It was an exciting end to the workshops - A Youth Art Exhibition. The kids did great and got the experience of 
personal art making to the culmination of public art sharing. 
Some of the youth even made sales on their artwork.

We've seen those time lapse videos of plants growing from seed, seedling, to full grown plant in a matter of seconds. It's a fascinating peek into a slow process. Reality is that a plant takes time to grow. It also needs the cooperation of all the elements at play. Every member - seed, soil, sun, water - doing its part. 

Up until now, you've been the sole supporter of your seedling efforts of art exploration. The next step of The 10 Steps of an Emerging Art Collector is - 

This week requires the involvement of others. Art Allies. People who will help tend your art ambitions. There are reasons why other's contributions will increase your intentions and be of benefit to them as well -

There are a few ways (and probably more) to do this. The basic pattern is 

1. enlist friends or associates
2. pick a specific day/time
3. assign a specific task

Here is an example of one way -

Have a Art Tweet Tuesday that involves tweeting the link of some art related event, article, or image. Short and tweet. 

Here's another - 

Something like a What-do-you-think-about-it Wednesday lunch bunch. This could be virtually or an actual lunch visit. Have everyone get 2-3 art images of styles they like. Tell who the artist is and why they like it. Summed up.

Yet another -

Do a Blog Swap Saturday email exchange. Everyone can find 1-2 blogs (or websites) that have to do with an artist or art and pass it along to the group. Simple.

I've even tried to make it a little easier for you by including text for the invite.

Art Journal 
Write it down -

• Acquire a list of allies.
• Assign an approach to use. How do you want to do this?
• Attract others with the invite. Compose and commit when you'll send it out.
• Allure of art. Why you love it and want to pursue it. Share this with your invitees.

Date Night Idea- Invite friends over for French bread, fruit and cheese. They bring cheese and an art book they are intrigued by. Share talking about the artists and art. And the food.

I am participating in the BlogHer 2010 Art Auction as a contributing artist. Each artist was given a blog post from 
one of the finalists of the Voices of the Year. I was given
 Jessica Bern of BernThis.com's 
blog post as the inspiration for the artwork. 
(The painting will be auctioned off
 - in a couple of weeks online -
to raise money for the Gulf Area.)
Here is a part of the post I was assigned.

There were several considerations I have when doing a project like this. 

First, the art composition has to connect with the content (Jessica's blog) while still being able to connect with others (art collectors.)

Then, the art has to be in the same vein as the article. This was interesting for me because Jessica is a humor blogger. I am not a humor painter. So it was a challenge. You can't force funny, it just doesn't work. And to force a funny painting is even tricker, especially so on your first time. So I didn't go there. Instead I went for playful, along the same line as funny.

And finally, I wanted to add my own genre to the artwork, which stories, symbols or secrets. Jessica supplied the story. 
And here is some of the symbolism -

Let's start with Jessica herself. I didn't want to be too literal while including her but I definitely wanted to have her in there. So I went with her name as she does in her blog - Bern This. There is a match and the burned edge of the paper. She also uses bread on her website as her logomark so the burned edge of the paper is a bread shape.

Then there's Jillian and Bob from The Biggest Losers. I used plumb bob's to represent them - weighted, finding center, 'bob". Also, in the post there is reference to their personalities. For Jillian, Jessica wrote that she would "look me deep in the eyes and whisper in her therapy voice..." representing a calming influence. Which led me to leave her in a calm, motionless position. And she writes for Bob, "...he tends to express himself better physically..." so it made sense to me to put him in motion.

There are the numbers for the weight that goes down and the page views and retweets that go up. The numbers are all under 365 (except the year 2010) to represent the days of the year. The idea being that there needs to be a consistent, even daily, effort to writing or working on any goal. And the white numbers being the potential of the writing days ahead.

And the magnetic, refrigerator numbers and checkerboard pattern representing the playful, game-like, fun nature of humor writing about life.

There are other little things but the real secrets to this painting are the ones other's will 'read' into it and the view that they'll disclose. 


Feel free to share your secrets about the painting.

Update: Watch for the speed video of this painting coming soon.