Cuckoo for Photographs
I haven’t done much in the clay studio this past week – but I have been engaged in other activities, some creative, others not so much.
Creative endeavors:
I’m taking a plants class this summer through the University of Colorado at Denver taught by an alumnus of the graduate landscape architecture program. While some might not think taking a class creative, this one is using both my right and left sides of the brain. In addition to the reading & lectures, I am able to fuel my amateur photography habit by visiting various green spaces including the Denver Botanic Gardens. Plants, plants and more plants – what’s not to love? I’m not saying I am any good at photography, but I do enjoy doing it so much so that I have decided to buy myself a new camera this year. I am going to upgrade my old Olympus C7070 Wide Zoom digital to a SLR – make and model to be determined. If you happen to own one over which you wax poetic, please share…. The class participants are also required to keep a visual/written journal which is a beneficial activity for me – I already keep this digital journal and going analog is a good exercise. There is a quality that pen to paper brings such as seeing the hand writing, cross outs and rendered drawings that is missing in the digital realm.
Iris & Grasses – from sketchbook – watercolor crayon, mylar, pen
A side benefit to this class is that the material, discussions and field trip will certainly inform my own humble landscape which I have yet to touch (other than a little weeding) since moving in last summer. I’m pretty sure my neighbors are more than a little skeptical when I tell them that I’m studying landscape architecture. ;D
Not so creative endeavors:
This past week, I have been whittling away at my pile-o-papers filed on the kitchen counter over the course of the past 10 months – a promise to my husband that the pile would be gone (or at least severely diminished) when he comes home today from his weeklong man adventure - Riding the Rockies. On Sunday, I finally filed my 1st Q taxes, albeit extremely late (good thing I didn’t have any sales), renewed my retail sales tax license, along with all the other necessary paperwork & fees to the City of Denver & State of Colorado in order to once again sell my work legally online and the occasional in person event. AND – my dogs are also “legal” again…unfortunately, I also missed some great art events happening around town thanks to my haphazard filing practices.
Feels good to feel like I am catching up to my life again.
What’s new? Not a whole lot…
Unless you count being a mom, wife, student that is.
Life is happening for sure – it just feels accelerated - is it really almost Friday again? One of the classes I’m taking is called “Plants in Design” which made my head ache during the first 6 weeks of class. We learned how to id plants and had to memorize common names and their Latin names. The latter is what made my head throb – sometimes I’m just not sure how much room my brain has for all this extra info. We had weekly quizzes where we had to identify 15 plants chosen at random by the professor out of the 20 – 30 plants we had learned the previous week. While we only touched the surface on all available plants, we did focus on local native and adapted plants to Colorado and our climate.
Last week, we shifted gears and have started weekly journal assignments. While this relates to landscape design, I was quite relieved to be doing something artistic again and gladly pulled out my water color crayons. Our assignment was to choose a landscape related term and explore that term visually and verbally. Since I have an art background, I decided to analyze color theory and how it relates to the natural and built landscape. I have another page or two to add since I only briefly considered what it would be like to be “color blind” – one of my classmates confessed that he is color blind and gave me more information on how he perceives certain colors. I found out that 52% of men have some version of color blindness – that’s a pretty huge number. Color theory and perception is a huge topic, but I felt like I gave it a good start. For next week’s assignment we will be exploring the topic of “Enclosure”.
Still no clay activity around mi casa. Last weekend was very busy around here, so hopefully, this coming weekend will be more relaxes and allow me to get muddy again so I can bring a few things to the Colorado Potters Guild show in November.
I know my blog is gathering a few cobwebs here and there and with all of my obligations, I find that I’m using Facebook more and more to catch up on everything that is going on with people.
Happy Thursday everyone,
Cynthia
