Happy New Year! It has been a little while, but I was enjoying the holidays and doing a little traveling (more on that in my next post). For now, I thought  I would talk about one interesting thing I did this week: attending a “Healing Arts” workshop for Red Cross staff and volunteers. I have volunteered to start offering art classes through a collaboration between the Red Cross and the  Wounded Warrior Project. I am very excited (and a little nervous) to share my passion for art and creating.

The project for the workshop was to decorate a mask, plain and simple. There are a lot of ideas for art teachers and volunteers on the web, but I thought this was one of the simpler and more straightforward ideas. All you need are the masks, some paint, glue, scissors, and some decorative paper for collage. I suppose you could have all kinds of things available – feathers, beads, old magazines, even recyclable materials if you wanted to be really creative.

What amazed me is that, without much instruction, everyone in the room – whether they were artistically inclined or not – hit the ground running and created something totally unique after just an hour of work. Of course, being the perfectionist that I am, I went home and embellished mine a little more and even painted the inside.

Here are some pictures:

Stay tuned for more on my current work. I’m learning on how to do engraving and I hope to have a series of engraved prints in my Etsy shop by spring.

Also, head back here soon for an exhibition review of David Hockney: A Bigger Picture at the Ludwig Museum in Köln.