The Other Side of my Arts-In-Ed Work

Mid-summer flower petal arrangement

In my last post I wrote that when I work in schools (which I has been a significant part of my life for decades) that “everything I do with students is closely related to what I am interested in doing myself.” The thing is, it’s because I can find ways of merging my own questions with the work I do with others that has kept me interested in classroom book arts for so long. .

This short post is a follow up to the last, to show some of the overlap between what I do by myself and what I do with children.

Mid-summer flowers and foliage and harvest -the discerning eye will recognize string bean leaves. Gathering natural materials to arrange is a perfectly joyful thing that I do. I just pick what appeals to me on a given day, without a plan.

Sometimes it takes awhile to find out what shape the harvest will take, though there do seem to be a few themes that come up: dancing figures, butterflies, and radially symmetrical designs. But now that I’ve said this, it may all change.

Flowery Five Fold Symmetry

I generally photograph what I make…these arrangements take a good bit of time to do, and I like them so much that I want some sort of reminder.

Sometimes I will bring the image into Adobe Illustrator, do an image trace, then edit the image in what feels like a painterly sort of way.

This shows the kinds of color areas I get to edit in Image Trace, Illustrator

Sometimes I will do some photo editing, just like I do with children’s work, and make cards.

Twinning

What’s super pleasant about this work flow is that I can approach each session with no expectations, and feel good about just seeing what happens.

Here’s a wreath I made this past Sunday. There wasn’t much in bloom here around the house, so I focused on harvesting foliage that had friend and family connections: a leaf from a perennial that came to me through my friend Nancy, mint that had been transplanted from my mother’s yard, flowers from bulbs that my husband and kids had planted as a birthday present, garden flocks that Kay had gifted to my husband, and leaves from a plant was transplanted here 32 years ago, from Davene’s yard.

Doing these projects on my own and doing them with children are both part of the same thing. So glad to be able to work this way.