The Picture Mill

These three puzzle pictures were done for the Arts and Science Council fundraiser. They gave me three blank puzzles with that cardboard glossy surface that puzzles have. It was a challenging paper to make watercolors on, but I made it work.

The images came from some wall shots I took but never made into final pieces. They were fun to do, and they came out rather nice I thought.

A newer wall, this one a bit smaller. Unfortunately I didn’t think to shoot this one until after I had framed it, so if you look closely you can see my reflected self-portrait-with-camera.

I noted before that I’ve been very busy with lots of side-projects lately. One of these projects was coordinating a mural for Albemarle Middle School. As part of a larger project to expose middle school kids to a variety of career options, I was given a group of about 10 students (the actual number varied over time) to produce a mural at the school over a 10 week period. I would meet with them once a week, and Mr. Ryan Howell at the school would work with them through the week to get the project done. Like the previous mural then, this was a sort of collaborative effort. The mural was finished Tuesday, and the unveiling was last night during a cap-off event for all of the career projects.

The theme was diversity and citizenship. After working with the kids on visual metaphors that support this theme, I took these elements and arranged them into a final composition. The kids then painted away. Like any long-term project, there were fits and starts (like losing four of my better painters to basketball practice). But it came together, was well received, and the kids dressed in their Sunday best seemed very proud of their efforts and posed in front of the mural like celebrities as the crowd took snapshots.