Entry for March 29, 2007

I don't normally blog on Thursdays, but I have a little piece I wrote and pasted to a friend's blog comments. These things don't really go together, and yet, in my mind -this morning- they do. So here it is. Tammy, I hope you're not offended.
The picture is of my granddaughter Olivia.

I am verbose
and full of improbable dreams at times.
Then that One to whom I promised faithfulness
looks penetratingly at my arrogant humanity.
He isn't shaking his head. His look does not condemn.
That is my heart speaking
-the heart that was so confident and snobbish a short time before.
He sees my broken promises.
That's the hard part.
I really intended to trust and forsake all others,
but I got hung up on the things that would be added to me
if I succeeded.
So, He advances with His work
and in that moment when I can barely look back,
he wipes my face,
makes me a new garment from the things I would not have dreamed
and says "Come along now.
We have things to do."
D Woodall 2007

Apple dance

Soft white petals dance and swirl against a muted sky

Animated t'ward the earth where limp and still they lie

They join together like warm snow, then they disappear

Fulfilling and fulfilled the purpose which has brought them here

Small uncommon beauty which small round life inspires

Abandoning their glory as the forming fruit requires

Selflessly they dance and fly and frolic in the wind

And give away their beauty to let life begin again.

DWoodall 2007

No smoke.

Grapes on the Vine Donna Woodall, 2007

11x14 inches, Oil on canvas

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly my students learn. I'm a decent teacher, but still.
This past week a student looked at me with a "yeah, right" when I told her that her grass was better than she thought and that she needed to find the closest leaves and complete the grapes before she would know what the grass as a subodinate item would need to be. She was obsessing over the grass!
I don't blow smoke. I am positive toward my students and their work for two reasons. First, I want them to grow in a positive way. Second, I've seen sooooooo many of these pictures develop that I pretty well know what they can become before they go there. But for all my compliments and encouragement, I am pretty well honest.
I believe all people can succeed in drawing and painting if they apply some basic rules and have the drive to keep on - keepin on. I'm not saying they'll be famous or make lots of money selling paintings, but they can succeed and produce good work based on their personality and style.
My own paintings are seldom my own style, for I must teach and much of what I do is geared toward teaching strong skills and visual perception. My heart would much rather experiment. In my soul, I'm a slasher!
I have one student who really wants to become a slasher. I'm ready to work with her. She's already developed the keen, visual interpretive skills. So now, we go for personal expression that obeys the principles of art. It should be fun.
The picture is a photograph of the lead picture I painted during a recent rote (follow me) assignment. I do these in a class setting to help students see and accomplish good technique or learn a specific skill. The students are on the finishing stage. I've not signed it yet.

The timely tree

We have a pear tree on the hill. It's a large, pretty tree.
Early in the spring the south side of the tree blooms in fine little white clusters. About the time the south side blossoms begin to fade, the northern branches produce larger white blossoms. This tree is half Bradford Pear and half fruit bearing. We can only speculate as to its beginnings. The trunk comes out of the ground as one trunk and splits within a couple of feet into two large branches. The branches that come off the northern stock branch bear large pears. Those that immerge from the southern stock have the small round 'fruit' of Bradford’s.
There are some branches that seem to come from the north that have the small white blossoms, etc. But if you look closely, you will see that one branch passes completely through another branch. The same is true on the south side. Trying to determine its origin – just because I’m like that- is difficult, though it really is inconsequential. Is it a fruit variety with a graft of a Bradford or is it a Bradford with a grafted fruit tree? Or perhaps did they start as two little stocks of different varieties and eventually over the years grow up to look like one tree. I’m not considering cutting it down or anything, but it’s a curiosity to me.
In this politically charged year, it seems we have a whole slew of these running for president.
The video clip attached to my blast is a collaberation between myself and a friend using the photo Tulsa at Night. It just evolved, no particular reason, but I think it was fun. If you have time to view it, I hope you will.

Life in Transition

My life is in transition.
So what, my life is always in transition. It's called time.
Saturday, I went out to transplant my irises -another story- and saw that my rock wall was teetering. This rock wall was very pretty from the lower yard, but as I stood above it, it was obviously ready to reinforce the laws of gravity. I moved it into the flattened area I'd carved out of the hill to transplant my irises and took about six more inches off the back. Now it's sturdy. I filled and mixed dirt and gave the irises a more permanent home. Life in transition.

While fixing the iris bed, I saw the plight of some over exuberant frogs stuck in the upper pond which a gardening show convinced me should be converted to a bog. I began bringing large gravel up from the bottom of the hill where we'd tossed it when we put in the pool two years ago. As I filled the small pond with the gravel, the water only rose in the pond not helping the plight of the floundering frogs at all. I began putting the buckets of gravel into one edge until it was touching the back top of the water level. Eventually the three living frogs made it to the rocks. One frog was too far gone. I felt good that I'd respected life. Life in transition.
Sunday afternoon, my husband and I walked up to check on some things and look at what I want to do with the upper course of the water stream (manmade) (womanmade actually). I saw that only one frog actually made it out. Three lay floating and bloating in the small pond at the gravel's edge. But a closer look made me realize the world would not miss them. The pond is full of polywogs. Of course, when I fill it with gravel, I'll displace many. But there is life - in transition. It is a thing of ebb and flow, of rain and drought, or exuberance and quietness. When your frogs have died, you get polywogs. "This is not the end - it is the beginning" "The worst thing that can happen is we fix it." I tell these things to my students regularly as they survey work that seems imperfect or unsettling in its transition. Some events are for learning only. Some give you a surprising lift.
It's life in transition.

Cast a pleasant shadow.

The picture was taken in Tulsa in February. Be sure to enlarge it. At the bottom of your internet window is a percentage tool that will let you zoom in somemore. The bigger I get this one the better I like it.
The following write is one from my elementary ed days. I ran into it a little while ago and put it on my computer. It's true that I see myself differently than others do. You name it, teaching, clothing, hair, house, studio, what ever, I pick it apart or if I'm busy,maybe I ignore it. I often have trouble deciding what others will find important or appealing. Though this is incident specific, I still see it as valid.
I cast a pleasant shadow. Seeing my shadow is a definite surprise.
In the mirror I see a different me: all lined and harried, a splotch of paint laying on my skirt- dry clean only. In the mirror I see a smudge of graphite comically wander off one side of my nose where I touch my glasses frequently to keep them in place. In the mirror I notice that my figure is switching emphasis. In the mirror I see grey strands multiplying.
As I rush to my car, I find myself recapping my instruction. Did they see what I see? Is my nose smudged? Is my skirt marred? Is my hair too grey? Of course, I’m really thinking about projects and supplies and management techniques, but it’s all the same. Was I too lenient; was I too strict? Did they understand? Did they learn? Did they love it?
Before me I see my own shadow. The shadow doesn’t show my sags, bags, strands and splotches.
I ran into one of last year’s students at the 4^th of July celebration. He drug me over to meet his dad and then asked me to stay and watch the fireworks with them. His dad obviously felt as awkward as I did. We both smiled, hemhawed and excused and I went back to my family.
When I thought about what had happened. It surprised me and made me chuckle. The child hadn't seen the obvious age difference or the fact that I had a waiting family. He just knew that his dad was alone and he kind of likes the art teacher for what ever reason. Maybe I was kind one day when he needed kindness. Maybe he felt success or pride in his work. Maybe I seemed like I had it together. Maybe I was just always there. For what ever reason, I cast a pleasant shadow.

Just for the love of it!

Consider the lilies of the field. The don't weave, or stitch, yet the best dressed stars on the red carpet are no lovelier than they. (my take on an old quote)
On Monday night I attended an artist's forum in our sister city (The little sister). The moderator of the forum is an accomplished artist/designer who started the group to encourage development and interaction in the art community. The program was about having a competitive spirit in the arts and how destructive it is. It's the difference between pitting our work against our best or against someone else's work. It's the issue of doing it to satisfy an inner stir as opposed to trying to get a piece of the action.
The reading would have been wonderful if he had not asked me to read it. My eye and my mouth don't always work together on a totally new read. And wouldn't you know it, I was in great need of the whole article. I was trying to read, process and react all at the same time. You see, just that afternoon a person called me asking about getting some advice and maybe some supplies from me to teach a class that could limit my own load. Operative term - could. So petty, but I found myself tied to a frustration I abhorred. My core philosophy was being called into scrutiny. I say I believe that the people who come through my studio are both a gift and a responsibility. How quickly I can let the money and reputation (what reputation) replace my lofty words, let alone my love for this one I have mentored over the past several years.
Luckily the feeling left as quickly as it came. The following is a poem I began writing and have completed in stages over several months.

Progress?

Poems songs and pictures
Dances in the night
Honest questions asked in tears
Arguments for right

Stumbling feet and tongue
Clumsy heart and hands
Ceaseless efforts to achieve
What I think life demands

Wars of faith and fear
Helplessness ingrained
heart and mind surrendering
what hope and love sustained

Love has kept me bound
Love has set me free
Pain and hope at last reveal
the “Yes” and “No” in me.

DW 2007

Entry for March 12, 2007

Okay, so in case you wondered, I am a possum married to an armadillo with a large array of suthern delicasies to my credit.
The picture is of Saturday morning with the fog and all, taken from my hill toward the south.
Today was Jon's birthday. I've thought about him all day. He's 20. I don't have his current address. He's in the navy, perhaps he's in San Diego now. Last time I asked for it, my daughter said "yeah, I'll send it." I've got some funny and serious stories about the lad. Some I offered last october when he was headed for basic. Some are a little too personal to tell in a public forum.

My youngest daughter is two years two days older than he is. Here he is with his aunt Amanda (left) and two of his cousins at last year's Christmas Party. Boy they were a lively group!
I woke late this morning - a little before 8 AM. Blame it on the time change. I really couldn't sleep last night and so worked on a story I've been contemplating and writing on for a couple of years. Anyway, it was a beautiful day even though it did get pretty warm for March. I planted and transplanted bulbs, and worked on a bed I'm preparing for my irises. They're getting choked and are in the way where they've been for the past two years. So I'm piling up a rock wall and going to put in some better dirt for them and hope for the best. My mom is like the queen of gardening and she seemed to think this would work okay.
I had two students finishing up work for an art competition come this afternoon. Both had missed at least once and I missed one week during my mother-in-law's final days. But the work is due this week so we worked a couple of hours and both finished well. Now comes the waiting on judges and such. I came in from the hill to eat a bite and rest a moment before the students were to be here. There I sat in my sweats, filthy, tired, the room not prepared, just getting ready to clean up, change and get prepared when the phone rang. They were here, and the studio door was locked. Yeah, I looked bad, smelled bad and was unprepared and started them early anyway.
Tonight was the artist's forum. Everyone had the blah's though we did get some good news about the accomplishments of a couple of our members. So tomorrow my work week really starts. It was a quiet, soft day. Monday is my day. This Monday was Jon's day as well.
Happy birthday Jon.

HB to my youngest

If I could give her anything for her birthday I would give her joy in her struggles, success at her job, fullfillment in her relationships, peace in her situation. She's been such a sweety and I love her so much. Yet, I'll give her some meaningless trivial thing that in 5 years will not make any difference.
But I do have a prayer that I pray daily that God protect her heart, mind and body and bring her the love of her life without loss of herself, the most inspiring job without discouragement and the greatest happiness without debasement.
So Happy 22nd girl.
The picture is of the get-up she sported last St Patrick's Day for the joy of her preschoolers. She's gotta be the coolest. I taught her well.

Entry for March 08, 2007

Like a tiny drop of water
in which all creation
is reflected and revealed,
perhaps a teardrop
or maybe a dewdrop,
or a leftover droplet
from the rainstorm bygone
resisting evaporation:
its end and beginning,
desperately wanting
to make a difference.

Like the newly risen moon
waxing from an eclipse,
The darkness still effective
yet beginning to give way
as light leaks back
from the shadows
turning sienna to amber
and amber to gold
and gold to cream
and then washing the earth
with its dazzling light.

Standing in the balance:
rising star or has been
novice or sage
super nova,
black hole
forming star
dry as sand
yet there the seed lies
waiting for life
waiting for joy
waiting for meaning.
DW 2007

It’s who I am. It’s what I do

I painted a lot of pictures and became a fairly accepted commissioned painter in the ‘70s. I taught music for several years. I taught painting for quite a while. I liked teaching and thought of myself as a teacher. I eventually found myself hurled into the classroom. While I did have a lot of communication training, I did not have a degree in teaching and when the clean up of education began several decades ago, I did not have the credentials for the classroom. I did not have the proper training either, though I don’t think I realized that at the time.
My first education effort was for Journalism. I liked to write, felt comfortable writing. I enjoyed photography. I knew advertising. I didn’t like advertising, but I knew it. I wanted to do scientific reporting. That’s a real cool idea in journalism class. This is Arkansas. Eventually, I ended up back in an advertising position.
One day at the encouragement of my husband, I went back to college to get my teaching degree. It was a good comfortable feeling to be back in an academic setting. After one semester, I was on scholarship. I loved the challenge and the interaction college provided, made lasting friendships and explored every artistic avenue I could.
I got my hands in clay, learned to think in three dimensions, studied the history and development of world art and discovered things about color my mind had totally missed. I learned to communicate ideas while managing behaviors and time. I loved it. I analyzed each professor’s approach to teaching, irregardless of subject, mentally grading and categorizing their efforts and effectiveness. It was a time of growth and discovery like none I’d ever known. I graduated suma cum laude.
Shortly before graduation, two friends and I sat in a museum and dreamed about starting an art school. We each had strong points and media favorites and felt we were unrivalled in talent and creativity. We would have a store and sell the “good stuff” as well as marketing our student’s work and our own. It was a fun discussion. We went our separate ways.
For the first several years of my teaching career, I was totally in love with teaching. Not discipline! I never liked that part. But teaching was so exciting, so energizing. I gave everything I had. They took everything I gave. I can tell some funny stories from that period. Thinking of it still energizes me. I worked with student council, Academic Olympics, and Odyssey of the Mind. I had a huge art club and we tried just about everything an art club could think of. We painted and built and carved and printed and decorated our way through each year. Homecoming, Prom, Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Spring, Winter, Fall: everything was an opportunity to explore and create art. In class, I drew connections between art and science, math, literature, daily living – just about everything.
I was teaching several miles from home. My daughter was growing up – without me. My husband and I were growing apart. I had a very bad automobile accident that deeply wounded me physically and emotionally. I began to experience tension with my principal. It was time for a change.
The year I left that first teaching position for one close to home I also left high school for elementary. I moved my aging parents close so I could watch and help. My eldest daughter went through a devastating divorce and another daughter began a downward spiral that broke my heart and eventually her own.
I was not an elementary teacher. My principals loved me. My kids loved me. The classroom teachers tolerated me well and some even befriended me. The news media used my teaching for a feature on integrating immigrants into the system and dealing with diversity. But I was not an elementary teacher. I only recently realized that deep in my knowing part I don’t know what elementary art really looks like. I know the principles and required skills and have some cool books, but when I see elementary art, I feel unsure. I have no clue what it should be.
The district moved me into secondary after two years. It was a sweet but difficult school. The difference between the haves and the have nots was so evident. We had about every problem the legislature couldn’t fix: physical and mental challenges, low test scores, poverty, neglect, drug abuse, physical abuse, aggressive, resistive behavior. You name it and if it is a problem, it was there. We had a strong leadership in the administration and good hard working teachers who tried and tried and tried. We had an enormous turnover of certified staff.
After four years, I began to submit to a very defeated realization that all my efforts were helping little and destroying much. I was a good teacher. Yet nothing was working. As an art teacher, my subject and needs were low priority. My already pitiful budget was hacked and hacked again. It was time to change. At my husband’s encouragement, I handed in my resignation at the end of my fourth year. I would try to establish my own teaching/producing studio.
This is my third year and I’m beginning to finally experience some stable growth. I currently have 5 private students and 8 classes in art. I currently have no piano students, but have some waiting in the wings. My students pass the word and constantly remind me that I am a great teacher. It comes from retired ladies and homeschooled teens and single fathers and private schooled students who can’t manage to schedule art classes. It comes from business women and professionals and stay at home moms and business men who have always wanted to learn to draw, paint or do pottery but really weren’t sure if they could.
There are times when I miss that stable paycheck that comes whether the students are sick or absent and I miss the paid personal days and insurance. I miss the interaction with other professionals. I miss getting up and dressing up and clicking my heels off to a diverse classroom. I miss teaching art history.
But then I enter my studio and become an artist. I open the door and become a teacher of people who want to learn badly enough they will pay this verbose aging teacher who walked away from her certificate and security. I face hungry minds and longing hearts who put up with my social blunders and crowded studio and bury themselves with me in this wonder called art for a couple of hours each week. And I pray for kindness and integrity and clarity and energy. I give thanks for my past and my present and hope I never forget any part of it.
It’s who I am. It’s what I do.

Getting it Right

So it was late Monday night. I wanted to make the video. He wanted to sleep. I couldn't blame him.
We had planned the video: the two of us grinnin' and singin' and maybe shakin' a little virtual tambourine (metaphor) for our daughter's somethingth birthday. We do have a real tambourine. Originally it was going to be playing instruments. Hobbes, Cloe. Yeah. Life happened.
Last night, after I returned from a meeting, he brought in the little handy dandy camera that takes video and the usb cord and the disk to put the whole thing on my computer. It wouldn't work. The computer insisted I use the dazzle port. No. NO. No. I want the camera. It's getting late. Uninstall. Reinstall. Permission denied?
You are MY computer. You can't deny me permission to install the disk for my camera on you! Second try. Frustration. Sleepy man. Early morning for us both.
I finally succumbed. I could fight no longer. He went to bed. I made a slide show with the poem I'd written and the pictures I'd gathered before we got insanely creative. I liked it. But I wanted a fun surprise for my girl.
Happy Birthday Jonea!
Thats her on the left with her younger sister the first of February.

Beneath it all

The babes left this afternoon.
My house is shambles and so eirily quiet.
The cat is missing her.
A half finished painting sits on my studio table.
My nightstand is a really bright color of deep pink.
Toys litter the hallway and living room.
Little twin babies wait with LuLu in a portable bed/play pen where we lock Liv away when she's supposed to be sleeping. (So she can't paint the other nightstand.)
Toy dishes and fruit sit alone and quiet.
The potty chair is forsaken, waiting for a final cleaning to be tucked into the cabinet.
No one to wake or cook special foods for.
No lessons to assign or check.
I finally have time to read and write in blogland.
a smile, rest, plan, garden,
a sigh,
impatient loneliness until the next round.
Tomorrow I'll teach and work.
For today Skinamarinkidinkidink echo's in my head
And then a simple strain from my current favorite:
"Oh, it's gonna be alright all these things must have their time." (Newsboys)