ARTS hosts military families Aug 11.10
I’ve been meaning to post a lot more about ARTS. It’s been almost two years now since I started working there as a volunteer art teacher, and it’s absolutely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. I’ve been working with some great teens for a while now from a youth center in San Diego. I found out recently that they’ve unfortunately lost their funding, so we won’t see them at ARTS anymore. Another fall-out of the tough economy.
I haven’t settled on a new class yet, but I look forward to remaining a part of the ARTS family as long as I can. The people who run the place are awesome, and the few hours a week I spend with them always make me happy. This particular event was dedicated to visiting military families. We had a fun day, with kids of all ages. My specialty that day was teaching kids how to draw with simple shapes. Hence the Napoleon Dynamite Liger on the board there.
When you teach a 5-year-old kid a few simple tricks they can use to draw anything they want, it’s like you dropped down their chimney on Christmas. I had a couple who even got angry at their parents for dragging them away from my drawing tables, to get them to participate in the other activities. I call that a satisfied customer, haha!
Photo credit: Rob Tobin
Process Recess 3 Feb 18.10
Process Recess Volume 3
Just got my copy of this amazing collection of sketches by James Jean. If you’re an artist, or if you just like looking at great art, check it out. So much good stuff.
ARTS Sep 10.08
I recently started volunteering as an art teacher at the Pat D’Arrigo ARTS Center in Point Loma.
They have a great complex at the NTC Promenade. ARTS (A Reason To Survive), provides visual, performing and literary art projects for kids facing life challenges.
The people who run it are all very cool, and the kids are a lot of fun to work with. It’s the kind of organization that deserves lots of support, for sure.
WhoopsPress Sep 10.08
One thing you learn quickly about using Wordpress is the need for SPAM control. Before I got it locked down, I managed to delete a block of pending comments, including some that I wanted to keep. Whoops.
So for some reason that made me think of the giant worms in Dune that burst out of the sand and did whatever weird things they did. I haven’t seen the film in years. But I think they ate people. The way SPAM tried to eat my site. Or something like that.
I lost some nice comments from Suzanne Buchanan, whom I stumbled across one day via On My Desk, a cool blog about artists’ work spaces. Suzanne is a really talented artist with oodles of fun sketches on her site.
Anyway, the lesson learned? Beware of Russian alien SPAM worms.
