smol update from the coast 07.20.2024

I've been in Ketchikan for almost a month now. Next week is the last week of ArtsCool, a 4 week summer arts camp I've been teaching "art" class at. The camp has been largely centered around the production of a musical for many years now, with any visual art time being focused around creating the set or costumes or props for the show. This year it's a little different. A little more like it was when I was a kid, with classes not all necessarily building toward the same goal. There are classes on dance and acting and stage makeup and clowning. I've been teaching a class on how to make paper and paint out of foraged and found things. I couldn't tell you which way is better, but the flexibility to offer such diverse classes seems at the very least to be a good thing.

It's been going very well. The kids are chaotic and loud and generally just great. We've made pigments out of avocado peels, dandelions, fireweed, orange hawkweed, daisies, pinecones, turmeric, and eyeshadow. We've made paint out of honey and vegetable glycerin and gum arabic and walnut oil and fish eggs. We made our own deckles out of picture frames and window screen so that we could make paper. This last week they are finally going to get to paint on the paper they made, with the paint they made. I hope it's been good for them. I've learned a lot about teaching, and about making paint.

I took a trip out to Vallenar Bay last week and harvested some natural clay. It's still settling in its slip in a bucket in the garage. Maybe today I'll pour some of that water off and filter it through a pillowcase. It's been a full trip of artmaking and nature and community. The show the kids are doing, Finding Nemo (kid version), is opening this Friday, and we'll have a little gallery show of the paintings they made.

There have been many many late nights with a full house eating good food and drinking wine, hosting last-nights-in-town and meetings-that-evolve-into-parties in the garden. The past two weekends we were all working on the local melodrama, The Fish Pirate's Daughter. I played one of the drunks, my brother and his girlfriend played the young lovers, and our mother played the piano. And the narrator. And the director. And the producer. This has been the first Friday and Saturday I've had free since I've been on the island, and it's been sweet. I ran into an old friend wandering down to a cafe to see some old friends. I just finished this hat today.

I hope you're having an artful summer~

amelia