedom to make art for personal intellectual pleasure at my leisure.  I have been much more productive in the last couple of years than in the past but now is the time to ramp it up to the next level.

2. Finish up my Masters degree - I am five classes away from completion.  With more free time I should be able to finish up by the end of next spring semester

3. Start a new blog - I will be putting up a new blog that will deal more specifically with my production of fine art and illustration. Illustration Friday submissions will be posted there as well.  I have three recently completed large canvases that are the beginnings of a new body of work.  As soon as I have good photos, I will inaugurate the new blog.

4. Work part time at Micheal's - As a evening/weekend "Customer Experience Manager" and hopefully fine art instructor... I still need to be able to make my car payment and tuition. :(  I worked at Micheal's about six years ago as a framer and event coordinator before I started teaching.  They still like me and have been kind enough to take me back.

I showed my son Todd, the illustration for this week.  He asked me what the word was, when I told him, he looked blankly at me and said "I don't get it."  If you have read to this point I hope it now makes sense.  To those who have been kind enough to follow this blog, I hope you will "stay with me" as I move on in another direction.  I'll post here to let everyone know when the new blog is up and running.

Make art with all your heart, mind, and soul!

Sally

Art and Mutant Flowers

I have been crazy busy lately getting ready for art exhibits and possible art exhibits.  I spent the day yesterday at the family farm in Marshall, with my dad, making plinths for sculptures out of 100 year old barn wood.  Thanks Dad!  I couldn't have done it without you.  These are some sturdy (heavy) sculpture stands.

 

Barnwood Plinth

with 100 lb sculpture

I have also been painting as fast as I can... below is a small oil painting that I was actually fairly happy with.  I have plans for a couple more paintings along these lines.  I have been experimenting with a water soluble oil paint that can be mixed with acrylics. (I know, I couldn't believe it either!)  I have actually not been brave enough to try mixing it with acrylics yet, but I love the easy clean up of water soluble oil paints! I need to do a few test mixes next week when I have a little more free time.

 

Morning Light

6 x 12

Oil on Board

And here is a strange thing I just had to share.  (The science girl in me loves this kind of stuff.)  John and I went for a walk yesterday morning and I came across this freakishly mutated black eyed susan.  The stem is flattened out and twisted into a ribbon shape, and the center of the flower has grown elongated and curves into almost a complete circle.  As a result, there is an increased number of petals that are growing out from the sides of the center in voluminous ruffles.  I don't know if this is caused by disease or just a random mutation, but it is strange and fascinating no matter how it happened.

Crazy Mutant Black Eyed Susan

Tyler Artwalk - June 18th, 4-8 pm

The June Tyler Artwalk hosted by the Downtown Tyler Arts Coalition and Gallery Main Street has come and gone.  Overall it was a very positive experience.   My exhibit consisted of 7 acrylic paintings, 1 watercolor, 4 colored pencil drawings and an alabaster sculpture.   I had a much larger space than the 10 x 10 square feet I was told to expect which was nice because it gave people an opportunity to move through the exhibit more easily.  I shared a large upstairs loft space with two other artists and a lady who volunteered to set up a photography exhibit from the recent Azalea Trail Photography Competition.  People started trickling in about 4:30 in the afternoon and by 5:00 there was a steady stream of visitors until the end of the exhibit.  The only downside was the heat, the building we were in had a less than adequate cooling system, so we ended up with three big room fans to try and keep the temperatures bearable.  Also there was no elevator to the space, only stairs.

I met lots of really nice people though, including a future art teacher looking for employment, and a high school art teacher from Pittsburgh, Texas.   I received a visit from a couple of my former art students from Lindale. and found out at the end of the event. that another former Lindale student, Megan Bryant, was actually part of the exhibit at the Main Street Gallery.

I did have one critic, an elderly gentleman named Elihu Edelson who told me I was a better sculptor than painter.  I smiled and agreed with him.  He said that he had been an art critic for a newspaper when he lived in Florida.  He was charming nonetheless and the conversation became even more interesting when he asked me if I was mystical.  I then heard a long tale about how he ended up in Texas.

It was a lovely evening.

Clean Puppy - Dirty Puppy

Clean, beautiful, sweet, obedient, angelic puppy,

Stinky, nasty, slimy, fishy, naughty (but very happy) puppy

Lucy found the fish pond.  'Nuff said.

Winter Wonderland - Friday Morning at the Taylor Farm

 

Click on any picture to enlarge

A rare event occurred in East Texas this week.  A foot of snow fell in Dallas and a more moderate but still impressive 5-6 inches fell on the little plot of ground that we call home.  Most of the snow fell on Thursday night and continued into the early hours of Friday morning.   I know that this is not exciting news to most of the rest of the country, especially with the record snowfalls the nation has been experiencing, but it is something that we almost never see here and it causes quite a stir.  The schools shut down and kids rediscover a fascination of the world around them.  Even the adults become more light-hearted and find it easy to set work aside to marvel at the change of scenery.   Artistic types like myself start waxing poetic and try to capture the moment in memory, image, and words.   Above are just a few of the pictures I took Friday morning, as soon as there was enough light to shoot in.  The last is a picture of my 14 year old son Todd with his first ever snowman.  Sadly he was knocked down and half melted by the end of the day. (the snowman...not Todd).  

The only unfortunate side of the whole event was that we lost power sometime in the middle of the night on Thursday which didn't get restored until Sunday morning.  We spent a couple of nights sleeping next to the fireplace, but I finally broke down on Saturday and got us a hotel room.  Ahhh Adventure!

Ukulele Lessons

I had an impulse a couple of days ago and decided that I wanted to take up the ukulele.   It seemed like just the kind of quirky cool thing that I needed to do at this already over committed point in my life. :)  Did you know that you can learn how to play the ukulele on YouTube?  I bought a tenor sized ukulele yesterday and I already have about half a dozen chords down.  I can also play about 3 or 4 children's songs and "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles with only minor mistakes.  My mother took up the ukulele for a while when I was a kid.  Like all things, it must be genetic.  Next song on my list to learn is "I'm Your's" by Jason Mraz.

 

This is a picture of the usual state my studio work table is in.  I realized that the previous pictures I had put up were a tad misleading.  Here I have been working on Artist Trading Cards of some of the pears from my pear tree.  Our new (deaf) kitten Lola likes to be involved  in making art.  I'm not sure paint and white kittens are a safe combination, but she is too cute to shoo away.

Welcome to my studio!

This is my current working space looking surprisingly clean and organized. It is amazing how fast I can fill up this big table with art supplies, sketches, books, and 3 days worth of mail that hasn't made it to the trash. My studio space was supposed to be an out building that is next to the house, but the wasps, humidity and tendency for it to be used as a storage facility finally drove me back into the house. This space was our kid's game room, but since Todd is the last podling still home, we moved his TV and video games into Kelly's old room, and I finally have my own space again.