Monday, April 27, 2009

Still in progress...


It can take a long time to finish a painting. OR, it can come in a snap. My stilt painting is taking a while. That is ok. I kinda liked the first version but now I am liking this new view much better.

I thought it needed a place to walk out from. I felt it needed other animals. I outlined a tiger beetle near the mud bank on the right. Can you find the crab?

I also felt the Salicornia needed more life.

Also, I started another painting. I can't help myself. This is also along the San Gabriel River but, at the Whittier Narrows.



Have yet to finish the burned trees. I will do some more before I up load it.

Monday, April 20, 2009

REALLY OLD stuff


Way back in Ohio, when I was on the Board at what had been the Dayton Museum of Natural History (now it is the Booshoft Museum of Discovery)~(as an aside.....any museum with 'Discovery' in its name ...should ... uh...well... this over used word, 'discovery,' now sounds like a corporate buzz word. 'Discovery Museum' 'Discovery Center' 'Museum of Discovery' all sound like a place to sell junk to the innocents.)

ANYWAY.... I painted murals for the museum. I had a wonderful time. I grabbed these old shots from my old website which lives in the Wayback machine.



Sometimes we had smaller shows... this one was about artifacts from Mexico.



My friend, who was the director, asked if I could do something to help display some of their materials from the ocean that had been in storage for years. So, I did this...



Dayton Museum of Natural History needed images of a time when the earth and moon separated as molten globs. I loved the illustrations from my children's Life books. I would stare at them for hours and hours. I am deeply influenced by those artists. So, I re-created the birth of earth for them.






Dayton was the birth place of CFCs.... there was this celebration.... and I got to paint the mural. This is really my vision of what the molecule might look like... fun to imagine!




Prior to working and living in Dayton, I lived in L.A. and worked at the LA County Natural History Museum in their Discovery Center (sigh...well, when they named the Hall, it - 'that word' - was not over used - yet). I built hands on materials for children and their parents to learn together. One of several boxes of materials was called 'The Eyes Have it!'. Kids learned all about how other animals saw their world. I even built a camera obscura from two white plastic spheres, which together. looked like an eye ball. Kids could hold the handles on each side of the 'eye' and see that the world was projected on the back of the ball, upside down. I also wrote materials explaining optics and the biology vision for all ages, which were all in the box, too. Here were a couple of illustraitions.


I also got to do some stuff for their members' booklet.... all so much fun!

Sunday, April 05, 2009

Oklahoma Anna



This is a year old. Almost. I will put up some other songs by my daughter.