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.

Poland Service Project

My next trip was to Poland on a Service Project with Club Beyond. There a bunch of Club Beyond groups from all over Europe came together to help out the Polish in various projects. Bitburg's assignment was to build benches and double bass stands for a small music school right around Katowice. I've never had so much fun doing work in my life!!




Here I am on the first day outside of the club building making a "wow" face. Well, the sign looks like it says WoW from far away, but it really is WDW... oh well, it was still funny!This is my small group and leader. They were a wonderful bunch of girls and I love them to death, we made very strong, lasting friendships in that very short week!

We even had our little own dance :P

Here we are having some fun in the city on a special tour from the 11th class students of the music school:We never knew this, but I guess posing in front of mannequins at the mall is a very American thing to do. We found this out when we tried to get our Polish friends to pose with us, their reply was "Polish don't do that"

Three billy goats gruff!

The tour of the city was really special because we were the only group who got to go :D

We were able to see what Polish life really was outside of the music school. The city was very old and very beautiful. We could, however, see how much World War II had destroyed the place and how it is still effecting people to this day. Most fo the building were very run down from poverty and some ruined and abandoned. Away from the older buildings, you could see how they were trying to rebuild. Most of the land was empty lots but in random spots gas stations and stores and churches were built. They even had a mall as you saw earlier. You should have seen how excited they were when we mentioned that the mall was just like the ones in America!

The Catholic group coming back from church.

Before the actual work started, our Youth Leader took us to Auschwitz, the biggest of Hitler's concentration camps. He said, "I hope this will remind us all of why we need to value ourselves and others. When we forget Genesis 1:27 ("So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.") we are doomed to devalue those around us and become capable of destroying lives. May we never forget."

Dale was a wonderful speaker, his insight helped us to open up our eyes to our own dignity and the dignity of others. In the words of my small group leader, we were blessed to have him with us that week.

The next day, began work. Here's our group climbing up the hill to the park where we were to build the benches, the music school is the buildings to the left. Here's my group digging holes for the posts of the benches.

While digging we found a bunch of obstructions, mostly rocks, but also lots of debree like wire and cement, we even found the knob for a 1940's oven.

Us four girls were working all alone at the bottom of the hill. Some of the obstructions were very hard to remove and required the help of one of the boys who were all working up the hill.

Lifting bags of cement to fill up the holes and hold up the posts of the benches. Mixing the cement was the Polish kids second favorite part to watch; their first favorite was laughing while we attempted to dig holes :P That was our favorite part too.

Don't get me wrong, we could tell that the kids at the school were genuinely excited for us to be there and grateful to know that we cared. I was actually wrong, their favorite part seemed to be when we would talk to them and share our lifestyles while learning about theirs.

One of the other things we did as part of the service project was getting to know the Polish kids by interacting with the kids our age and helping the younger ones with their English.

This is me with a few girls from the 11th class. I answered all sorts of questions about american sports and past times, about the classes we take and they were very excited to learn more about prom!

The girls loved how tall Deion is!

Every once in a while we would take a break from the hard work and start crafting our message box for our group and writing notes to the other groups at the work site.

The notes were meant to encourage the other members of the service project. It was a fun way to get to know eachother. It was always fun to get a note from someone, sometimes they made you laugh and sometimes they were very sweet.

Here's my group painting the finished benches.

With the work almost done, each group had a turn to have some quiet time to finish their devotionals.

Lauren having some fun painting benches!

Up next is more pictures of us interacting with the Polish:

Here are some friends I made while teaching them how to play baseball and basketball! They were very excited on the last day when I gave them the bats and balls :)Here are the music students gathered around DG as he played his guitar and sang. As you can see most of the kids around him were girls :P

The boys liked talking with him though and enjoyed trying to learn the songs on his guitar. Remember, all these kids are already amazing musicians!

I didn't get to go, but Lauren, Libby and Kelsey weretaken by one of their Polish friends to hear and concert from the stars of the music school. It turns out the trumbone players are like the "jocks", these guys are being "scouted" by colleges around the world!

Our last day was a Saturday. Here we all our with some of our Polish friends who decided to come see us for the last time instead of going home for the weekend. This was a really special, but very sad day. None of us wanted to leave, me least of all, I wanted to stay and go to school here to play my violin all day like they get to! :(((

Lastly, I'd like to give a very big thank you out to everyone who donated money to Lauren and I. Without you guys, we would have never have gotten to have this wonderful experience!!

Creative Connections

I know its really overdue, but here's a blog about my experience at Creative Connections!

It started when we rode the bus up what seemed like a never-ending hill. It was so peaceful on the mountain side, it was like a whole other world. Jasmine, an amazing artist who went for the drawing class, and I were roomates who got to be in an awesome room in the basement.

Everyday we would go to our groups. I was in the Strings group, I was really nervous at first but it turned out to really fun!! Even though the tips of my fingers began to bruise, it was aazing to get to play my violin for hours at a time. And getting to play with other muscians in an orchestra was a wonderful experience!

We played a beautiful performance piece called "American Journey" plus, during practice time, 50 sight-reading pieces. My violin instructor was amazed at how loose my fingers were when I got back home!

One of the coolest parts was hanging out with other artists. Jasmine, Andre (amazing with computer art!) and I got to meet some many people who are as weird as we are! In the Rec Room we could play pool and ping-pong and we could go hang out in the Cafe. But the best part was just walking around and hearing the music played by the performing arts section and seeing the beautiful works of art by the visual arts section.