Thursday, September 8, 2011

365 Day 251

getting to know new friends...doing some new things

I had SUCH a great time tonight -- Leann Meixner invited me to join the Second Thursday group and I am so glad she did!

Second Thursday is a group of local (Plymouth/Northville-area) artists who get together to talk about art and what we're up to, etc...while working on a small project. Tonight the group was made up of Leann Meixner, Peggy Kerwan, Ellen Bennet, Joan Potter Thomas and me.

We met at Hermann's Olde Town Grille in Plymouth and Leann brought watercolors and brushes and pens and pencils and cut out circles of paper for us to make mandalas. She had some examples to show us and read a little bit about mandalas to us and we were off! I've never made a mandala before but I looked at this sort of like an Experimental Art Night. It was pretty dimly lit in the bar and it was a small challenge to see how our colors were turning out...but it was a blast! We were sitting below a large tv screen and every so often we'd get a brighter screen with a white or yellow background and we could suddenly see better...very cool.

The food and conversation were great and eventually we moved down the block to Liberty Street Brewing Company where Leann and Joan currently are showing some of their work. We went upstairs to the gallery area and looked at the art and sat and talked and talked and talked. It was really great. I had such a wonderful time!



Leann explained that some of the basic components of a mandala include a circle, a center point, four gates and symmetry.

I wasn't sure what to make, but Earth, Air, Fire and Water came to mind right away.

I tried to make really simple representations of each element and I also wanted to make a repeating pattern.






I really enjoyed this...I think I will try making other mandalas at some point.

Also for today -- this morning from 3:40 - 5:50 a.m. I made another one of the balls-and-tomato- cages guys. My sister had some tomato cages left over from this year's unsuccessful attempt to grow tomatoes...the deer kept coming and eating the tomatoes just as they were almost ripe. AND these cages are the correct size that I needed -- yay!




I am still not sure what I will end up doing with these guys -- all I know is that I need to make six of them. This is number four.






LOL -- they are starting to accumulate in my CD closet.

2 comments:

Woodie said...

I took a mandala class back in the spring, it was enjoyable process. Your art group sounds great. SEED tried unsuccessfully to start something like that awhile back, but it kinda fell into the politics of life. MaybeI'll try to start something up again, soon. I think you need the right positive people to keep it going.

Leann said...

I love this group of folks, and I knew you'd like them too. Thanks for coming, it's always fun.

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