Artandicon's Blog

  • The Hand Rewrites the Brain

    Aristotle once said, “The hand is the tool of tools.” Our hands with their opposable thumbs are an evolutionary miracle. Our opposable thumbs evolved around two million years ago, even before humans began to make tools. Our hands helped us to develop language and procure nourishment, as well as create mysterious images on cave walls…

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  • Eclipse T-Shirts

    Friday in art class we painted our own unique designs on t-shirts for Monday’s Total Eclipse of the Sun. Anticipation of an event is characteristic of young children, while adults often feel over saturated with the early build up of attention given to an important event. By the time it gets here, we go, “Wow,…

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  • It’s Not Under Control!

    All things will renew themselves in good season, yet we have only the present moment before us. We can’t live in the past, nor can we control the future. We have to recognize even our present moments aren’t always in our control, as we witnessed in the big Super Bowl game last Sunday. Who would…

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  • Lifetime of Learning

    “Transfer of Learning” is a concept in which anything learned in one situation or environment can be applied in another. When I taught art, I would have my students use mathematics and fractions when they cut mats to present their work for exhibition. “Why do we have to use math in art?” they whined, “We’re…

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  • Introducing Watercolor Painting

    Our art class has worked in acrylic paint for several years, but toward the end of last year, they expressed an interest in learning about watercolors. I said, “Sure, we’ll do that. It’ll build on the color theory you already know, but you’re going to have to learn to plan ahead and learn not to…

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  • Prints, Pumpkins, and Possibilities

    Here we are shortly before Thanksgiving, at the time I call the “high holy days of family gatherings.” We’ll be in this space-time continuum until the last whistle of the last Bowl Game—the grandaddy of them all: Sunday, February 11, 2024. That would be Super Bowl LVIII, or three days before Valentine’s Day, as a…

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  • Inspired by Autumn Leaves

    I returned from a spiritual retreat at Mount Eagle, at which we studied the Enneagram. This is our United Methodist camp site dedicated to holy listening. Of the nine spiritual personality types, I happen to be a Four: The Creative. I’m “The Sensitive, Introspective Type: Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental.” Fours are self-aware, sensitive, and…

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  • Rabbit! Rabbit! Welcome to November

    My parents would often say, “Time flies when you’re having fun.” If this is so, I’ve had a one whale of a time in 2023. I don’t know where the time has gone, for I’d swear I just woke up in the bright new year of 2023, and now this year has grown a beard…

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  • Texture Paintings

    I don’t do wine painting classes. Since I teach in a United Methodist Church, our Wesleyan temperance tradition holds sway: we serve no alcohol. However, out in the world beyond there are classes where everyone drinks wine and paints the same image. They’re out for fellowship purposes more than for art, but these classes serve…

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  • The Persistence of Effort

    I was reading an article in the New York Times the other day. In “How I Learned to Love Finishing Last,” the author wrote about her slow pace as a runner. As one who regularly finishes last in my age group in the annual Spa 5K Walk each November, I’m optimistic one day I might…

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