A Goodbye Post with Flowers and Skulls

"Mom, life is like a roller coaster."
"Oh, yeah? What do you mean?"
"You never know what's coming around each corner. Sometimes it's crazy fun. Sometimes it's scary. The highs and lows."

You got it, Ruby! Life is like a roller coaster. A few days ago, a career opportunity knocked on my door. I wasn't looking. Why would I be looking? I had just spent the last year teaching art in Oz. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to introduce art to young children ages 4 - 11 in a school environment where art was appreciated and valued by the families. It really was magical. I learned how much I LOVE teaching art and how absolutely critical art is for a twenty-first century child. I hope to explore this more and express with you my findings in future blogs. I hope you stick around.

For the reasons of retirement, benefits, all the dry but important realities of growing up; and a lingering desire to teach high schoolers art, I accepted the position. Packing up was tearful and exciting. The tears prompted by the random passer-by popping into my classroom and reminding me just how wonderful the year has been. Tears came from the lovely texts and emails from parents. Tears came from the thoughtful Turkish cup and saucer left with a note on my desk from a student. Tears came from administration trying to find solutions to hold onto me as their art teacher. That meant a lot.

The NvArtworks blog and Facebook page will still be up and running but from a high school perspective. Students may even be contributing to the writing of posts. I hope you stick around.

For our last elementary blog, I want to end our run with our last project. Our Georgia O'Keeffe Flowers and Skulls project seems metaphorically fitting today.

Enjoy the work of your beautiful, young, creative artists.

All the above works were created by students in 2nd through 4th grades using watercolors, oil pastels, or a combination of both. A big thanks to the Kline and Yezeka (sorry if I have misspelled. I do not have access to the student rosters any more) families for taking our project to another level by sharing with us your knowledge of and collections of antlers, horns, and skulls. Thank you, Nevada State Wildlife Department for allowing us to borrow your collection of tracks and skull casts.

A bear, bobcat, mountain lion, and antelope skulls. We also had beaver, raccoon, and mink from which to gather inspiration.

I have a feeling they are going to remember what they learned from this last project for very long time. ART WORKS!

Almost ready to let go of the safety bar and release my hands into the air on this roller coaster ride.