Life is fleeting – what will you do?

Tip of the hat to Shape + Colour. And he is right the You Tube version doesn’t do it justice – watch the HD version to appreciate the true beauty.

Bang the Drum for Earth Hour and Shape + Colour

Regular visitors know I am a fan of the blog known as Shape + Colour created by Jeremy, an advertising copywriter from the cold north. Jeremy never disappoints – never ever.

My daily peruse this Sunday morning yielded green gold. Turns out that Jeremy wrote the copy for Sir Richard Branson’s spot promoting the March 29th event Earth Hour.

Jeremy also wrote the now famous Eliot Spitzer Virgin Phone ad.

Go, go check out his site and report back to me.

Art Teachers – Squashing Genius

I visited a friend this morning and noticed a really cool new sculpture sitting on her shelf. It was an asymmetrical house with deep blue exterior walls, random windows through which red interior walls shown through – the roof was multi-hued brown and umber – very cool. I asked her where she got such a fabulous piece.

Her son made it, she said, and then asked “would you tell him you like it because he got a C and didn’t want me to display it.”

This set me off – who do these damn art teachers think they are? The color coordination and contrast, the windows, the roof were very wabi sabi – organic in flow and visually appealing. Much more interesting than if it had been symmetrical and boxy. But I guess he/she couldn’t see that.

Blue House S.M. copyright 2008

In my opinion high school, middle school and elementary school art teachers are responsible for killing the creative spark in countless children. Son No. 2 drew the most fantastic and creative stories and pictures until his 3rd grade art teacher threw a cat he had created for a school mural into the garbage, IN FRONT OF HIM, because the proportion was off.

He stopped drawing that day and I have never forgiven her.

Art should be a joyful expression for children. It shouldn’t be graded at all.

Please enjoy this gallery of scribblings from Son No. 2 titled:

Things My Son Drew for Me

Before His Third Grade Art Teacher Killed His Spirit

Cat: marker and white out on legal pad – date unknown but definitely before third grade

Pointillism: water color on construction paper – date unknown but, again, definitely before third grade

Pamela and Warren and Art

Until the November day that Pamela walked into my life I thought Art was something you bought at the department store to hang above the sofa, like the blue toned gilt framed landscape my mom bought at Strouss Department Store. I wasn’t totally in the dark, I knew there was “great art” created by someone else, usually a long time ago. I even had a vague idea about contemporary art, but again, art was stuff created by someone else, and certainly not by anyone I knew.

But that was before Pam and her pastel and foil drawings and her stories and, most importantly, before she informed me that artists, like her, saw the world differently (magically) , than non-artists (like me). My wounded ego and already stunted creative spark had to agree, however reluctantly, that she was right.

Only, she wasn’t.

But I didn’t know this until much later when Warren opened the doors and windows (literally) with stories and light (figuratively) and returned me out to nature with an open and loving heart. I learned that seeing through artist eyes, is a learned, or rather, an unlearned skill. It is all about turning off what you think you see and focusing (softly) on what you really see before you in all its impossible and imperfect glory. When you do this, when you are truly present, shadow and light and color break apart to meet in patterns so beautiful that you have to take up an instrument to share your impression of this transitory meeting.

Our souls need art in all its forms to give voice, no matter how small, to the divine. Our souls ask that we use all our senses to experience the world; to translate the composite picture our brains tell us that we see, in to the the essence of what is really before us. The natural world with its ever changing light, color and movement is the perfect studio. No artificial borders, the feet on the earth, the body fluid, the eyes move, perspective changes, the body moves, the hand finds its rhythm and the image flows onto paper.