First time participating in the Ugly Art Club challenge. A wonderfully supportive art community that encourages folks to “just make stuff, show up for you, and be present in your artistic journey.” The challenge is, given a one-word prompt, to create a piece of art in five minutes. This crazy short amount of time helps to prevent over-thinking and perfectionism. Being new to mixed-media collage, my first piece took way longer than 5 minutes for me to create, but this one was powerful art therapy to help me process the ravages of climate change. Stormy was a perfect prompt. Historic hurricanes, floods, wildfires, earthquakes . . . we are living in a world beyond the tipping point. The future climate scenarios which I imagined much further into the future are now our present reality.   This all hit home when a 12,000 acre wildfire hit a town where I previously resided in Washington state. Following the progression of the fire, I was stunned to realize that my old house, one that I he...

  Nearly three years have passed since I last wrote a blog post. Setting up this new blog, I never expected to encounter such a seemingly insurmountable obstacle right off the bat. . . naming the blog. Having tried nearly 28 creative names and finding them all unavailable, this was the first one to stick. So, this is it, and here it goes . . .  The arts have always been a part of my life, thanks mostly to my father who insisted that I play the violin in elementary school and encouraged me to always give school projects some sort of artistic flair. I guess a part of that mentorship was due to his background in music and art. As a gifted artist, sculptor, and industrial designer, he was an amazing role model and our house always had a plethora of varied art supplies. My journey towards art, however, has been a delayed one.  Having abandoned my music major in college, I turned to education. The last couple of years of my 35-year career in public education, I discovered jewe...