Bavaria

It's taking me longer than expected to get te pictures of my recent (and not so recent) projects ready for posting. I have no excuses but I do have some distractions for you. Here are some photographs of the amazing Bavarian country taken by my sister and I during our summer vacation. Enjoy!

Wake Up and Smell the Hostile Vibes

Hey guys, this is Birdy. Sam has had a pretty eventful summer this year and she has a lot to talk about. However, she hasn’t gotten around to it. So, naturally, I gave her one:

Hahaha, get it? A round tuit???

Okay, yeah, I think I’ll leave the jokes up to Sam….

Anyway, we’re going to be posting a lot of stuff starting off with Sam’s first year of college. There are also lots of pictures to upload. We’ve got sewing projects and drawings to share with you.

Sam has also done a lot of traveling around Europe and instead of making individual posts, we’re going to put it all into one at the end of the summer.

Okay, talk to you next week!

More Googly Eyes

This is another googly eyed monster made for my little sister. This is a slug-like monster inspired by the singing slugs from Flushed Away. His name is Bob and his wide, toothy grin is great for singing with. This little guy is the nicest of the monsters and will be your friend forever!This is decorative pillow I made the other day that I am very proud of! I love little cute owl-y things and I had a lot of fun finding complimenting fabric and carefully cutting and sewing them onto the pillow case. I also decided to use my googly eyes on this guy too. :)))

Making the pillow inspired me to make this stuffed animal into the shape of an owl also. At first, he was just a fat little crayon sketch made on a scrap of paper, but after making the pillow I decided to make him into reality. Before putting the wings or eyes on, I was very afraid he would be ugly, he was just an awfully wide stretch of old t-shirt with devil's horns. But, I didn't have to worry, because as soon as I put on his googly eye he was my own, totally and insanely cute little owl-y thingy!
Here are my latest creations relaxin' together on the couch. I love how they look all together! <3

Studio Art

I had so much fun in Studio Art this year. I was nervous at first because their are a couple girls in the class who are amazing artists and I have never had any other experience except for sketching in my bedroom. But, in just 11 months I worked with acrylic paint, mixed meadia, clay and watercolor paint.

This was my first piece. We were being influenced by surealist artist Salvador Dali. This watercolor painting is called "Ants Marching" and I came up with the idea after listening to the song Ants Marching by Dave Matthews. I thought it had a wonderful meaning, where people are like ant's marching through life. So here's my interpretation of that concept.

This is not exactly as I imagined. If I could do it again, the ants would be thinner which would make them more realistic. The only bad thing about doing art in a classroom is the time limit. As you can see, some of the ants are darker than other, this is because I had started darkening them as they got closer to the point of view, but kind of ran out of time :(

The next piece was supposed to be influenced by Picasso and I had this whole cubist idea planned out. But, conviently, the day I was absent, the class decided to do mixed media instead. I was a little upset, mostly because I had such a short time to work on my idea, but it turned out to be okay.

This is the beginning stage of "Memories of a Violinist" I tried to use a brush to make my canvas look like wood, but I couldn't get it to work (mind you, I've never used acrylic paint before... or any paint for that matter) So I decided to get more "hands on". It worked out great!

This is the finished piece. I wanted it to look like one of those memory box this where you put photos and old letters in or as if someone took a picture of someones cluttered desk top. These memories happen to belong to a down and out violinist.

The next work of art we were supposed to create was sculpture. It was supposed to be along the lines of modern art and it had to be an abstract human figure. I was very excited about mine, it was of an Native American hunter dressed as a buffalo crouched in the grass, I spend hours making many different models until it was right, then worked the clay for weeks trying to get it smooth and presentable. The body was like a crouching man on all fours, he was covered in a piece resembling leathered buffalo fur and his head had long horns. All over it's body I used random objects to make "cave drawings" and petroglyphs. An example would be the strip of metal the box that's used to cut tin foil. Have you ever torn one of those things off the box? Well when you do, it coils up and that's what I used to make a swirl on the front of his head. (Below)

You may ask, where is this wonderful sculpture you made? Well, I'll tell you. When you work with clay you have to fold water int it to make it soft. While doing that, you have to make sure there are no air bubbles; if there are, the clay will blow up in the kiln. Well, I made sure I did that carefully, but one of my classmates was not so fortunate. When we fired the sculptures, her piece was next to mine in the kiln. Her beautiful sculpture blow up and as it did smashed into the side of mysculpture as well as many other students. We all tried desparately to fix our sculptures. Some were worse that others so some of the students were able to walk off wth only a few cracks on theirs. But mine was definitely destroyed. The head (which was my favorite part anyway) was all I could save. Even though the horns are damaged and anyone can tell that the head was severed, I still keep it to remind me that, yes, I can sculpt and maybe I'll be able to do it again some time with a little better luck!

My next work was even more stressful than the last. The reason was that, because I was a senior and I would be leaving a week early and wouldn't be coming back next year and thaat this was a mural for the whole school to see, my teacher depended on my completion of this painting on time.

The theme for the mural was "After School". Some students showed prom, fashions, graduation and the movie theater amoung other things. My theme was music. I divided my section into smaller sections so I could fit more than one picture and show more variety of music. In the bottom section is trumpeteer in a jazz band (as you can tell my the totally hip hat :P)

The one above that is of a street musician playing in Trier. This is because my teacher said we were supposed to show our culture outside of school and, since nobody else had anything else about Germany, I thought I should get it in there some how. After all, that is where we live! The intracate German house was very time consuming, but all the feed back I got afterwards was worth it!

The next section is of a violinist. Yes, I guess she kind of looks like me, but thats not what I orginally planned. I just wanted a blonde haired musician since the other guys have brown hair. And just because she's blonde doesn't mean she's me!

The next section is just piano key but, what I really like about this part is the red color. All the rectangluar sections of the mural are 6 feet in length. The wall is 6 1/2 feet. The extra 6 inches alternate, for example, mine is on top and the girl's next to me is on the bottom, the girl's next to hers is on top. And it goes on. We all painted the six inch section a complimenting color. I decided to blend my beautiful little red triengle from my painting into a nice orange. I think it turned out very nice. Actually, I think the whole thing turned out very well!

Another Googly Eyed Monster

Here's another addition to my googly eyed monster collection, Snowball. (until I find him a better name) He's a seemingly harmless monster who sleeps in the summer and emerges in the winter. He's so cute and fluffy that people are automatically drawn to him, cooing and aweing. However, they better watch out for his huge, alluring, googly eyes, they stare into your soul!

This cunning, fearless and stubborn little guy was a Christmas present for Kitty... fitting, huh?

This Fourth of July

This Fourth of July, I was thinking about patriotism to my country as I thought that was an appropriate time to do so. I began thinking of a quote by the great navy captain Stephen Decatur:

“Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong”

Sounds nice enough, doesn't it? Very patriotic and everything. However, I wanted to dive more into the meaning of these words, particularly, "but our country, right or wrong." Dear old Stephen believed that no matter what, our country is always in the right... even when we're wrong.

Personally, I don't believe that. Yes, I think America is the best country in the world and I love what it means very much. But, that is why I'm so concerned with the way it is going! I think that if our country is in the wrong, we shouldn't just sit back and call it right. We should, instead, demand a change! That's what America is about, right? Change! No, not just because that's what Obama says all the time, but because that's what our Founding Fathers did in the Revolution, they changed from a monarchy to a democracy. This gave us the right to be able to change things when they go wrong! And, demanding a change does not mean voting for another big man who promises change and then sit back and hope that he does what he said he would. Comfortable, right? No speaking up, no protesting, no revolting orf any kind, no thinking even, the news people do that for us, just no trouble at all!

Americans are all about comfort, which isn't always a bad thing. However, things start happening when we wish to remain comfortable. Things that aren't right. We've allowed large corporations to treat animals inhumanely because we aren't comfortable with higher prices of meat. We've let factories move over seas because we still aren't comfortable with higher prices and because we're uncomfortable with mistreating humans... inside our borders that is. (Remind me to tell you about "slave chocolate" some other time) We even let mothers kill their own babies because the mothers or fathers or boyfriends or girlfriends just aren't comfortable with the pregnancy.

We have to remember that, just because its America doesn't mean it's right.