A break from art: MDGs

September 25th is a national day of prayer, fasting, and advocacy for the Millennium Development Goals. Whatever day you happen to read this post, please take a moment to DO SOMETHING to support these.



There are about 1 BILLION people in the world living on less than $1 a day.
Every 3 seconds, a child dies of preventable, treatable causes (diarrhea, malaria, etc).
Some things you can do include:

Go to the Hunger Site. Click there and food will be donated by the sponsors just because you saw the advertising on their page. You can also sign up to get a daily e-mail reminder. I've been doing this for years. It takes about 10 seconds a day, and it gives someone food for the day.

Sign up to receive Action Alerts from EPPN or another group. When you receive one, it will take you about 1 minute to complete a form to send a statement to your legislators about issues around poverty and justice.

Loan $25 (or more) thru KIVA.org. It is really fun to look through their lists of people approved for micro-loans and choose the actual person and business you'll support.

Donate money to the Heifer Project, ERD, Curamericas, or the charity of your choice that helps "the least of these."

Have you DONE something yet? If not, stop right now and do one of these things.

I thank you, and God thanks you.

SpirARTuality: Marbling Fabric

September's SpirARTuality activity was marbling fabric using shaving cream.

Step 1: Spread a layer of shaving cream in a bin or on any sort of flat surface (even the gravel patio worked!)


Step 2: Blob on some paint, and swosh it around (this picture is actually taken after step 3...)

Step 3: Press a damp piece of fabric down into the color. "The Directions" say leave it there to dry. But what fun is that?! We Must Make More!!


Step 4: Lay flat or hang to dry (and don't be embarassed about your big rump in the side of the photo)



Jo came out with some beautiful marbling when she did this alone. As a group, we made some interestingly painted pieces...but I'm not sure they could actually be considered "marbled."

The question of the day came from someone being surprised at how little control they had of the process of getting the colors onto the fabric:
How much control do you believe God has in your life? Does God drop the colors and let them smoosh where they may, or is God more careful about getting things just so?

Ad Astera Per Aspera

A wonderful artist friend let me come raid her stash, and I came home with a big sackful of wonderful new bits of material.
I couldn't resists so just started sewing and sewing and sewing them together, planning on doing the sew-cut-sew-cut-sew-cut until I got backgrounds like #2 in my Prayer Resurrected piece.
Instead, at some point several really simply sewed pieces jumped out at me and said they were done. So I used them as the background, added some wonderful raw silk on the edge, and pieces of debris I picked up after the Chapman Tornado.

I call them Ad Astera Per Aspera 1 and 2. Kansas' motto is Ad Astera Per Aspera--to the stars through difficulty. That is what this tornado recovery has seemed like to me.

AAPA 2:

AAPA 1:

Hands on Art, Door County WI

The BEST part of our vacation was finding a small green sign by the side of the road that said "Hands on Art." It is a magical, amazing place. (I told my husband I know now what Heaven is like!)

It's on a big old farm and they use several out buildings and have animals to pet and feed. They use their silo to put up tiles people had made. The kids loved looking at them (and standing and yelling inside the silo).


Each Wednesday Night is Family Night where families come do projects together. Here, our family is working on a spin-art painting that now hangs in our front guest bedroom:


And here are my boys painting ceramics. Charlie already has a plate he painted when he was 2, so he did a snake. Luke was very confident about the colors he wanted to use. We use the plate regularly, and the snake has taken up residency on Charlie's dresser.


Charlie also had time to work with fused glass. Well, he puts the glass together just the way he wants it, then they put it in the kiln and then it becomes fused. This is now hanging in our kitchen window:

We had such a wonderful time that my husband and I went back on Friday night for Adult Night. It was SO much fun! We worked with metal. More about that another time...