Hide and Seek with Max.

Playing hide and seek with Max is always hilarious to me. Max is 2 1/2 now and he hides pretty much in the open not looking at you. In Mt. Tabor Park he hid here by this tree from his Pops. I threw the branches on top of him as he had crawled on top of them. It cracks me up. He laid there quietly for maybe 45 seconds.

Below Max is hiding by mistake. He completely blended in with the red tile wall and bike rack. Good look.

Here you can see Kevin's feet. Max's pops just got home from work and took off his shoes. Max is hiding in the kitchen under the table in plain sight. I love this. I will look for Max for days in plain sight. Kevin on the other hand... says flat out..."Max if I can see you. you aren't hidden." Huh. Realist.

I feel like I am hidden in plain sight too sometimes. There's something in the air around the world right now that makes me feel this way. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Maybe someone will find me! I hope so! Most likely I'll find something!

Landscape Loveliness

Before I moved from Vancouver, BC I created the curriculum for the 2012-2013 Outreach program called Van Go. Where you take the Van and Go to the schools. I didn't invent this program the wonderful art teaching genius, Maureen Proctor did and boy is it AWESOME!

The theme I picked for this year is Outside Inside Upside Down!

My fascination for kids outcries when things from outside came inside always made me laugh. And the fact that EVERY time I did landscapes with my classes of 15 they always turned out incredibly gorgeous. I think it's because no matter where you turn in Vancouver, British Columbia, you see an amazing picturescape. You see mountains down laneways, you see the ocean at the end of busy streets, you see giant trees beyond condos, it is stunningly gorgeous everywhere you look. One of my favorite quotes of a newspaper in Vancouver was, "Is Vancouver just another pretty face?" I often thought that when I biked around town. It's lovely. Well, the young artists who live there they know landscapes when it comes to waterfalls, trees and mountains, and so we went with it. I remember learning to do the sunset between two mountains when I was in grade three. I put it everywhere after I learned I loved it, so I wanted to pass that along to the kids and this is what happened! Enjoy!

Isn't it lovely? To help stop the spread of too much time on the computer, too much fear of the unknown, too much technology, just look at these amazing landscapes our young artists created in a 90 minute workshop. Incredible. Thank you Maureen Proctor, who now teaches the outreach again, and thank you Jessica Jang who assisted and is one of the artist that inspired this project, and thank you Sarah Van Snellenberg who took over Outreach too. I bet the paintings you are making are fabulous! And thank you Sarah Hoemberg for stepping up and being the number one assistant and paint mixer! And thank you Sara Whitney for always packing the van and making sure we had everything we could possibly want! And thank you Golnar Sepahi for making the boards that had all the artists on it! Thank you! I hope to be making such beauty happen again one day!

Love,

tARA

33 Things to Draw when you are not messing around on the computer.

• 1. people
• 2. trees
• 3. draw what's around you
• 4. animals 
• 5. animorphs- one animal turning into another animal
• 6. cities
• 7. landscapes
• 8. houses
• 9. monsters
• 10. house designs
• 11. bridges
• 12. rainy day
• 13. sunny day
• 14.  the four seasons
• 15. food!
• 16. city of food
• 17. robots
• 18. bikes
• 19. transportation
• 20. rocks
• 21. yourself
• 22. yourself in 10 years
• 23. yourself minus 10 years
• 24. your family
• 25. your dream home
• 26. outerspace
• 27. innerspace
• 28. dinosaurs
• 29. flight, things in the air
• 30. things in water
• 31. things on land
• 32. people sleeping
• 33. your computer

One of the most common things kids say to me when they come to class and are to work in their sketchbooks first to transition into 'art brain'. What should I draw. Here's a list of 33. Not complicated, fascinating, or even creative, until the artist gets ahold of them and figures out what to create with the idea. Best of luck!
 Tara

Trees Please! For the Van Go Outreach program this year We picked the theme of Outside, Inside, Upside down! With that in mind, I was focusing on landscapes for kids grade three and up and Trees Please, for k-2. It started out wonderfully with the help of the book, Picture a Tree by Barbara Reid. Then we draw our humungous trees with oil pastels, then paint them with tempera paint. It's Gorgeous!

Strong old apple tree!

Tree Texture, wind, marks, WOW!

pink lady apples

expressive trees!

lollipop trees

grassy bits!

tall skinny trees

pink trees

tree bark and birds!

I'd love to see all of them hung together to create a forest of trees, or an orchard! Ahhhh, trees are the best! I'm also fond of three other tree books, Stuck by Oliver Jeffers, How to Draw a Tree, by Bruno Munari, and A Tree is Nice, by Janice May Udry illustrated by Marc Simont. 

I got Rainbow Fever!

OK, I can't help it, everywhere I look I see rainbow. Then I get in these moods and start painting them and can't stop. Of course this is another series of paintings of Max and Me.... I'm the big one. Things we do everyday. Soccer ball, Ring Around the Rosie on the beach, and when Max is worn out, he says, "Pick You Up, Mom-Mom.'. So I do. I try to remember to tell him to say please, but sometimes when he reaches that level of fatigue, I just scoop him up.

Ball, Ball, Ball

Ring Around the Rosie

Up Please

Summer Rainbow fun. My toenails are rainbow too. These are 5" X 7" and are acrylics on stonehenge paper. The line drawings are with fancy archival ink pens that are nice and delicate and remind me of my old etchings from university. Enjoy! I love Max!

Martha Rich Inspired 9-12 year olds Art

When I was in University at the University of Iowa, Steve Thunder McGuire always encouraged us to create from personal experience. I started doing that in my own art work and began getting A+'s in printmaking drypoint and monotypes. It was really exciting. I do this when I'm teaching too. If I'm not 'into' it, my kids don't get excited. Kids can sniff out a fake faster than anyone. 

When I started this project with them, I explained. Sometimes I teach you about art history and artists that I think are really important. And sometimes I teach you about local artists so you can learn what's going on around you. But, this artist I'm going to share with you is an artist that really inspires me. She's alive now, lives in Philadelphia, and makes all kinds of cool art. Let's go look at her website.

As we don't have access to the internet in class we take our class out to the lobby and use the computer that is used for registration for classes at Arts Umbrella.

We check out Martharich.com I tell them, Martha Rich's art is Awesome. I get her email updates, I want to buy her art, and here's a video of her. She makes really neat stuff! 

She often reuses books to create her paintings on. We use an old Family Circle Cooking book from 1970's to create our masterpieces. The trick is to try and save some of the language before you deconstruct the entire thing. I don't stress it too much, because our classes are filled with kids who are learning English, and I don't want to pressure anyone into 'more school stuff'. Art is their release, escape and a place to build confidence and use different parts of their brains.Focusing on Martha Rich's 

 Palate show we create our cook book paintings. I think they really turned out lovely.

 

You have to love Family Circle's old cakes. I reminisce with the young artists how my sister Stacey took a cake decorating class when we were kids, then we sat around and cut marshmallows in half for her to make the flower cake for my mother's birthday! It really was sticky and lots of them were squished and well, we ate a bunch.

 

The log cake Theo got was hilarious. Smmoooooootttthhhhhhhh..

 

And it looks like my scanner did't pick up the language on this beautiful strawberry cake either. In a world where most cakes are bought at Anna's cakes or Cosco, I felt the fun and excitement that many felt when reading the recipes as they were painting over them. Jacob, one student, just kept mixing paint together into various shades of brown and calling it frosting. It was great.

So, all in all I think they did a delicious job deconstructing and reconstructing their masterpieces. Thank you Martha Rich for inspiring us! 

Rock ON. Love, TARA

Let's Have Lunch!

These are little warm up paintings I do on a 5X7 pad of paper. The last one is a tuna melt from The Butler Did It, in Emily Carr cafeteria. Actually, it's the first in the row and then the name of the small series. Each picture is under 20 minutes. It's like making a pinch pot before making something with clay. It gets whatever's in my brain out and then moves me on to the next phase of my process. Ahhhh, I love lunch.

Max's pottie. There's this Kids' album I have and they sing the song, 'Poop in the pottie, poop in the pottie...' I feel bad for the band that got stuck with that song, but it's actually really funny. ' Not on your sister, not on your brother...' 

This is a flashback quilt picture. I used to be obsessed with quilts and it was reinforced in the book A Fine Balance. Well, I love how they are pieces of sew many stories....

Juicy Paint. Ahhhhhhh.

A toy we inherited from our neighbor. Weird toys that you aren't sure what animal they are. But, very well loved, as in missing feet and ears and things.

Just blobbing.

Little faces of little kids I saw that day at work.

Collaborative piece with Jessica Jang.... Famous Vancouver Artist. I painted it, but she saved the image from a slow death as we played pass the pen and my brain would not function for the life of me! :D

Love,

TARA