Jacqueline’s Blog

It has been a long time!

It has been a long time!


It has been a long time since I blogged but I got very discourage because there were never any comments left and I was not sure people were finding me. This is what I have been doing:
Writing a book
Donating a painting to the Deschutes Childrens Foundation
Teaching my The Good, the Bad, the Beauty of Color
Teaching my Watercolor Journey’s Class
Teaching the Elements of Design Class
Getting ready to take a group of watercolorists to Provence, France, September 2009
Finalizing my article for the July – August Issue of Cloth Paper Scissors

So see not much but………

Island Girl

Island Girl

Sandy’s box became a beautiful white sandy island surrounded by turquoise blue seas. We all had so much fun with this one and the theme was set and easy to think tropical.

How the Art Box Works

How the Art Box Works

Part of what we did for this Art Box Group was to record our thoughts, our progress, our frustrations and why we did what we did to these boxes in a little journal that each Art Box person provided. The journal traveled with the box as it was passed from artist to artist. The blog below is my first entry for Helen’s box.

Art Box Number 1 – Helen

Art Box Number 1 – Helen

Art Box, Helen

O ne evening while driving home on Shevlin Park Road, just before the curves going down to the river, I passed a shoe in the middle of the road. My curiosity was peaked so I turned the car around and drove back to the shoe sighting. Shoes and boxes were scattered everywhere. I was able to retrieve 2 very nice pairs of size 6 ½ soft leather, Anne Klein, low heeled shoes; one pair light blue and the other black, as well as 2 clear acrylic boxes marked: “shoes, green” and “shoes, red”. Driving home I wondered about the demise of these shoes. Was some young lady with petite feet driving away from a tortured life so fast that these shoes were flung out of the car? Was a young couple on their way to a new home and these shoes just slipped off the back of the truck? The original shoe owner was obviously a very meticulous and organized fanatic to have marked each box so carefully but where were the red and green pairs of shoes? The history of the shoes will remain a mystery, but the moment I received Helen’s box I knew right away that she would get the blue shoes.

I kept the shoes for several years, showing them off occasionally to my friends. “Hey look at these cool shoes I found on the side of the road”. And when they asked what I would do with them, I said I didn’t know but someday I will have the perfect use for them. My 2 teenaged daughters tried desperately to get them to fit but the sweet size of 6 ½ was a fleeting moment in their foot life.

Even though Helen talked a lot about loving the stars and heavens and being up high, I could tell that she is a woman with her feet secure to the ground. But her box is now suspended above the shoes, thanks to the help of my husband and his shop tools. My impression of Helen is that she is very sure of herself and is someone that has been places and is going places so I wanted to give her Art Box a sure foot to get started on and since her favorite color is blue, of course she gets the blue shoes.

The Art Box Group

The Art Box Group



THE ART BOX GROUP, FIRST MEETING
My curiosity was piqued after receiving an email invitation to join an Art Box Group last September from someone I had met in an art class. All we were told was to show up at the first meeting with a box. I brought a wooden cigar box. Our coordinator, Candace, explained that we would be meeting once a month and we would rotate boxes at each meeting so that everyone would get a chance to work on everyone else’s box. The only box we would not work on would be our own. Candace was well organized and had a spreadsheet prepared with the box rotations. There were seven women involved in this adventure. Some of us were known artists and art teachers in Bend, Oregon and some were lovers of paint, glue and scissors and the mixed media world. Others did not feel very artistic. One lady owned a beauty salon and her form of art was what she practiced everyday. We all felt challenged! I knew 4 of the women in the Art Box Group. But we soon got to know each other better because we started telling about our lives and favorite things giving clues to how to proceed to decorate, change and embellish the boxes. That night we left with the instructions from our fearless leader, Candace, that we were entering the construction phase of the Art Box Adventure. We were to open up, change and morph the box into a new design and meet back in a month to rotate boxes. The box I took home was your standard got-something-from-UPS box, not too big, cardboard-ugly and a little dented. I am including a photo of what I did to this box. I will be posting more photos and stories about the how the Art Boxes evolved on this blog shortly.