Something's coming...

One time, my good friend Aron Noll and I were talking about life in general, and he said something about his then-current station in life that I will always remember. He said that at that moment, he felt like a big kettle of water that was being swished around and around in a circle, until the wave of water began to rise higher and higher around the lip, just ready to spill out.

Nicole is taking an art appreciation course this semester at Missouri Southern, and it’s different from most in that the students are actually required to create different forms of art in addition to learning history, so as to, you know, appreciate art. There was some procrastination as far as getting the projects and assignments done on time, and I helped her out last night to finish everything she needed to do. (And today, our bodies are reminding us how late we stayed up!) And it was quite fun, despite my sleepiness. Her big project was to construct a model of a chair, and while walking around the craft store looking for inspiration, she decided that she’d actually make one out of the letters C-H-A-I-R. To fit the wooden letters together, it required some chiseling and carving, which she enjoyed immensely (see her current blog description). I’m sure that she’ll be posting photos of the finished project on Flickr soon. She’s hooked on wood carving!

Her class also required her to visit an art museum or gallery, and write a report on two pieces of art. Two (or was it three) weekends ago, we drove over to Springfield and went to both the Springfield Art Museum and Keyes Gallery. At Keyes, we saw some splendid, bold, colorful paintings by Hugh Yorty that just took us both captive.

Also this semester, Nicole enrolled in a nighttime drawing class through the Carthage Technical Center, and she learned quite a lot about how to draw forms, and different media that’s available to work with. Even her very beginning drawings were very good, and there was strong evidence of natural artistic talent. She liked what she made, and so did I. My baby’s an artist!

On New Year’s Eve last year, I impulsively decided to begin a project where I would do something creative every day of 2008. I naturally settled on comics, since I have somewhat of a history creating comic strips, but that has expanded into Movie Grabs, which, although it doesn’t take a lot of effort or skill or time to make, is still creative enough to qualify. I’m woefully behind due to many different factors (moving to a new home being the biggest), and I hope to catch up to the present eventually, but I’m still in the creative vein. And I have to give huge thanks to Samuel John Klein, who has been so supportive of me since January first, and for also discovering the works of Scott Teplin, whose 3-D rooms and alphabet buildings I am completely geeked on. Thanks Sam and Scott!!!

So now, it appears, Nicole and I are on the cusp of something much larger than anything we’ve done so far. There’s been an infestation of art bugs around here lately, and both my bride and I have been bitten hard several times. We both have some new, big ideas to discuss over lunch break today, and I can’t wait. It appears that our kettle is about to spill its water.

Stay tuned.