Carpe You Some Diem!

I have a slight obsession with tortilla-making.  It’s really simple — all you need is Masa (special corn flour — not cornmeal), hot water, salt, and a hot surface to cook them on (I like to use a huge, cast-iron griddle, so I can make a lot at once.)  It is nice to have a tortilla press and a tortilla warmer, as well.  At my house, we have sort of an assembly line.  Jon rolls balls of dough, Olivia presses them on the tortilla press, and I cook them.  In about 15 minutes, we can whip up a whole batch of hot, delicious tortillas that are so much better and healthier than packaged tortillas you buy in the store.  The tortillas are great, but the time spent together in the kitchen is even better!

How crazy is it that Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year, and Mardi Gras fall on 3 consecutive days?

Tonight, I’m making king cakes to take to school in the morning.  This is a big Charleston Catholic tradition.  Every year on Mardi Gras, we have the traditional king cakes, each with a tiny plastic baby tucked inside.  At the end of the day, each class will have a cake, and they are always so tasty!  Traditionally, the person who finds the baby is supposed to host next year’s Mardi Gras party, but we just assume the kid will have a lucky year. 

Here is the recipe used by CCHS cake makers (makes 2 cakes):

1 16oz. container sour cream
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 tsp salt
2 (1/4 oz) envelopes active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 tbsp sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
6 to 6 1/2 cups bread flour
1/3 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
glaze
purple, green, and yellow sugar

Cook first 4 ingredients in medium saucepan over low heat, stirring ofrten, until butter melts.  Set aside, and cool mixture to 100*.

Stir yeast, 1/2 cup warm water, and 1 tbsp sugar, let stand 5 min

Beat sour cream mixture, yeast mixture, eggs, and 2 cups flour until smooth.  Reduce speed to low, and gradually add enough remaining flour until a soft dough forms. 

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, knead for about 10 min (until smooth and elastic.)  Place in a well-greased bowl, turning to grease the top, cover and let rise in a warm place for about an hour, or until doubled.

Punch down the dough, and divide into two halves.  Roll each portion out into a 22 X 12″ rectangle.  Spread 1/3 cup softened butter evenly on each rectangle, leaving about 1″ border.  Stir together 1/2 cup sugar and 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, and sprinkle evenly over each rectangle. 

Roll each rectangle like a jelly roll, starting on one long side, tucking the baby into the roll somewhere.  Place one dough roll, seam side down, on a lightly greased baking sheet.  Bring ends of roll together to form an oval ring, moistening and pinching the ends together to seal.  Repeat with second dough roll.

Cover and let rise in a warm place 20-30 minutes or until doubled.

Bake at 375 for 14-16 min, or until golden.  Slightly cool cakes on pans on wire racks (about 10 min.  Drizzle with glaze, then sprinkle with colored sugars, alternating colors to form bands.  Let cool completely.

Glaze:

3 cups powdered sugar
3 tbsp butter, melted
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
2-4 tablespoons milk

Stir together first 4 ingredients.  Stir in 2 tbsp milk, adding additional milk, 1 tsp at a time, until spreading consistency.

This is the year of the Tiger!  Rowr!

I am thinking of doing Chinese papercuts with my exploratory (middle school) students like this one I found on Craftzine.com’s blog.  Except, nowhere near this complicated. 

My students’ exhibit at the Clay Center is coming along nicely!  For those of you who missed my mention of this project in an an earlier post, the Clay Center has asked my students to curate an exhibit of artworks from their permanent collection.  We’ve come up with a theme:  “Wildly Wonderful and Wonderfully Wild,” and selected (for the most part) the art we’re going to include in the exhibit.  But that’s just half the job — now we have to figure out how to group the artworks, figure out how to hang the exhibit in the Clay Center gallery, write exhibit labels, and work on the show’s graphics and publicity.  While the Clay Center is doing all the grunt-work, they’ve put my students in the driver’s seat, and I am pretty sure this is the coolest thing to happen in Art Education since the invention of washable paint.

To keep the public updated on our progress, I’ve started a blog at http://cchsclaycenter.blogspot.com .  We only have a few posts so far, but that’s because the project was just getting started.  It will be updated at least weekly from now until our exhibit opens April 3rd.

See you at the Clay Center!

A few months ago, my principal called me into her office and excitedly presented me with a postcard announcing a West Virginia Humanities Council/ Davis & Elkins College teacher institute this summer.  This program allows teachers to travel to India to study ancient and modern culture, then come back and develop lessons to help students understand this diverse and fascinating culture.  I applied, of course, thinking that I didn’t have a ghost of a chance at actually being selected, but I got the acceptance letter yesterday.

I am so excited!  July 20-29, I will travel to India.  Our itenerary is jam-packed, but I can’t wait to see it all.  While I am very excited to visit some of the temples and sacred places, I am also just as excited to experience the culture firsthand.  We will even spend a day at an Indian high school, seeing how the students are taught, and what school is like for kids who are the same age as my students. 

I have always loved India.  I have a few dear friends from there, and through them, I have a vague, patched-together idea of what lies ahead of me in this program.  I look forward to having stories of my own (and photos!!!) to share with my own students and family about this place.  It will be so hard to be away from my own family for 9 days, but I can’t wait to see the country, firsthand!

“Elements & Principles of Art, Frida Kahlo, Hope, Change.”  Yep, that about covers it.

Maybe I need a teleprompter.

I know, I know… I don’t write… I don’t call…   It’s hard to blog when life keeps getting in the way. 

So, back to the trip to Pittsburgh.  Mom, Liv, and I decided to walk from the Warhol Museum to the Mattress Factory, and we came across this unusual house:

There are a few houses around this one painted in wild colors, with interesting murals and sculptural elements, but this one caught my attention.  I later learned that this is a project called “House Poem,” by an exiled writer from China, Huang Xiang.  He is one of the writers housed by City of Asylum, Pittsburgh, which is an organization that helps exiled writers from all over the world find safe places to live, write, and be published.  Huang Xiang has been writing since the 1950s, and has spent much of that time imprisoned for his work. 

Here is more info about “House Poem” and the Sampsonia Way project — a joint project between City of Asylum, Pittsburgh and The Mattress Factory:

It is so sad that a freedom we take for granted in the United States of America is a freedom that others are imprisoned, exiled, tortured, and even executed for.  City of Asylum, Pittsburgh has opened my eyes to this, and I’ve been working on hosting a reading from another writer from their program, Khet Mar, who is a writer from Burma.

I will be posting more about this in the future.  Stay tuned!

Over Christmas Break, I loaded my daughter and my Mom up in the car, set the GPS, and headed to Pittsburgh to see the Sheppard Fairey exhibit at the Warhol Museum — and, heck, just the Warhol, itself!  I had never been to the Warhol, but to have that exhibit showing AT the Warhol meant that I had to go.  It was amazing!  I am a huge fan of Fairey’s art (controversy notwithstanding), and was blown away at the layers and layers of collage underneath his printed images.  Everyone is familiar with his famous “Hope” poster that became the icon of Obama’s presidential campaign, but the actual work, itself, is so much more intricate than it seems in photos.

Of course, the Warhol is an amazing museum.  I saw all my favorite Warhol pieces in person, along with great pieces by Keith Haring and Basquiat, and many more artists.  Olivia loved the Silver Clouds the best:

After our trip to the Warhol, we decided to walk the 1.1 mile to the Mattress Factory, which is a “research and development center for artists.”  It’s a museum in which artists reside and create art, and the art tends to be more on the experimental side.  It’s definitely a neat museum, and I can’t wait to go back there!  I especially enjoyed “The Space Between” by Joseph Mannino:

On the stroll to the Mattress Factory, I discovered The House Poem, which I’ll write about in my next entry.

Today I am experimenting with light painting, which is just what it sounds like — painting with light (although not in a Thomas Kincaide sort of way.)  It’s a photography thing where you use a really slow shutter speed and a moving light source.  You can do some pretty cool things with it:

When we get back from Christmas break, my students will get to experiment with it, as well. We have a lot of fun things going on in the bleak winter months. Got to keep those creative spirits up when the sun is hiding!

I have the most fun job, ever.

I attended the first Charleston Women’s Vision Quest with Dr. Nicole Cutts yesterday.  To be honest, when I was first invited on Facebook, I sort of thought it would be yet another “girl power” thing, where women get together to discuss women’s issues and success, but really just end up giving each other a lot of platitudes and eventually start bitching about men.  But I liked what Dr. Cutts had to say about “Living Your Vision” in her blog, and after taking her Vision Quest Survey, I got the feeling that this is really about seeing your dreams through, which is something I’ve been struggling with.  REALLY struggling with.  Like, I’ve given up over and over.

So, what the heck is my vision, anyway?  I know I want to be an artist and a teacher and a wife and a mother.  But I think a vision goes far beyond that.  I can be a wife, mother, teacher, and artist, and not be living my vision.  Those roles are a huge part of reaching my vision for myself, though.  I probably could not reach my vision without them.  So, what is my purpose as an artist, a teacher, a wife, and a mother?  How do I affect others through those roles and what is the most I can achieve through them? 

It sounds deceptively simple to try to state this “vision”, but it’s really not, especially when sometimes those roles seem to compete for my limited resources most of the time.  And, I think fear plays a role in it as well.  Or even shame.  Like, who am I to think I am great enough to affect the world?  And what makes me think I have what it takes to do those things when I have a dirty fridge to clean and laundry piled up, and kids playing sports, and…???  It becomes very easy to lose track, and that’s what this Vision Quest is about.

So, the first step in the process is of course, stating your vision to the group.  “Hi, my name is Rebecca, and I am living my vision.  I am doing this by … “  This was really hard for me, because I do feel like I am pulled in so many directions.   But, it was inspirational hearing from other women who have such amazing visions for their lives, and who are maybe facing some of the same challenges that I have.   They are all such beautiful, diverse, and inspirational women, and I feel humbled just being part of this group.  As I started talking about my vision and the challenges that I have faced, I felt so completely understood, supported, even loved by the group.  I actually felt clearer in what I want to achieve in life, just having to put it into words for other people to hear, and hearing their words of encouragement.

So, really, we didn’t get much more done than a little sharing from the group, but I have high hopes for the future of this program.  I am looking forward to meeting again and moving toward our visions together.  I have no doubt that together we will all achieve greatness!