110 degrees magazine - Index

110 degrees magazine - 110° Magazine - July 2007 - Through the gates of Hell - Index

Art is in my blood, perhaps, since I am an artist and
the daughter of an artist. My aunt was a potter; my
grandmother both an artist and a teacher, so in my art
and in my teaching of art I’m following in their steps.
Whatever its sources are, my art is born of passion
and I’m driven to draw representations of the world
around me. I work in many artistic media but prefer
chalk painting.
My pictures include a lot of local scenery and I love
to do on-location (plein air) art. It is much more
effective to paint a scene as you see it than to paint
the thing from a photograph because the human
eye can see many more details — especially shades
of color — than can be caught by any camera.
My personal world is full of color to a
remarkable extent. My eye catches more
colors than most people can see. Where some
people see a red surface, I can see layers of
oranges and browns swooshing through it.
The world comes to me so varied in hue and
with such layers of color that I thought
something was wrong with my eyes. I
actually asked an ophthalmologist what
was wrong with me.
My pictures begin with an effort to
capture what’s out there. But then I
add a quality of sparkle or poetry to
the literal image. Words are inadequate
to describe the process. After
drawing the bones I go back and
dance on the canvas.
I often feel that I’m documenting
our East County area and creating
images of these places as we now
see them so that years from now
people might be able to look at
one of my pictures and understand
what the world of our
time was like.
Perhaps I really am creating
art for the ages. Any picture I
create will not, itself, endure
for centuries, of course, but
now talented people are
doing giclée renditions of
my work. Giclée is the
process of making a fine
art print from a digital
source using ink-jet
printing. The result is a
far more faithful repro-
duction of the original than was possible before the
current age of digital technology, which, as far as
giclée is concerned, began about a decade ago.
The conversion of any piece of my art into digital-based
medium offers the possibility that the
piece will endure because the reproduction is based
upon an electronic file stored on a computer or
server somewhere.
Colors fade and physical materials decay but, unless
deleted, the bits and bytes comprising that picture
file will remain unchanged. If the file makes it onto
the Internet, the piece of art could ultimately be
stored in multiple archives and will endure until the
end of our technological society.
TEACHING CHILDREN ART
For the past two decades I’ve been an art teacher in
the Brentwood School System. In my opinion, art
teaching is best left to artists. Mary Jane Barnes, a
poet who used to teach in the district, once told me
“If you aren’t practicing your craft, you aren’t really an
artist.” So doing my own art gives me basis for
authentically teaching art to others.
My classes include kindergarten through the fifth
grade. Occasionally I’ll teach Adult Ed classes. My art
classes are gleeful experiences. In my first class I tell
the kids, “I’m Mrs. Padama and I’m here to get you
dirty.” Sometimes I’ll begin by showing students how
to get dirty by drawing a line with a pencil and then
smudging it with their fingertips.
Something about the creative process invites disorder.
I’ve learned that adult art students spill stuff all
over themselves in the same proportion as kindergartners.
I love to see the messes!
Younger children learn by imitation. You can’t just
tell them, you do it for them; you show it to them. I
prepare examples for every class. Each of my visual
aids requires at least 15 hours preparation time.
I tailor projects to suit individual classes and situations.
Following a public shooting, for example,
some children became anxious about the approaching
Halloween. We needed to have a happy
Halloween theme so I created as an example an
enchanted scene that included a tree, a woman in
the moon, and a kitty.
Art can often surprise the artist. I don’t know why
I put a lady in the moon, but I know that she belonged
there. I saw two young boys looking intently at the
tree. “You know there’s a tree fort in that tree,” one of
them said. It was just great! After I displayed the scene
in a show at an Antioch gallery, I had to wipe kisses
July 2007 www.110mag.com 77