Tour of my studio

Ever since I went on the Portland Open Studio Tour I've been inspired to put together my own studio in the basement. I've been collecting tables, art supplies, appliances, and numerous fliers from First Thursdays and the Open Studios. I feel like I finally have a set up that works for me, although I'd still like to organize it further and maybe get some shelves. So, in the spirit of the Open Studio tours I'd like to open up my studio to you! Here are some pictures of the set up I have so far.

Here's my table with a view of my inspiration boards

Here's a close up of my painting supplies. I have my palette/griddle, my crock pot of medium, my heat gun, and the all important coffee

Here's my palette with my muffin tin for mixing, and my pigments. This is how I keep my wax liquid while I'm painting.

Here's the crock pot I found at the Goodwill that I keep my encaustic medium in. $5 and it works great! I keep my brushes and tools in empty jam jars.

Here are some inspiration boards I made using fliers from shows and artists. I also keep the First Thursday and Friday maps up here too.


Where I keep most of my art supplies. I really need to organize more...

New boards all prepped and ready for painting!

My dancing manikin friends who keep me company down here.

Well that's all for now. I need to get back to work because I've fallen behind on my painting this week. This was supposed to be the week of my fabulous new schedule until I got sidelined by an all day errand on Tuesday, then knocked down with a mega migraine on Wednesday that doesn't seem to be completely gone still. Once I'm back on my game I'd like to write an educational post about my painting medium, encaustics (hot wax). It's a medium that not many people know and I love to teach about. Hopefully it will answer some questions people have when they see my paintings and how exactly I do it. Until then,

Peace!

The cons of working from home

Let me first say that I had a great time at my first art show! Lots of my friends and family came out to see me and the art, there were some crazy performances, heaps of food, and a gallery full of interesting art. Although my piece didn't sell I did get a lot of compliments and a lot more confidence in my work. All in all it was a great experience. Below is a picture my mom took of me by my piece in the show (it was right next to a Chuck Bloom piece! Squee!!)

Although the show inspired me to make more work it's still hard for me to get motivated on a daily basis. Here's my dirty little secret: I'm kinda lazy and make a terrible boss for myself. When I first started to seriously consider this art adventure I had visions of myself waking up at dawn to run five miles or do yoga, reading serious news stories while drinking coffee, then working for hours in my studio on groundbreaking paintings, stopping only for a quick salad until dinner. The reality is more like I would wake up at dawn to turn off my alarm before it even went off and go back to sleep until about 10am when I would guiltily crawl out of bed and putter on Facebook and I Can Has a Cheeseburger. I'd surf the internet until I was so hungry I either had to go running or give up and just have breakfast/lunch, which I would usually eat while watching episodes of Intervention which assured me that even though it was 2pm and I hadn't brushed my teeth things were still good because at least I wasn't addicted to meth. If I got down to my studio during the day it was only for a couple hours and I never got much done, but still congratulated myself for even entering the basement.

Seriously if I was working for a real company I would have been fired long ago. The thing is that when I'm working in the schools or have a real job to leave the house for I'm pretty motivated and hard working, but I'm just not strict enough with myself. I think that part of it is that it I don't have to leave the house to work and thus get distracted by the A and E's awesome shows full of dysfunctional people and giant piles of dishes in the sink. If I want to have a shot at being a successful artist I have to treat this more like a regular job with set hours and a schedule, even if I am in my muffin pants and pink slippers. During a rare fit of motivation I made myself a strict schedule that made time for things that were most important to me: painting, running/working out, reading, and some quality time for dinner with my husband. Today is day one of following my schedule because last week I was sick and mainly lay around watching Hoarders and eating Lipton's noodle soup from a box. So far so good...I've run for the first time since my race, showered, had breakfast, and even remembered to take my vitamins. I'm running 15 minutes behind schedule but am all ready to go down into my studio before noon. I'm feeling so productive I might even get around to brushing my teeth before Mike comes home.

If you want to see the anal retentive schedule I'm created for myself I've posted it below. Lets see how long this productive feeling lasts for...

MWF Schedule
Time	Activity
6:30am	Wake up, change & stretch
7:00-8:00	Workout
8:00-9:00	Shower, change, get ready
9:00-9:30	Breakfast
9:30-10:00	Research, email, blog
10:00-12:00	Studio time
12:00-12:30	Lunch
12:30-5:30	Studio time
5:30-6:00	Cleaning time
6:00	Start dinner
7:00-8:00	Dinner
8:00-9:30	Free time
9:30-10:00	Get ready for bed
10:00-10:30	Read in bed
10:30pm	Sleep

Starting Over

Well, this year didn't exactly go according to plan. I applied to about 13 different teaching positions and only got one interview for an after school day care program who took one look at my resume and told me I was over qualified. September came and went and all my teacher friends went back to school and I was left behind. I felt like staying in bed for a week. It was tough because I worked so hard to get my license and nothing has come of it. I have a 4 point and taught in a foreign country!! Does that mean nothing to you people?!

Everyone has advice for me. Subbing is their main solution. I'm sorry, but teaching subjects I'm not qualified in, with students that aren't mine, in a school that probably turned me down for a teaching position...nothing about that gets me excited. I also don't want to just teach art classes at my house after school because I don't want to be used as daycare, I don't have any supplies, and what about liability? What if little Timmy lights himself on fire in my house while we're drawing (don't ask why there would be fire, I'm sure they'd find some)? Right now I don't want to take on children without the support of a school.

So, that leaves me with what options? Work at a coffee shop or warehouse like I used to? Retail? Office work? Waitress? I've been on the teaching path for so long that most of my non-teaching positions are more than 5 years ago. I've now had 11 jobs in my life and feel exhausted by the meaningless work, awful coworkers, incompetent bosses, and constant threat of being let go. The more I thought about applying for jobs the more depressed I became. I didn't want just a job, I wanted a career. My teaching path might be at a stand still, but that doesn't mean I have to be. After a lot of thinking, sleeping in too much during the weekdays, and one too many nights surfing the internet past a reasonable time, I decided to become a full time artist. It's not something I ever considered before because it seemed so uncertain and open ended, but right now it feels like exactly what I need. It can become whatever I make of it and I'll be in charge (to a certain extent). It's big and scary but it feels exciting and that's something I haven't felt since I was teaching.

Now the research and creating begins. I've already created myself a studio space in the basement after I swept away a ridiculous amount of dead spiders, bought myself some art supplies to start with, and have bought a few special art related things on Craigslist. The most important and useful thing I bought were two tickets to the Open Studios Tour. During the 2nd and 3rd weekends in October 100 Portland artists open their studios for the public to walk through. Tickets cost $15 and it's been so worth it! I've already got contacts for framing, galleries, supplies, and some really awesome painting tricks, and that's only from the first weekend. I was so inspired by all the creativity this weekend that today I made my first painting since college, and while it sucked (really it looks terrible) I'm still excited and optimistic about this adventure.

This blog, along with my life, has changed directions. Instead of being centered on education it will be documenting my journey to become an artist. It will be a lot of creating, research, networking, and putting myself out there in ways I never have before. Hopefully soon when people ask me what I do I can call myself an artist without laughing or adding "kinda".

Here's to starting over, peace!

Art Budget Spreadsheet

One of the aspects of teaching art that isn't always fun is budgeting. Other subjects have to plan their budgets as well, but the art budget is big, complicated, and can be frustrating. There's nothing worse than running out of paint of paper mid-year and having to go over budget, believe me I used to do it all the time at KidSpirit until I had more experience. Plus other teachers sometimes need to use your supplies for projects and aren't always great about letting you know in advance, "Oh you needed paint for a poster and used all the expensive acrylics for it? That's great but I actually had tempera for that..." You get the idea. Staying organized can make your life a little easier when it comes to budgeting and one way to do that is to use a spread sheet to keep track of what your budget is, what you ordered, and how much money you have left. Some people are great at Excel spread sheets and don't need any help in this area. If you're one of those people then rock on with your geeky self and create a spread sheet so organized and detailed it'd make my OCD heart proud. If you do need some help or even just direction in creating a spread sheet I'm here to help.

I had to make a spread sheet project for my computers class last term and decided to create an art budget spread sheet to help keep me organized and on budget when I have my own class. The spread sheet has an itemized budget section where you type in how much each supply cost, then a totals and percentage section where you can see the total monetary amount you've spent on that category of supply and also the percentage of the budget that is devoted to it. For example, I can type in the amount I spent on acrylics, tempera, and watercolors and see how much money I've spent on paint in total and what percentage of the budget goes toward paint. I've included both the actual spread sheet itself which you can use just as it is, but I've also included instructions on how to make it yourself on Excel, step by step. I think it's a good idea to look at the instructions because if you ever want to change something about the spread sheet, or make it more personalized you'll know exactly how. Happy budgeting!

Art Budget Spread Sheet

Instructions for Excel Spread Sheet

Peace!

Work Sample Lessons

I realized after looking at my last post that it isn't that useful unless you are writing a work sample. So for all those teachers out there that just need some good lesson plans I'm giving you just the part of my work sample is actually taught in the classroom. All the lesson plans, handouts, tests, and slide shows. If you're looking for an interesting way to teach color and line this unit might be a good fit.

Peace!


Goals and Objectives
Lesson Plans
Handouts
Pretest
Posttest
Rubrics
References
Slide Shows
History of Graffiti
Line Examples
Color Examples
Test Graffiti Slides

Elements and Principles Slide Shows

I just finished making some slide shows on Power Point for a computers class and thought I'd share them. The first one is on the Elements of Art and has action buttons to advance the slide show, and the second one is on the Principles of Design and is self advancing (requirements for the projects). Most of the pictures and photos are mine and people are free to use them if they want to and the voice over is me, but if you wanted to take my voice off that would easy to do. There are also some hyper links that connect to a really good website for the Elements and Principles:

http://www.artsconnected.org/toolkit/index.html

At the end of both shows is a hyperlink to a course outline I wrote that uses the Elements and Principles (again a requirement of the project you could take off). Feel free to use course outline if you would like, but I should mention that I did get the sculpture project from the Arts and Activities magazine (I'll give credit where it's due).

I also have a slide in each show with a mnemonic device for memorizing the Elements and Principles which I used to study for Praxis. It's really helpful if your kids have problems remembering the terms.

Elements of Art Slide Show

Principles of Design Slide Show

Peace!

Guidelines for Success Posters

I figured it was about time I added something useful to this page. I thought about one of the first things I made in grad school for my future classroom and thought that would be a good place to start. So here are my Guidelines for Success. When I introduce it to the kids I ask them to read each line and tell me what it means to them, and we discuss each topic a little as we go down the list. Then I ask what word it spells out and when they say "ARTIST!" I tell them yes, and in this class we're all going to strive to be artists and these are the traits of an artist. I also have included another one I made for non-art classrooms that spells out STUDENT. I just recently had the ARTIST one made into a large poster for my class which I'm excited to hang, and I have it on my syllabus.

Peace!

Artist Guidelines for Success

Student Guidelines for Success

The Beginning...

Well, this is my first post on my blog. Welcome! My name is Chantel and I'm currently in my last term of graduate school earning my Master of Arts in Teaching. When I'm done I'll be certified in both middle and high school art. I'm starting this blog for a class project, and at first I wasn't even sure I wanted a blog, because I didn't think I had anything interesting to say and I was worried about having personal information on the web because well....I have to be professional as a teacher. After thinking about what I want to say, who I'd want to read it, and who I'd write it for, I decided to dedicate my blog to art education. I'll discuss and present anything art or education related. That means lesson plans I've made, found, or been given, fun craft projects for art day camp classes (which I taught for two years) or just for fun, personal art I'm making, art events locally in Oregon, educational sites, classroom tools I've made in my grad classes, education theory discussions, and useful links for teachers (art or otherwise).

So I'm dedicating this blog to all those under appreciated art teachers out there. The teachers that encourage experimentation and risks, the teachers that stay after school so students can use the supplies they couldn't otherwise afford, the teachers that donate their own pencils and brushes when the class runs out, the ones that put their own art aside to teach others for a while, and who are constantly trying to wash paint (or is it printmaking ink?) out of their new khakis. I'm inspired by all the teachers I've met, and wish that I could someday be half the teacher they are. I hope this blog can be a resource for some of you, and maybe a way to feel that you aren't so alone in your subject as I sometimes feel (only art specialty in my whole cohort). I hope to hear some of your stories, and if you ever come to a Portland First Thursday gallery opening you might run into me. I'll be the debt laden new teacher in the corner drinking the free wine and putting rolls in my purse.

Peace!