Monday, February 18, 2013

THE ALPHABET FLOWERS

One of the greatest gifts an artist is given is the vision and a capacity "to do" whatever comes to him/her.  This is especially noticeable as I work on a new (and unexpected) project I am calling "The Alphabet Flowers", which is a collection of 28 little poems to celebrate the love of flowers.  The poems encourage literacy and they are designed to create positive adult-child interactions as a child learns the alphabet.


Ordinarily, I work on music or plays or some aspect of educational psychology and the integration of the arts into our lives.  So, I was surprised when I had the inspiration to create poems about flowers--alphabetically, and that I feel so compelled to illustrate them using techniques I experimented with this past summer (crayon, watercolor, regular 8 1/2 x 11 office paper and gold craft paint.)


The poem paired with the illustration above is:

Bachelor Button petals are
raggedy and blue.
Plant seeds early in the spring
and they will bloom for you.


Since I am a composer/playwright, what the project is teaching me is that no matter what realm of art we work, we can be open to the possibility of expanding ourselves in all kinds of ways ... and when we do, we receive so much more joy by exploring that unknown.  For me, I am receiving the gift of "Delight" ... Creating the poetry was a delight!  Printing the poems and placing them into a working binder made the project real ... as did creating its community FaceBook page .  These tasks were a delightful process.  And now, for the next several evenings,  I will color the letter/flower designs and work to complete the pages ... preparing for whatever follows.

Click HERE for a link to a slide show