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My Time as “Artist in Residence” at the Denver Children’s Museum, Fall 2017

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Today is my last official Open Studio as the artist in residence at the Children’s Museum in Denver! (If you are in the area, please come say hello!)

The three months have flown by! I still have some finishing touches to do on my leave behind art piece and get to finish off my stay at the museum with a party on the 25th of October. But, I wanted to write this post and share a few of my favorite moments from the past three months with you and also invite you to the closing reception. Getting to be part of the magic that the Children’s Museum staff creates on a daily basis was such a gift and getting to play alongside kids and families and create art together was a dream. I’m still pinching myself that I got the job. Enjoy flipping through these photos!

I’ll see you Wednesday, October 25th at 6 PM! Here’s the info for the event.

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A giant color collage we made on my first open studio day.

Making mountains out of words –

Painting eclipses the day before the great American eclipse with visitors from around the world getting ready to head to Wyoming.

Museum goers’ tiny contributions to my leave behind piece

Painting stars –

Here is a nice little write up they did about me –

Creating a blue zoo –

Working on my “leave behind art” piece

   

A particularly adorable visitor testing out my stage for me

A little corner of the studio –

Planning for my family workshop where we made little table top paper theaters

One of the kid’s finished theaters

A workshop with Kindergarteners making shadow puppet monsters inspired by “In the Hall of the Mountain King”

And more work on the leave behind piece…

Documenting Our Creative Process – A Photo Series

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This post is part of an ongoing series we post every couple of weeks, sharing our journey as working artists. Sometimes it is good to take the veil off of the creative process and showcase how we get from A to Z. See some of the other posts here.

So many little aspiring musicians around here.

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This creative mixer/master, the elusive Dave Wilton of Saint Ida’s studio, has been working his magic on our new “Becoming” album. I am almost giddy I am so excited about it.

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Tim has been experimenting downstairs with a new creative venture. Notes, harmonies, layering….sound and smell aren’t that far apart.

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We have been enjoying lots of Chalk art, especially in anticipation of one of our favorite Greeley, CO events, the Greeley Chalk a Lot on Sept. 12th.
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While momma has been painting away on her own projects, Lucy hatched out this fluttery, neon butterfly.
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I have slowly but surely been closeted away working on this new series of ours (“Becoming” will be an album AND art series). I truly can’t wait to share it with you all.
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I love my little studio view of the Treehouse Village. This window also becomes a temporary landing page for collage pieces I haven’t yet incorporated but that are providing inspiration.  IMG_6387

 

August Ideas and Activities Around the Theme “Newspaper”

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For this entire year I’ve been doing an at home curriculum with the family (Lucy 6, Hattie 3, Beatrice 10 months). Tim and I call the project “Abacus” and we’re sharing it each month for the fun, challenge, and community of it. Each month we choose a theme and then come up with a bunch of activities around that theme.
Read all about how to use this list and our heart behind this project here.
Explore past months themes here.

This one is going to be a little different. When I threw out the idea of “Newspaper” as a theme, my sister said “What?” But I love it because it has a lot of creative directions you can go.

Below is our comprehensive NEWSPAPER activities list. Choose a couple to do with your kids to enrich the month or try to accomplish the whole list! What would you add? I would love to hear your ideas and plans for the month.

Unless you count S’mores day (August 10th), there are no major holidays in August, which is actually kind of lovely. It makes August a month that isn’t defined by its holidays. It can be what you make it.

August Dates to Take Note of:

August 10th –S’mores day
August 2 – Sister Day
August 7 – National Lighthouse Day
August 12 – Vinyl Record Day (I love any excuse to get out our record player)

Local Greeley, CO events:

August 4-8 – High Plains Chautauqua – if you are in greeley and haven’t experienced this, it is a must
August 4 – Family Bike Ride
August 7 – Neighborhood Nights – Paddington Bear
Aug 14 – Neighborhood Nights -Big
August 22 – Agriculture Fest and Feast

List of Ideas and Inspiration for NEWSPAPER:

Each section of a newspaper lends itself well to all kids of activities. Try to do something for each category.

Sports
Life
News
Weather
Editorials
Food
Entertainment

We are going to make our own newspaper – interviews, comics, stories, page layout, etc. – hopefully we will print a few and actually send it out to grandmas and friends.

I love this because it has lots of important elements –

Writing Stories – Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
Interviews
Typing
Graphic Design
Photography
Documenting
Taking Notes

I am not sure how exactly this will play out, but I am excited to give it space and just experiment with the idea and see where it takes us.

Maybe we will print some of it on our very own Printing Press

 

COMICS:

Do you remember reading the “Funny Pages” as kids? All sorts of great comic strips to dig in to.
Calvin and Hobbes
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Peanuts
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Garfield
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Far Side
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And, if we are looking at comics, we should definitely try our hand and writing and illustrating our own comic strips.
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I also want to be sure to find some Sunday paper comics to enjoy.
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EXPLORE:
Take a tour of our the local paper
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Take a look at old newspapers and how they are a little snapshot of history – like this cool one we found in our crawl space when we moved into our current house.
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ART:

Make a fort out of rolled newspaper
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Make newspaper beads
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Weave newspaper baskets
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Make paper boats and hats
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Make something with paper mache  (there are some great fun animal tutorials where you start with a balloon)

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Make some Newspaper fashion! (Their is a fabulous Project Runway unconventional episode where they have to use newspapers to make clothes)
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READ:

The Greeley Tribune
The New York Times
USA Today

The Onion (grown ups)

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs
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Black and White by David Macaulay
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WATCH:

Newsies
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It Happened One Night
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PLAY:

Crosswords

Anybody remember The Mini Page?
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Have fun reporting!

Documenting our Creative Process – A Photo Series

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—This post is part of an ongoing series we post every couple of weeks, sharing our journey as working artists. Sometimes it is good to take the veil off of the creative process and showcase how we get from A to Z. See some of the other posts here.—

A week ago, Tim had the opportunity to play at our downtown’s Friday Fest. He wrote a song called “My Unexpected Home” that was showcased as part of the kick off of our city’s “Greeley Unexpected” campaignIMG_4957

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He has also been busy tracking away with all sorts of amazing musicians on the new “Becoming” album – which is already sounding FABULOUS.
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Lucy has been perfecting the art of self portraiture

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I have been working on some of the smaller pieces for our Becoming series –

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The girls and I have been drawing on a bunch of sketches for a calendar we are designing! Hopefully to be released next month.

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I finished up this logo project for my Mom’s button business.


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And finally, I cleared out my studio of all my old series art pieces and have had a “Summer Clearing” show up at the Blue Mug at Margie’s coffee shop this month.

Betony Coons from www.giantsandpilgrims.com Summer Clearing art show

Documenting the Creative Process Series

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Continuing work on our new series titled –  “Becoming” – current release date for the album and artwork is this fall.

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Making sure to get this little girl started early.

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It helps when you have an awesome dad to listen to and watch.

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A lovely tea time sketching out ideas with my mom for a new header for her antique button business called House of Button.

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Tim has been doing all sorts of recording and tracking – both in my very messy studio and at the UNC recording studio. Having AMAZING musician friends is pretty great. Thanks, Melanie Haskins!
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Thanks to my amazing parents and husband, my library mural is finally fixed (there was a problem with some cloudiness in the anti-graffiti coating) – You can see the difference in the black below between the finished redone black and the cloudy. It took LOTS of scrubbing and sanding, but it looks so bright and happy now. Just how I intended it.

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Getting it done called for me to actually remember to sign it this time.
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And, I am working on a second draft of a new book project. The first version incorporated a lot of cool collage elements, but the publisher we are working with nixed the idea. Still going to be pretty wonderful though.
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Documenting the Creative Process: a Weekly Photo Series

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Here are some bits and pieces from our creative process this last week:

I finished up a sweet poster design for the band the Burroughs.  They are doing a LIVE recording at the Moxi theater on May 8th & 9th. We were going for an old school Art Deco feel of a downtown greeley street. My artwork will also be used as their album cover and a T-shirt (and tank-top!).
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tshirt mock up

 

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Tim and Charla Bultman are working on the beginnings of a stellar new project, details still to be announced. But as the person who gets to hear all the songs in their infancy stage, its going to be incredible.

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Harriet (and Lucy) have been creating and coloring all kinds of chalk murals on our driveway. Thank you sunshine.

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I also finished up this Alaska painting for a wonderful couple in town. They spend half their year in Alaska near this really cool mine. Lots of fun symbolism in the various imagery – including the newspaper which is an Alaska paper from the 40’s we found in the crawl space of our house when we moved in

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Whipped up some quick series artwork for Atlas Churchs spring series “Changed”

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Figuring out how many animals I can cut out of a piece of plywood 🙂 Project still TBA….
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Documenting the Creative Process: a Weekly Photo Series

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Here are some of our projects we have been working on and some snippets of our artistic process from the last couple weeks.

I submitted a design for the city of Greeley Manhole cover design contest

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Tim has been continuing recording on our new album “Becoming” and working on another still to be titled album. One song uses this sweet antique musical organ toy.

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I’m in the middle of this commission depicting a mine in Alaska. Still has a long ways to go 🙂

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I made a whole series of little sunprint bags for John Galt’s Boutique

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And finally, I have been working on an Art Deco poster and CD cover for the new Burroughs live album!

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Documenting the Creative Process: a Weekly Photo Series

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We are excited to start a new series of posts on this site dealing with our creative process. These will mostly be pictures of tidbits; the art we are creating in our family. I love seeing other people’s process in their work, so we’re sharing this, a few times a month, here this season!

This will also be our way of taking a bird’s eye view of the fields we’re involved in… It’s easy to feel scattered and lose sight of the what’s being made in all the messes. We’ll be able to post these pictures and say, “Hey, we ARE doing stuff! The process is slow, but good!” I’m sure MANY of you relate.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

Laying out all the pieces of a new series and seeing how pieces work together.IMG_2347
Planning and dreaming about what is going to go in this space at our local library.IMG_2366

Drawing portraits of their baby sister.

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Still to be revealed, but spending lots of time on my newest children’s book project!

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Giants & Pilgrims’ New Project: “Becoming”

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(Above: a piece in process from Betony titled “On Becoming an Artist”)

I’ve been surprised by something recently- I’ve been surprised that I am still growing.

Now, in all physical ways I’ve actually stopped growing. In fact, my body has peaked and I am really in the process of dying. I am no longer a youth heading to adulthood.

But you understand what I mean. I’m still growing: as a human being. I feel like I’m in this deep process of “becoming” the person I’m longing to be. Is it strange to be surprised by that?

I had the understanding, since I was young, that one day I would grow up. That I would be a wise (and, of course, boring) adult. That was the arrival point- to become a static human with a family and a job and a spouse, contributing to the civilized world.

Here’s where I’m surprised, and delightfully so. None of us are static. We are SO dynamic. In my family, in my wisdom, in my work, in my soul, I am still growing and reaching and enriching and stretching.. and becoming. We are always growing IN to these things, not UP to a stopping place. I find such comfort in that: there is no arrival point for the soul. Even in the deepest heavens we will always be reaching “further up and further in”, as C.S. Lewis writes when closing his Narnia series.

This view of a dynamic soul has only been compounded since being surrounded by my children. I’m captivated watching them come into personhood in such powerful ways. Not just everyday- Every moment. They are fountains and explosions of rapidly growing soul. I believe this is one of the greatest parts of parenthood. It’s a rebirth of wonder from the place of joyous spectator.

So it is from this “surprise and delight” over continued growth where Betony and my new Giants & Pilgrims project starts.

I have the beginning of an album and she has the start of a painting series. We are, together, sharing our discoveries of “becoming”. Currently I’m capturing the first recordings of songs in the basement. The lyrics and acoustic-driven arrangements are saturated with children’s toy instruments. Betony has been organizing bits and pieces of collage elements (hundreds of bits and pieces!) and has started the process of creating with them.

We’re excited to share this project with you all soon. Be looking towards the fall of this year, but that’s a loose date. We just wanted to share what all we’ve been dreaming, while the process is still fresh and crackling with formation; while it’s still becoming.

Thanks for your support and love,

Tim & Betony
Giants & Pilgrims