Life gets busy, especially when you own your own business and have a small child. Making time for art can be a struggle, but it helps to have a collaborator! I am glad I know Mary England, my artist/blogger friend who is always working on new, collaborative, creative work, so I can make art by way of collaboration.

Recently Mary organized a Puzzle Art Project, inviting 36 different artists from around the world to make art on their assigned blank puzzle piece. We all created something special on our puzzle pieces and returned them to Mary, who assembled the puzzle and affixed it to an abandoned building in Baltimore to bring a little beauty and joy to the area.

Here is the puzzle piece I submitted:

I used this puzzle project to finally experiment with some dried flowers I had and decoupage, a technique I had never really tried before. I had been saving some dead flowers for a while but didn't know what kind of project I should use them for. Luckily the puzzle piece afforded me a manageable blank canvas to attempt something new.

Here is a picture of the assembled puzzle and the work installed at the space:

Pretty awesome! The other artists and I all felt very good about working together and making such a successful piece. All the credit goes to Mary for coming up with the idea and getting us together on this. 

For more information on the project and to order a puzzle of our puzzle (so cool), check out Mary's blog directly: http://uncustomary.org/puzzle-art-project/.

Somehow this summer I've found myself collaborating with artist friends in more than one group projects with an environmental theme. I have always considered myself a bit of an environmentalist and included nature in my abstract works, but this year it's been nice to work with others to make some statements about man's relationship with nature.

First, I came across a fun opportunity to do a performance art piece in a pool for DC's SynchroSwim event. We had a blast making costumes and putting on a show! See my SynchroSwim webpage and my friend Mary's blog post for more.

Then, last Friday I went to my friend Michael's house to work on some puppets of dead sea animals. He went to Ocean City this Labor Day weekend with the puppets to raise awareness about Obama's approval to use sonic cannons in the Atlantic coast, a practice that uses extreme sound to search for oil that can kill, deafen, or otherwise impair animals, particularly dolphins and whales that rely on sound for survival and communication. I was unfamiliar with the issue but reading about it definitely raised my concerns.

I'm hoping Michael will have some pictures from his time at Ocean City with the finished puppets, but here are some pictures from when we were working on them:

Being a part of this project reminded me that art doesn't have to a solitary, complex, or exclusive endeavor. Team up with your friends and find your own audience!

Father's Day came and went, and it was beautiful outside! 

To my pleasant surprise, a father and friend of mine decided to get outside for Father's Day and visit Gwynns Falls Trail. He and his family checked out my piece #TakeASketchLeaveASketch, and his daughter sketched a little something to leave in the box.

Though I haven't made many interactive works in the past, it makes me very happy that people are actually interacting with this piece. From what I've observed, usually kids are the ones who leave a sketch.

One of the best things in life to me is to share my art with others. And #TakeASketchLeaveASketch is about giving others the opportunity to share their art as well. I'm glad kids are compelled to sketch something and share it, but I hope more adults will jump on board too! You are never too old to let your creativity out.

When was the last time you shared your art with others?

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.

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!