Sometimes, a good goodbye is also a fresh hello.
As we wrapped up our "Sacred Spaces" paintings, I asked our student teacher to design a one-day project—something playful, earthy, and engaging to ease the class into her care. She brought mud. Literally.
Using mud and simple stencils, students pressed images—flowers, insects, wings—onto the sidewalk behind our school. There's something timeless about making marks with the ground itself. It felt ancient and immediate at the same time.
These prints won’t last long, but maybe that’s the point. A fleeting image, a shared laugh, a new hand guiding the next phase of learning.
Art is about making marks. Not all of them need to be permanent.
I know nothing of the actress of the same name (although I do need to watch The Spirit Of The Beehive someday), but the words alone had “drawing title” written all over them, so yeah!
Ms. Nathan was a play production teacher with flair and a big personality. She wore colorful clothing and loud socks that never matched. Her joyful, chortling laugh filled the room—or the hallway—wherever she happened to be.
Staff meetings and PD days have always been strong invitations for observational drawings. Over the years, I’ve found that there are many boxes to check in a wide variety of systems. I often created my own boxes—and checked them with sketches of my colleagues.
This one goes out to the colorful Ms. Nathan.
Lino cut print over pastel. The story goes: The bird fell in love with the whale the first time she saw him break through the ocean’s surface, sunlight dancing on his back. From high above, she sang to him, and deep below, he answered with a song as old as the tides.
She longed to dive, to join him in the rolling blue. He wished to rise, to fly beside her in the endless sky. But air and water would not trade places.
So each day, at dawn and dusk, they met at the edge of their worlds—she on the wind, he in the waves—singing a love song carried by the breeze and the tide, never together but never apart.
Happy Imbolc to all who celebrate it :-) Spent today with some friends designing seed packets for planting various flowers, vegetables, you name it… although this will inevitably house more Washi tape in my case!
