Last week was the slightly rainy opening of Nature Art in the Park. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I am pretty new to creating nature art (art made from natural materials) and public art (art displayed in a public place). I should also say I have never made an interactive piece before, but came up with the idea to build a nature inspired interactive mailbox. I built the box from found branches and bark, filled it with handmade recycled paper, left instructions for visitors take a sketch and leave a sketch, and encouraged them to tweet their sketches using the hashtag #TakeASketchLeaveASketch. I planned to upload all the Twitter photos to a page on my website over the course of the Nature Art in the Park exhibition. After much hard work, I completed the piece, installed it, and hoped for the best.

Because of the weather, not that many people visited my piece at the opening, but I did meet one person who sketched the following and put it into the mailbox. I was happy that the project was underway.

The weather continued to be quite rainy throughout the week, and there hadn't been any tweets after the first sketch, so I decided to check on my piece yesterday. I was surprised at what I found:

There was a bird's nest inside! To be fair, I modeled this piece after different birdhouses I looked at, but I didn't think a bird would take it so seriously. I called the organizer of Nature Art in the Park, and she suggested I rename this piece, put a "do not disturb" sign next to it, and make a new, more secure box to carry out my original idea. That sounded good to me, because if I took the bird's nest out, I am pretty sure another one would come around and use it later.

So, for now, #TakeASketchLeaveASketch has been temporarily derailed, but hopefully in a week or two I will have the second version finished and ready for action. If you would like to see (but not touch) this original #TakeASketchLeaveASketch art piece, find it on Trail D at Leakin Park.

Also, let me know if you would like me to make you a birdhouse.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been learning about public art recently and created some small art pieces at an artbomb party this month. We partiers decided that we would find sites on our own for the majority of our art.

Last weekend when the weather was nice, my husband took me to a disc golf course nearby our house. I decided I'd bring my art trinkets along for a nice art drop. Here is where my pieces landed:

I can be pretty sure these art pieces were found--this recreation area is a pretty busy place, and I was putting a lot of the art on the actual disc golf grounds. Unfortunately, I was not able to stick around and spy on the lucky finders of my creations. So far I can only hope and imagine that they were pleasantly puzzled and a little happy to find something handmade by a stranger.

Well, I was supposed to work on some outdoor art today, but it has been raining lately and I can't start my project using wet wood. Hopefully things will be better tomorrow. If not, I'll really have to work it during the week to finish my piece for Nature Art in the Park!

Anyway, I decided to browse the web today for other examples of nature art. I definitely found some things I like.

As long as I have some nice weather and a little time, I will have a nature masterpiece done this week. Stay tuned, and plan to stop by Leakin Park on May 19 to see my work!

Last night I had the pleasure of making my first public art pieces with some new friends. Even though I am an artist and consider myself fairly aware of art and art history, I realized that I could definitely stand to learn more about public art.

According to wikipedia, "the term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all." Wikipedia mostly pointed to large, imposing works to illustrate examples of public art. Baltimore's own "Man/Woman" statue came to mind.

I decided to look up other examples of public art, and found many other examples, some claiming to be the "most bizarre", the "most controversial", and "the best". After looking at all this, I was feeling a little unsure about what kind of public art I could make.

At the artbomb party, we had a table full of paper scraps, glue, markers, brads, paper clips, envelopes, and all kinds of found objects and tools. Mary has done a lot of public art, and explained that public art can really just be something you make for others to find. Whether you're yarnbombing or hanging up posters on the street, you are giving your gift of art to anyone who just happens to see it.  A public art project could be something people see and smile about, something that makes people think, or something that people can take with them, add to, or share with others. The possibilities are endless, as they say.

As a group, we decided we'd work on separate little projects and install the majority of our pieces on our own in locations we choose. I still need to choose locations for my pieces, but have a feeling they will be hanging off tree branches or hidden inside library books.

Here are some pictures of what we made:

Thanks again to Mary for opening my eyes to the world of public art, and also to Sailor for hosting the party!

Well, this was not my year for the Baker Artist Awards or the Sondheim Prize, but congratulations to the well-deserving winners!

The Baker Artist Awards winners were announced a couple of days ago. Congratulations to Jonathan Latiano, whose work I particularly love, Dariusz Skoraczewski, and Lynne Parks.

The Sondheim Prize finalists were also announced recently and include Gabriela Bulisova, Larry Cook, Caitlin Cunningham, Nate Larson, Louie Palu, and Dan Steinhilber.

Congratulations to all recipients once again!

This year has so far been filled with unexpected opportunities for me to stretch my creativity, all due to a little bit of meeting people and a little bit of marketing. Earlier this year, thanks to Rob who I met at Connections Friday, I was asked to join the Baltimore Chapter of the American Marketing Association as the VP of Communications. Last month, thanks to Mesh Baltimore, I got to share how to make Serbian Easter eggs. Soon, thanks to Nature Art in the Park, I will be creating a special outdoor piece at Leakin Park this month. And this weekend, thanks to public artist Mary, I will be meeting some new people and collaborating on a project. It just goes to show you, Baltimore really is a great place to live and work. You just have to put yourself out there.

I'm particularly excited to have some creative time with Mary this weekend. We met at the Fun-A-Day reception, and I later introduced her to a knitter I know, Shanna. They ended up collaborating on a group public art piece, seen here. Great job ladies!