Students Making a Difference

At the college I work at there is a big community service/civic engagement program. When I started volunteering for the Dress A Girl Around the World program I decided to ask around and see if any students from the community service type of programs at the school would like to get together and create some dolls that I would deliver to the Dress A Girl program. The college programs jumped on board and on Mon. evening Nov. 5th at 8pm about a dozen students got together with me and our receptionist who joined in and we listened to music and created about 30 dolls in 1.5 hours.  I had created a brief powerpoint presentation about the program, agency, and founders including pictures of the monthly meet up and other dolls and dresses that had been created.  Many students expressed wanting to go to the monthly get together and be a part of this project.

Below are pics of all of the dolls created that night.

For the Love of ART and Creating!

My wonderful friend Cindi gets together with her good friend Leslie just about weekly to go wild and create art. Talk about an amazing art studio- Leslie's got it! They both graciously allowed me to tag along one Saturday afternoon and make a mess with them. Part of the wonderful experience was touring Leslie's home where every room is an opportunity to behold one of Leslie's amazing pieces of art. She takes random found objects and combines them with other materials to create eye catching masterpieces. Talk about jealous- she has more creativity in one hand than I have in my entire body. I could simply watch her create all day long. She has an innate style through experimentation and technique that leaves you wondering; "how the heck did she do that?". Her model is similar to Cindi's and mine; "there are no rules to using art materials- just use them". However; she has one additional model that I aspire to work towards; "keep going and no fear".

Anyway, here's the crazy part- she doesn't think people would purchase her artwork! She has loads of her work at her home but has never ventured out to sell any of it. She creates mixed media pieces, creative yarn dolls, yarn tapestries, felting images, most everything and anything. She is not a one dimensional artist that's for sure. So...I'm on a mission to get her to start selling her work so others can enjoy it! What do you think? Like her work? WOULD you buy it for yourself or someone you know?

She was featured in the Nov/Dec issue of Clothe, Paper, Scissor magazine. She was in the paper house/mixed media article!

Take a look at Leslie Werlin's mini art gallery below:

This is made from a piece of wood found laying around. Can you see it?