Kirtland: Part II

I've seen the exhibit "The Healing Power of Jesus Christ" twice this month (once with the YSA and once at the Kirtland YSA conference) and it is truly amazing. Artist Angela Johnson has done a really beautiful body of work. For a limited period of time it was exhibited in the church's visitor's center in Kirtland, soon it will be in Nauvoo from what I hear. If it is in your area, please take the time to go see it, it's so worth the trip. I enjoyed it on several levels: the subject matter, the design principles used, and the bronze work itself. Most of the pieces were 2.5 to 3 ft tall.

I don't remember the exact titles of all the pieces, but this one is of the woman who wiped Christ's feet with her tears:

Walking on Water (I love the water texture):

Christ praying:

With Martha and Mary:

I believe this one was titled "Free to Choose"- starting at the middle (with the family), it depicts how we are free to make choices that lead us to or away from Christ. Each figure represented a specific virtue or sin. The artist also intentionally made the sin portion darker and the virtue portion lighter.

I really loved this one of Jesus with the Leper, I also really liked the texture of the leper's clothes:

One of my absolute favorites was this one with Christ calling Lazarus out of the tomb:

This one was inspired by the scriptures where Christ says he would gather Israel like a hen gathers her young:

I also really loved this one of the First Vision:

The trees were probably about 4 feet tall.

Here's a closeup:

This one is of the adulterous woman, I believe it was called "Where are Thine Accusers?":

I can't say enough wonderful things about this exhibit, the statues are so beautiful and they really bring in the spirit. Even my mother (who is not so big on statues and paintings of Christ) really loved it. I'm really glad I was able to see them in person.

Up next: The Kirtland YSA Conference

Stay tuned!

Kirtland: Part 1

Earlier in the month I went with my YSA group to Kirtland, Ohio to tour the sites and see an exibit of bronze statues at our visitor center (more on that later). It was a really great day. Kirtland is only about two hours away, it's very do-able.


For those not in the know, Kirtland is where the member of the church lived from 1830- 1838 after they had to leave Palmyra, NY. A lot of important events happened in Kirtland and a lot of aspects of the church were organized here as well. A lot od the sections in the Doctrine & Covenants were revealved here. It was neat to be places that the prophet Joseph Smith had been.

Here's the Newell K. Whitney Store:

and the interior:

Upstairs is where the School of the Prophets was held (it's a pretty small room!):

Also upstairs in the store (Joseph Smith really sat at this table!):

The Whitney home:

Inside:


Replicas of the sawmill and the ashery:

Inside the ashery (used to process ash into lye for soap):
The waterwheel runs the sawmill:

Inside the sawmill:

We also went down the road to a park where the saints had taken stone to build the temple.You could still see where they carved away the stone, it was a lovely place:

And last but not least, the Kirtland temple:

The Kirtland temple was the first temple in this dispensation and it was neat to take a tour of it.

In all, it was a really nice day and it was very uplifting to see all these places where such great things happened. I wish I had more time now to write more about the history.

Stay tuned for more Kirtland!

Newest Arrival

I figured I should start with the biggest change around here- Laura got her latest guide dog puppy to raise a week ago (perfectly timed to when I was the most sick!). His name is Grant and he's now 10 weeks old. So far, he's a pretty good dog. We've already taught him how to sit and how to walk on a leash. It's been a crazy week getting used to a puppy (and having our three other dogs get used to him too!) but we're surviving. He actually sleeps pretty good at night now.

As you can see, he's pretty stinkin' cute. And good thing- Laura's dog projects drive me crazy. This is dog #4 that she's raised. The last one, Cody (a collie), was a total pill and I hated hated hated that dog. And I like dogs! Cody never obeyed and ate everything in sight (including my mom's dress at church!). He didn't like being told what to do and had dominance issues. He was mortifying to have at church. But actually I think Laura's training methods drove me crazier- she wasn't consistent with him and let him get away with alot. Let's just say I have been enjoying my peace of mind the last few months since we gave him back to Freedom Guide Dogs..

Oh and don't ask me how but Cody was the only one so far to make it as a guide- a couple of weeks ago he was placed with a man who's high up in the blind community in NY. This group out here is a lot less picky about the dogs than the Guide Dogs organization back home. So now I have to deal with my mom and sis bragging about what Cody's doing now as well as having to listen to everyone at church tell my sister what a good job she did (so hard not to roll my eyes!).

What drives me crazy about raising dogs is that I don't get much input since it isn't my project- but I get to deal with all the consequences! Her dogs have often woken me up at night and doing anything in public takes forever when you've got a dog with you. And somehow I wind up puppy-sitting and having to help out even though I didn't sign up for this. Drives me crazy. I've already had to puppy-sit 3 times this week.

So I'm crossing my fingers that this dog works out and doesn't drive me crazy...wish me luck!

For Reals

I love it when it becomes real Spring- no worries of snow, the birds are out, the trees are leafing out, the frogs come out after it rains, the grass is turning green...we've made a lot of progress in the last two weeks. It's so nice to see real life outside after such a long winter.

Some robins have built a low nest, love the color!

The Bleeding Hearts are blooming- I love them cause they remind me of home:

The rock wall looks good with daffodils and allysum:

and there are several types of violets (big, small, light and dark) everywhere in the grass, so cute!

So what else is going on? Well, we have a really really old piano in the middle of the living room:


My parents rescued it from the neighbors (who left it outside in the rain!) and got help to get it to our house. I was really irritated at my parents- we don't have room for a piano in our 900 sq ft house (!!!!) but darn it, I like how old it is. I didn't want to like it. It looks cool, especially the inside. We've never owned a piano before, but my dad wants to learn how to play. The plan is to moves some stuff and put it behind the couch, but that hasn't happened yet. Despite getting wet, it still plays.

I relaxed a lot this week, which was nice. I sorted through some papers (yay me!) and today I'm going to the Erie Art Museum to see their annual Spring Show. I guess I have to start doing real stuff soon! I'm hoping to help my mom unpack/dejunk our storage.

Happy Real Spring, everyone!

Projects

I figured I'd wait until I got all my latest art projects done and post them all at once. Today is the last day of the semester, which is very exciting. I just finished my math final (please send good luck thoughts my way!) and later today I have another sculpture meeting to finish up the critique (I think I'd rather stick a fork in my eye- crits in this class aren't much fun). Yesterday I had the day off, it was so nice to sleep in and veg on the couch. I also got a little crafty time in! Woo hoo! Anyhow, I apologize for the lousy photos, I just didn't feel like schlepping my projects to a better place to obtain a lovelier background.


I kinda struggled with some of these projects, it can be real hard to force creativity when the project goals aren't that great. I felt kinda bound. I'm kinda getting tired of doing stuff cause I have to- I think stuff that I want to create on my own is much more interesting (go figure). Art schools get a bad rap cause they're more about doing stuff/getting grades then really exploring creativity. I think I'd have to agree some this semester.

For the final project in Drawing II, you had to convey an idea using 2 or 3 pieces. I liked using non-art materials in the last project (the frosting drawing) and decided to go with that. My series is called "Man-made Environment" and I replicated two nature scenes (from photos) using trash. These are fairly large (20x30- I can't carry around anything much larger!) but the idea would be conveyed better with these materials if they were much larger.

A seascape of garbage bags:

And trees made of paper towels and brown paper bags:

On to Sculpture class: Our second projects were either to be 1) a block of plaster carved into an abstract shape, or 2) a project entitled "Me" that represented you somehow. Since I hate touching plaster with a passion and that really wasn't that creative of an option, I went with the "Me" project. I decided to make a "Carousel of Me" where each horse represented a different art discipline that I enjoy: drawing, painting, sculpture, sewing, paper arts, and photography. It's made of a cardboard base with a paper mache skin that I painted.

Photo, sewing, drawing horses:

Not a good pic of the photo horse, but it was made of photos of carousels and I cut negatives to make a mane and tail.



Sculpture (tried to carve a block of foam, not great), painting, and paper(made of punched butterfly shapes) horses

I got fairly good reviews during critique, but was criticized that the meaning wasn't entirely clear. When you have to make something really specific about yourself, what do you expect? I liked my carousel but I'm not entirely pleased with the horses. I ran out of time and they were kinda thrown together. I may redo it for my pleasure.

On Wednesday I had a critique for the last project, where you had to convey a "journey" of some kind. My teacher and I discussed stuff and came to the conclusion that this project should be more sculptural (instead of such a recognizable object like the carousel) and not sit flat on a base (like the carousel) since having some negative space in there makes it immediately more interesting. I was inspired by the journey our mind takes to form ideas. I purposely made this sculpture much more vague and I decided that it should hang so as to be more interesting.

It looks better in real life, really:

I made large paper mache flowers, attached light bulbs and nylons and created a chandelier of sorts. I actually really like how the paper mache parts turned out. I put shades of red, maroon and brown on the topsides of the flowers in an attempt to meld in the brown stockings. I also didn't want to use pastels or "flowery" colors so that someone could see a different shape if they wanted to. Lightbulbs = ideas and the newspaper paper mache= the clutter in our minds. Ideas bloom, no?

When I brought it in and hung it up, everybody in class really responded to it, but we talked about mine last (and it'd been 2.5 hours!) so no one really wanted to talk by the time it got to me. No one really got the meaning, but I didn't care since I knew it was vague. People were turning in much worse stuff then that, so I felt kindof attacked by my teacher(she's always either in a really good or really bad mood and that was probably part of it) with her comments when she wasn't that thrilled with it. I understood where she was coming from in her comments, but I also had the feeling that if I had done her suggestions that she'd have nitpicked about those too. I couldn't help but feel darned if I did and darned if I didn't.

She also somehow lumped me in a category with this other girl (who is a snot and doesn't care about this class) in that we apparently both have good ideas but don't always convey them well. First of all, no one in this class conveys ideas well (or even thinks about what they're doing) and I felt a bit attacked. Shouldn't I get some credit for trying an idea when most others didn't?

I liked that teacher as a person- she's pretty interesting and she knows a lot of artist's work and you can have some good discussions with her- but she kinda drove me crazy as a teacher. I guess that's an example of what not to do when I get to be an art teacher, eh?

One good thing to come out of these two projects is that I found that I like paper mache and experimenting with it. I hadn't done it since like kindergarten, so it was fun to rediscover it.

How to celebrate the semester being over with? I have plans to go dancing tonight- the stake is having a dance for youth and grown-ups and I wasn't really planning on going but one of my YW was like "Liz, what time are you picking me up?" so I guess I'm going. There's nobody for me to dance with, but I guess I'm still going. ;)