Celebrate in Wonderland: Biba Pagat!

BREAKING NEWS: DOD agrees to re-think Route 15 firing range; More studies, scoping planned

sketching in Wonderland

I've been a bit busy lately.  I have a few great projects going on and of course I'm also working to pay the bills, but I've been sketching a lot lately.  I just thought I'd share some stuff.

I'm working on something for a legend.

sketching at a forum

I edited this a bit.  You can see the sketch on the next page just faintly.  

Life in Wonderland: The Maidens Who Saved Guahan

*color reproductions available - $10*

 I just want to share one of my latest paintings and the story behind it.  I've copied the story from Guampedia to post here.  If you're interested in reading more of our island's legends or just want to learn more about Guahan in general, Guampedia is a great site to visit.

In the story “Maidens Who Saved Guam,” a monster parrot fish is chewing his way through the island of Guam, determined to destroy the island. Night after night the men of Guam went out in search of the huge destructive fish but could not find it.

The young women would talk about the monster whenever they gathered to wash their hair and rinse it with orange peels. Their favorite spot to gather was at the Agana Springs. When they finished, the pool would be covered with orange peels. One day a girl noticed the peels floating in Pago Bay. She was puzzled by their appearance. After some thought, she surmised that the monster must have eaten a hole all the way under the island from Pago Bay to Agana Springs and that was where it was hiding.

The next day when the girls gathered at the Agana Springs they wove a net with their long black hair and then sat around the pool and began to sing. The monster fish, enchanted by the music, swam up from the bottom of the spring to listen to the singing girls. Suddenly the girls spread their net over the spring and dived into the pool. The monster fish was caught and the island of Guam was saved.

Sketchy in Wonderland: More pages from my sketchbook

I've been working on my illustration skills.  I've  found out that I don't really have any. lol

my Sirena

I did this last year.  

I was bored and bit off more than I could chew.  I shouldn't have added the color.

Community in Wonderland: Hatsa i kanai-mu giya fiestan uchan

Hatsa i kannai-mu!

Wow! I had an interesting day.  Today was the opening day for the annual Micronesian Islands Fair.  Biba Micronesia!  Our art group has been meeting frequently to prepare for this event.  We came up with an activity to do with the many school children who attend the first day of the fair with their classes.

Kannai (hand) is what we've been calling ourselves.  We decided on this because hands can symbolize so much.  We use our hands to create, share, receive. I could go on and on.   Hatsa i kannai-mu means raise your hand.  For the fair, we decided to do a community art project with the kids.  We took a large sheet and painted a great big hand on it.  We spread that sheet out over a few tables and set up a paint and hand washing station. We talked to the kids about the many things you can do with your hands to help be active in the community and  let them choose a color and sent them to the sheet to leave their hand print.  All those little hands helped to create a mural of hand prints which in a way is Kannai's hand print.

eeee  kalakas!

We managed to cover the entire sheet and were planning to break out another sheet we had prepared, but it started raining. We decided it was a good time for a break and went to get some bbq sticks and check out some of the other booths.  It started getting extremely muddy and when we got back to the booth we were sharing with some other artists, our feet were mostly submerged.  We were all laughing and taking pictures of our sunken feet while it just kept pouring down uchan (rain) .

Before we know it, we were dancing the cha cha knee deep in flood water.  I'm serious, there was both knee deep flood water and cha cha going around.  I was wearing jeans and kept having to roll them up.  It got to the point where if I rolled it up any higher I'd cut off circulation to the lower half of my legs.  We couldn't just run for higher ground either.  We had way too much set up.  Plus, we were entertaining each other too much to be really freaked out.  It was an adventure!

Where did Dakota's knees go?!

scaled down sakman on the pond that was our beach park, earlier in the day

(L-R) car, Joey, picnic table
Joey is the only one that will be mobile today

The picnic area is nearly submerged up to the seat and if you look closely  you can see a happy carabao  keeping her owner dry and mobile.


Check out our friend, Rebecca Rae's site!  She has some beautiful art and amazing jewelry.
IslaRae.com

Painting in Wonderland: CAHA, face painting, and haggan

Haggan  (turtle)
Acrylic on mat board

Today I finally turned in the form to register with CAHA's artist directory.  I've been planning on doing that for over a year, but I procrastinate.  I think the hardest part was figuring out how to describe my art.  I wish I could've just shown them pictures and had them write something up, but oh well.  I think going to CAHA and seeing the artwork there and at the Chamorro Affairs office got me in the painting mood.

On Saturday, I went to the Down Syndrome Association of  Guam's 10th anniversary gathering. Allan's baby sister has down syndrome and his mom is the current president of the association.  She had asked me if some of my friends and I would like to face paint for the event.  Joey and Colleen came and did some really awesome little works of art on the sweetest faces.  It was a great event for a great cause.

I painted a few faces with little turtles and that inspired me to create this.  Considering I didn't have a reference picture, this didn't turn out too bad.  It obviously could be better, but I still like her.  :)

Painting in Wonderland: New Pieces :)

"Tasi's Palette"
Acrylic on mat board.
Painted at Asga' - 2nd Third Friday gathering .

"Peace of Paper"
Acrylic on canvas panel
*for sale*

"Look At Me Now"
16"x20" acrylic on canvas
*for sale*

Viewed in Wonderland: Let them return!

"Take my land,

It's called stealing!"

Rainy in Wonderland: off and painting

Rainy days are great for staying in and painting.  Thankfully, I was off today and able to do just that.  I even got to take a nap.

This piece was fun to work on.  I was thinking about that day that Nella and I went on our tree planting adventure.  I started with a paint brush, but decided to do more of a palette knife application when I was working on the hills.  I actually don't have palette knives.  Those things are expensive!  So instead I used the little plastic shovel looking spoons you get when you have gelato.  This was practice for a piece I have lodged in my brain.  I just need to see it more clearly before I try to get it out for every one else to see.

Viewed in Wonderland: Gax Fall 2011

I had an awesome time at the Guam Art Exhibit, GAX, but I didn't get a ton of pictures.  It was pretty packed and I was wine-ing it up and enjoying the great company and art.  I did find this video on You Tube though.

Enjoy!




You can also check out the Pacific Daily News article on the event.

Sharing in Wonderland: Pages from my sketchbooks

Just a few pages from my sketchbooks

I was at Ypao waiting for Allan to get off of work and decided to sketch this tree with a kite stuck in it.

I used one of Allan's skate mags to look for reference pics.

This looks super funky.  I need more practice!

Community in Wonderland: creative community

I haven't felt this inspired in a while. For the past few weeks or so I've been meeting and exchanging dreams with some artists here on Guahan. I'm a member of a bunch of online artist communities, but this is different, obviously. It's great to sit face to face and interact, collaborate, and share with a group of people who are not only passionate about art, but also community. And we don't just want to sit and talk. We are motivating each other to get out there and create for ourselves and our island.

With the help of We Are Guahan, we were able to paint another Prutehi yan Difendi bus stop. This time we met and planned first, picked a theme, and brainstormed the elements we wanted to incorporate in our mural. We learned about the village that the bus stop is in. Ordot means ant in CHamorro and is home to farms. It took a day of priming and 2 weekends to finish, but we were able to complete the mural before school was back in session. It felt really good to provide some kids with an inviting and stimulating place to start their school day.

Aside from the bus stops we also decided that we wanted to have a creative night once a month to get together and create. We are mostly made up of visual artists and one writer, but we plan to invite musicians and other creative minds to join us. The first creative night was freaking awesome. I mean, I've had painting sessions with a couple of friends at my apartment, but nothing like this. Every once in a while I'd step back from what I was working on and look around at the beauty that was being created. The energy we were sharing was so refreshing and positive. I can't wait for the next session.


Just last night I got together with a few artists in the group, and someone new, to talk about what we want to do next. After the serious (I don't even think you can call it that) discussions we decided to have an impromptu creative night. While Colleen worked on her printing, I sat at a round table with the other 3 artists and we did this crazy collaboration-ish thing.

We each started a drawing and every 10 or so minutes the table turned counter clockwise.  So we each added on to the drawings.  It was a lot of fun.  It wasn't super serious and it was pretty challenging.

I can't wait for the next session.

Check out these community art projects I found on You Tube.

Community in Wonderland: Eat Local! Grow Local!

It's been forever since I've updated my blog.  I haven't been able to sit down and write, or type, for a while.  I still don't really feel like writing, but I did want to share this recently completed project with everyone who follows my blog.  Hopefully I'll be writing more soon.  If not, I'll be posting pictures of what's happening in my community.