Category: Learning Lifestyle

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Inspiration and Play: #30DaysOfArtChallenge 

While hosting our weekly Lego Unschool Group, the kids needed little direction, so I opened a book on logo design with the idea of playing with three-dimensional branding.

These squids caught my attention, but I wanted more than a collection of creatures.

Three elements came together, almost on their own, and this alien eye cried out for a body and a story.

The eye became a curious and confused scientist. It was observing a world with which it could hardly interact.

Somewhat cruelly, I constructed a scene and story where none of the elements seem to belong. It is an alien world inhabited by beings that do not fit.

The Scientist seems to be asking me for arms or tentacles. I thought about an additional critter or droid to assist.

Something tells me this isn’t the Scientist’s laboratory, but the workplace of another unusual creature.

Perhaps this story requires further exploration.

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By Her Hand: #30DaysOfArtChallenge

Kristen Steele will give me my first tattoo.

That’s a sentence I never thought I would type. I was anti-tattoo for a long time. I’ve always had changing attitudes and interests, I didn’t want to be marked with something permanent.

Then I learned that nothing is permanent.

Even tattoos change. Their meaning can change. Their color and shape changes. They grow with you.

This tattoo will mark a new chapter in my life. After five years managing my household alone, Kristen will be joining me to expand our lives in innumerable ways. This one work of art will symbolize the many creations we are to bring into being.

That’s a lot to fit into one design. Focusing on beauty and art this month is part of that journey.

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Conversations on Art

The next chapter of my life approaches.

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Art will be central for the first time since poetry consumed more of my mind than any college essay could.

I’ll be cohabitating, working, and creating with another adult in deeper ways than I accomplished in ten years of marriage.

As shocking and new and devastating and dangerous as widowhood was (and is), it wasn’t a choice. This next chapter is filled with purpose and I am authoring it willingly, yet it is still unnerving.

Art is unsettling. Beautiful creations put into relief the ugliness of the world. There is peril and risk as art at once reveals and creates mysteries. It is not a casual endeavor.

The conversations below fell into my day to remind me the responsibility that comes with making art.

The first is about Mary, mother of Christ, and her symbolic meaning as portrayed in two-thousand years of art.

The second pertains to the contemporary state of art. It has me considering the Why of this next chapter. It is in my heart, but I’m piecing together the words.

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Inappropriate Unschool Shakespeare Movie Night

Screens have been heavily limited as of late. Guitar lessons, park day, Lego club, improv class, reading, and church activities have filled our days.

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I missed our movie nights, so tonight we watched Scotland, PA, a retelling of Macbeth in 1970s Pennsylvania. It’s no more inappropriate than the source material and less grotesque than many stage versions.

It was exciting to witness my sons’ familiarity with the story. They were racing to identify characters and predict who would die next.

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Late to Lent

It’s a strange time in my spiritual journey. God has never sent me so many signs that I’m heading in the proper direction, yet the tolls of this adventure are significant.

I pray every day, but there is a midway pause in the Exodus seminar I’m listening to and I’ve been remiss in replacing it with a daily study.

I’m testing out the Hallow app Lenten challenge with my sons. I’m unsure if it’s a good fit for us, but no other human resources are speaking strongly to me right now.