my brother, zee ar-teest

He's always been the one who could draw and make it actually look like something, so go figure that now he's churning out really great abstracts like there's no tomorrow! I used to draw stick figures with both arms and legs coming out of the head, and it took me years to figure out why they didn't look even remotely like human beings. My artistic world greatly expanded when I discovered torsos.

I love the colors he uses, and the texture you can see when you get to see the paintings "live" as I got to do a couple of weekends ago. A local coffee shop in New Haven is featuring my brother's paintings for the month of September, so that's where I started out my vacation. One of his paintings is going to be used during the filming of an upcoming movie. Cool stuff for any artist.

I have the first painting he did when his wife bought him his paints & easel...I named it Narnia, as it is topped with a bright splash of color, encroaching on the still-blank canvas at the bottom. Aslan is coming, and Spring is conquering the never-ending winter...



Oddly enough, my favorite painting he's done so far is titled "winterfell"



Isn't it stunning?

you can see more (and buy them!) here

edit: just in case you were curious, I thought I'd include a representation of what my stick figures looked like before I discovered torsos...

away

what I wrote before my vacation:
for the first time in several years, I am taking a week off work and not crossing the ocean. instead, i am going to sit on its shore, wade in its waters and gaze across its wild expanse. i'm going to (hopefully) get in a kayak and paddle around in its waters. i'm going to feel its breezes on my face and hear its sound in my ears.

what I actually did:
all of the above, minus kayaking (they were booked), plus I shopped, wandered around cobblestone streets, ate amazingly scrumptious foods, sat in coffee shops reading instead of working, took pictures, slept in, avoided all alarm clocks, drove, listened to books on tape, laughed, watched TV, read books, sang, asked God some stuff, and almost didn't even ever open my laptop.

great vacation.

I'll share photos soon...

engagement photos

I had a great time with Sue & Aaron...high school sweethearts who recently reconnected and are now getting married! We met at Starbucks so we wouldn't be total strangers when I started telling them where to stand and when to kiss, and then we headed over to Warner Castle to have some fun. They were really easy to work with...even climbing a tree and leaning on rusty iron fences for me!

I'm looking forward to doing their wedding in a couple of months...

location scouting

I got a call to do some engagement pictures last week. I don't have studio space, so I needed to find a good location to do some shooting. So I drove around town in my mind and came upon Warner Castle at Highland Park. I've done some photos there in the past, and it's a great location...with trees and flowers and wrought iron and stone.

So then I drove around in reality, checking out the castle's sunken garden, then scouting out some alternate sites nearby, just in case. My one worry was that there would perhaps be a wedding going on there when we showed up on saturday, but the only other folks who were there on Saturday seemed to be a girls' volleyball team wandering around.

These are some shots from scouting day...I should have the engagement shots up soon...

The little guy at the top was pretty sure if he stayed real still I wouldn't see him.

procrastinating…

…more later…

growth

Apparently, there are people the world over that can make things grow. Help things grow. Whatever.

I'm not one of them.

Every houseplant that I have ever been given, along with the promise of "you can't kill these. really," I killed. Every houseplant that I decided to purchase in a moment of good resolve (I'm going to pay attention to this tree, really! I'm going to water it and, well, that's all you really need to do, right?) I killed.

Fortunately, I'm not in charge of feeding a family from the fruit of the ground or anything like that. But I do so enjoy it when others have grown things...things beautiful, things edible, things both beautiful and edible. Because then I get to take pictures of them!! And eat them (have you tasted tomatoes right off the vine lately? you should).

move-up Sunday

For the past 5 years or so, I've been a counsellor in the 3rd & 4th grade Sunday School class at my church. I started helping out in there after several weeks in a row of dropping off some rowdy kids from the bus ministry and then leaving. I felt bad that the counsellors in there had to deal with these kids I was bringing to church, still a bit rough around the edges :-)

And I've got to say, that as challenging as it is, dealing with kids that I only get to see for a short time each week, it's really a great place to be. I love the kids...even the ones who continually test me. Maybe I love them more. They certainly get more of my attention than the "good" kids! But I so appreciate the good kids, too!

I grew up in the church, just as these kids are doing, so I can relate to the culture they are experiencing. And a big challenge lately is trying to figure out how to really help these kids desire God. Not just want to do the right things, and not just able to give the right answer—it's "easy" to teach the kids how to look good. How to make it look like they have lives that really have been changed by a relationship with Christ. It's much, much more difficult to get down into the heart of things, and explain the concepts of being born again...regenerated…made new in Christ; repentence from sin and what salvation really is and does.

I've always had a hard time teaching pretty much anything. Partly because when I learn something, I can rarely trace back the steps that I took to learn it. I feel like many things just "click" with me, and I don't know how to get things to "click" with others in the same way. And since I can't remember how I learned things, I can't always figure out good ways to teach them to others. My father was a born teacher—never missing an opportunity to help others learn something. I wish more of that quality had come through the genes to me!

A few weeks ago, we had a time of fun and games outdoors during the Sunday School hour to celebrate our last Sunday in our "old" church building. It was the day kids change grades and move up to the next class, so we kept our going-into-5th-graders and welcomed the going-into-3rd-graders, so we had quite a crowd as we headed outside for tug-'o-war and dodgeball and playground fun. We then presented our 5th-graders with graduation certificates as we escorted them next door to their new class.

I will truly miss some of our kids moving into 5th grade. Their sweetness and eagerness to learn has encouraged my heart many times. I'm also looking forward to these fresh new faces growing up in our class over the next 2 years...we've got a ton of new girls, and I now have the challenge of learning all their names...help!