- At December 02, 2007
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In artists, blizzards, Centrum, windstorms
0
Blizzard! And the arts!
Had a great time meeting and getting to know my fellow Centrum Young Artists Project art faculty (a couple of drama folks, visual artists, videographers and dancers) but did not so much love this afternoon’s activity – trudging around the Centrum Fort Ward buildings for an hour in 20+mile an hour winds and blizzard-levels of snow with freezing hard rain – they wanted to acquaint us with the spaces which I had already seen, and of course, as a writing teacher, don’t really need like the drama or dance teachers might. I have asthma and I had to sneak into the different buildings and take an inhaler twice (so embarrassing having asthma attacks!) and tonight I am coughing and hacking. Stupid lungs! Also the wind broke my umbrella that has survived over five years of Seattle weather.
It was really fun to sit around and talk about art with all these people who have sacrificed and worked so hard to practive their various art work, committed and dedicated and intelligent folks who all care about sharing their excitement about art with kids.
If you live in the Seattle area, and you have children in middle school or high school that you think might enjoy a spring-break or summer week of arts studies in creative writing, music, drama, and visual arts, check out this link: http://www.centrum.org/youth/yap-workshops.html They have scholarships for kids who need them. I think the middle-school kids might need to sign up through their school. It’s a pretty incredible program. And I’m teaching a class called “Superheroes, Mythology and You – Creative Writing” for two weeks in March and a week in June. Most of the time, Centrum’s campus is postcard beautiful and they have very nice, mild weahter. Not mostly blizzards.
Even more weather news – we are expected to have 70 plus mile an hour winds and storms tomorrow…maybe I’ll stay in with a nice hot gallon of ginger tea…
Finally the wrist is feeling well enough to type a little more, so I’ll write this quick entry:
-I have officially signed on to teaching two weeks of middle school students in March 2008 and one week of high school students in June 2008 at Centrum as part of their Young Artists Program. I’m excited but also a little scared…I’ll be trying to squeeze an introduction to mythology, mythology connections in comic books, and creative writing exercises all into a week. On top of this, Centrum offers the folks who teach in the program an opportunity for a residency there in Port Townsend, which will be nice. My first ever independent, non-school-related residency.
Creating a whole new twisted generation of comic book poetry fans is a fun prospect. I haven’t worked with middle-school aged kids before, should be an interesting challenge (anyone with advice please leave comments!)
-I’ve had a chance to catch up on my reading (what with the tonisllitis and sprained wrist and all – this is the upside of downtime) – some mythology texts, a pretty decent anthology of prose poems, Atwood’s You are Happy. And I got to watch some episodes of Buffy season I, which I call “when Buffy was still fun,” which always makes me happy. Even wrote a couple of poems – three in two weeks, which is pretty good for me. I’m not the poem-a-day type, although I admire the effort others have been making this August.
-The new 41 cent Superhero stamps are out at the Post Office. Elektra and the X-Men make appeareances. I now have two sheets.
