My Dad turns 19 and 3/4's

this photo taken by grandson Kent, aged 23

It is harsh to be a leap year baby. You have to be flexible and come to terms with your need for rituals. And presents.

Love you papa! Love you lots and lots.

Son's cooking spoils the mother

Oh my gosh! I have been so lucky to have my eldest son visit. He has arrived alone (without girlfriends or anyone in tow) and also I am alone! Together we have been taking evening yoga classes, meditating, and watching some classic movies. One of the newest things I have experienced is his apparent love of cooking. He did not get that from me! For the last three nights he has concocted a special dish and had it ready for me soon after I return from work. It's a pleasure to dine with him, sharing stories and hearing his dreams. He is still, and has been since his birth, somewhat a delightful mystery to me.

color zombies

It's time in the semester to have the students plunge into the act of mixing paint purely for the goal of making color. We have embarked on a more complicated version than usual this semester, and the students have spent almost three weeks, (argh! not planned), mixing primaries to get a full spectrum of hues, and then mixing white, black and gray to get tints, tones and shades.
Though many of them come into the class dragging as if slaves to the palletes, they soon enough appear trance-like with their brushes and little swabs of colors and I have to loudly remind them of the end of the class period.

Tomorrow half the students will be ready to start a painting using their new skills and tool. We will do nature based designs using a harmonic, or analogous, color scheme.
I am confident that they will come to love their color wheels and I have been exhorting them to consider keeping it and taking it with them to college to help decorate their dorm rooms, and to double check the suitability of their wardrobe combinations.

My son visits me in Miami

The way he looks and captures everything with his camera, makes me more aware of the details I can take for granted.

Pictures are just a sample of his eye. I am having fun...so happy to have this time together!

Max with my sister's new baby

It is the maternal instinct to want to wrap your baby in soft blankets when they are hurting. I realize that even though Max is 19, I will worry about him, ( I have worried about him), every day of my life since his birth.
My sister's baby isn't even born yet and she is already experiencing the maternal instincts and, probably, worrying about it every day. It's a long continuum.

Eclipse by my Son

Sometimes the events in life seem larger than Life. (Does that make sense?)
Mixed media on large nautical map

Healing Hands with bike rider

mixed media, large map

Broken Islands

Acrylic, oil pastel and color pencil on nautical map. The Broken Islands are visible at the center of the left nose.
This is where I paint out the worry over my son's recovery. In the process, I took a break to sit in the neighborhood park. While there I collected three oak leaves that looked, to me, like his lips, swollen and broken, shielding the wreck inside.  Drawn against the map, they too look like broken islands.

President's weekend free entry to Everglades Park

On a beautiful spring day, Krisse, Zanze and I found ourselves at a Miami ceramic league art opening at the Coe Visitor center in the Everglades National Park, south of Florida City. The work was nice and varied. Usually you see photography at these types of venues and rarely is sculpture on display, so this was a nice opportunity. Each artist was inspired and responded to some plant or animal, (or insect), that lives in the Everglades. Krisse made a ceramic Otus owl inspired sculpture, and Zanze made a funky Purple Gallinule.

Better still was the real thing waiting just outside. A free day in the park! (There was even a free trolley from downtown Homestead). We joined lots of other people for a short outing on the Anhinga trail. It was like walking through a living diorama! The birds were practically tame. I used my cell phone to take these pictures. I think I counted 26 alligators next to the walkway. They were all snoozing in the sun, collecting heat to fuel their nighttime hunting.

I mention that there were lots of people- but it didn't feel too crowded at all. I heard French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian and Japanese being spoken excitedly!

Happy Valentines day everybody

 I hope everybody did their best to spread the love today. My valentine pictures are not loading so here is one of my prince charming, cracking me up:

hoops and hopes

While in Alabama visiting my son I attended a men's wheel chair basketball game against Charlottesville. The University of Alabama has had it's wheel chair team (both male and female) be national champs for many years in a row. It was thrilling to see how athletic and powerfully the players played without any use of their legs. The game was fast paced with multiple upsets and over turning chairs. Alabama won by almost 20 points.
It was a clear visual for me of using our passion to overcome obstacles. So... when I start to feel sorry for myself, and I shared this with my son, so when we feel like we have an obstacle in our paths, we will think of these young men, and lean in to it.

We just might make a basket then!

prepping for the big V day

My heart is burning inside me.

Peace

Just wanted to share something beautiful. Old painting of mine depicting a snow day with my cat at the foot of my bed. New poster by Yoko Ono.

painting it out makes Me feel better

Painting sometimes makes it all feel better.