The RUSTY TRIO OF 2014

One of my passions in art is to incorporate found objects. I confess that my affection for rust has found a huge space in my very overcrowded studio, but a select few have morphed into art works...

BUFFALO ROAMED

Ironically, this car hood  found on Rt. 66 is the ONLY found object that I have claimed and knew from the moment I saw it what I planned to do with it.  My immediate response to this hood cast aside on the road was how carelessly that people discard such items on our beautiful countryside. This is my statement that we should not find such debris, and that we would be better served to find our Oklahoma wildlife along these roadsides.

Here it is on my dinig table, where I spent five hours cleaning it.  

And here it is a few weeks later propped against the back of my pickup, ready to go to a Native American art show.

BEDTIME STORY

I found this child-sized bed headboard in a countryside creek bed.  A bed in a bed? Why do people dump their garbage in creeks...that has never made sense to me!

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Here it is finished with a snarling, salivating wolf.  A twofold purpose:  My wolf is angry about the litter and this is a reminder to be careful of the stories we tell our children when we tuck them into bed.  (Big bad wolf....now go to sleep, Junior.)

HORSE POWER

Perhaps some heavy roadway equipment ran over this item???  I found  this flattened rusty bucket on Highway 20  near Claremore, OK, the home of a very famous Oklahoman, Will Rogers.   It was clearly labeled "Butt Can" in white letters on both sides.  Such irony!...that this item was used to keep people from littering their cigarette butts, but later it became litter itself.  I'm sure if we could consult Will that he would have a humorous line about that!

I pondered and debateded about the rough surfaces on this found object and how I could incorporate them with wildlife...I thought about painting a spider its web,  a turtle, an eagle...

  Nothing seemed right until one of my fellow artists mentioned that this reminded him of an old feed bucket.  Frrom that moment on I couldn't see anything on this rusty can except a horse.  The rounded bottom of the can made a nice Native American shield which I painted with colors of  the Keetoowah Cherokee flag and embellished it with beadwork, jute, leather and feathers.  Feathers on the sheild came from an exotic animal rescue reserve.  My cousin provided the horsehair  from her three beautiful animals.  Thanks, Donna!

ZALLER ART SOCIETY

The three works above are currently displayed with ZALLER ART SOCIETY's fine art exhibit at the Student Union Gallery,  Tulsa Connunity College Southeast Campus,  through Jan.29, 2015, along with some of my other Native American influenced artwork.   My fellow artists are very talented...Great show...go see!

Leisure Park Elementary Murals

As a former public school teacher,  I completed many projects for the schools in which I worked.  The following photos are a blast from the past .... which unfortunately are now lost and gone forever.  Apparently someone in charge now thinks that pristine clean walls are more productive for our youth than a welcoming child centered atmosphere.  Sadly these murals that I designed and orchestrated with the help of may fellow teachers in our off-duty time as a gift to our students,  have been painted under.  No!   none!!  zero!!!  zilch!!!  attempt to contact the artists first so we could try to preserve it better in photos. The actual color was much more vivid than these photos show.  I am very sad that they are gone.  I hope someone has better photos than I do.  There were some Friday evenings that turned into the dawn on Saturday morning.  Hours and hours and hours of work vanished with the stroke of an uncaring pen that sent a note to the maintenance crew.  Oh well, the memory is sweet and so was the bonding with other teachers through art

There was sone concern initially that the teachers who wanted to paint murals beside their doors might not have the skill to created full bodied children.  I think that was an entirely overexaggerated concern.  Those teacher were much more creative than they realized.  So on the big murals in the foyer that are pictured here, the only big rule was that the figures had to be stick figures.  That always bothered me a bit, but I made the most of it by making cute faces and clothes.  The child in the tree wasbased on  my son, Lance,when he was a young boy, but with stick figure arms and legs....LOL

Hours an hours just on the tree bark an the butterflies.  The children loved this.

I can still recall the students's faces when they arrived at school and entered the building that first day after we completed the murals.  If we ever wondered whether the students would appreciate what we had done for them, our wonders were put to ease.  They ooohed and ahhhed as they walked inside.  

Much of this part of the murals was painted by the art teacher that worked there at that time.     I painted the stand that holds a real flag, but deliberately I made it look more like her style, without so much detail as the next sign below .

The orange plaque was already on the wall.  I painted the sign around it to make it appear that it was a sign in a park.  Afterall our school was called Leisure Park for the housing addition that surrounded it.  There was a park in this housing additrion called Leisure Park Park.  I always thought that to be funny.  So I suppose you could call this mural Leisure Park Park Park????? LOL

I hope I can find someone with a better photo of this part of the murals.  I did the painting to the left of the tree, incorporating the fire plug around the emergency fire handle by our front door   It was tricky to place a fire plug so high on the wall and try to get some perspective.  A bit out of balance, but placing it on a hillside helped.   There was also some kind of\ electric box on the wall (just above the pot of crimson flowers in the pot on the left) that I tried to make into some generic maintenance pole that you might find in a public place.  The house over the hill in the background represented the many homes in this housing additionl.