art

Afternoon at the Blanton

| patmcg

Summer has the family scattered all around. With Molly still on her way back from the Pacific Northwest with her grandparents, and Claire back in town, it was a me & Claire night.

With Claire heading off to college in August, I wanted to do something fun and new with our rare one-on-one evening.

And then a big stroke of luck came our way: I got off work early for Independence Day. 🇺🇸 Our fun evening had become the rarest of great things – a fun weekday afternoon! We’re talking Ferris Bueller vibes here.

After a two-minute scan of the brain, I realized we weren’t gong to make it to a Cubs game or a downtown parade today, but we did need to take the opportunity to jump on one of the great museums around town, with their weird and pesky and mostly weekday hours.

So we met at the Blanton Museum of Art.

Claire and I had a great time, saw the famed Austin, and explored the gallery for like 90 minutes. This was long enough to take it in but not dull the senses. We discovered some amazing artists like Alfredo Jaar and Mequitta Ahuja.

One the way home in hot summer traffic, Claire suggested we drop by JuiceLand to get acai bowls and skip dinner. Perfect thinking.

It’s always fun when a tedious in-office work day turns into a fun downtown excursion with your kiddo in her last summer at home as a “kid”. 🙏

Molly’s Charms and More

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Molly has been spending a lot of her down time lately making bracelets. Starting with basic yarn bracelets, she then moved into plastics. Sometimes we even melt plastic beads in the oven to flatten them for just the right shape.

Molly has gotten so good at making her own bracelets that she decided to open her own Etsy shop: Mollys Charms And More. 🤩

After the initial store setup, Molly has been adding her own pictures, updating listings, rallying friends to support her store, and checking her stats.

She’s all over this. 🤓. Way to go, Molly!

Bringin’ in the Easel

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We cleaned up the back yard today, and in the process discovered the old art easel that had been forgotten out on the back patio for a while.  It was covered in dust and pollen.  The girls took it upon themselves to bring it inside and refurbish it.  They tackled this job with enthusiasm.  I did nothing but give them some rags and cleaner.  Molly and Claire got the easel in perfect shape, carefully wiping it down, removing every bit of dust and pollen and arranging the easel in its old spot.

Once the easel was in place, they put it to work.  Claire started drawing on the whiteboard side, and Molly took over the opposite blackboard side.  Claire draw a bunch of random cute things and titled it “Random Art”, and Molly drew a house.  It is amazing how far Molly’s art skill has progressed.  It really looks like a house!  And it even has some writing on it.  Here is the fruit of their labors.

 

 

Art Blast

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At the end of second grade, Claire brought home piles and piles of her art and other work from the year.  It had been sitting around our house for weeks.  Kit took some of her last week off to scan some of it.  So here it is, a review of Claire’s second grade art.

Claire Art #3

| patmcg

For a while, I’ve been posting the girls’ art to the portfolio section of this blog.  But the portfolio is tedious and cumbersome to manage, so I’m going back now to doing the art as a regular blog.  While Kit and I were in London, Joyce scanned our big backlog of the girls’ art.  Here is a bunch of Claire’s art and other creations from the last several months…

Claymation!

Video | | patmcg

Claire just finished up a brief 4-week claymation class at the Art School at Laguna Gloria.  All of her classmates’ animations are posted together as a single montage online.  Claire’s creations are in there, but I’m not even sure which ones are hers exactly, except for the one spelling “Claire” in the names section near the end.  Anyways, the class put together some really creative ideas, the kind of stuff only kids can dream up.