These little oil bottles have been selling like hotcakes in my Etsy shop....

thanks to All last minute shoppers : ))

shot glasses for the holidays, reminiscent of my kids drawings.... a little house, a little tree, a little flower... it's all about — happy : )

it's a Birthday season in my Fam. — all the kids were born in the Winter months.

So here goes the first birthday girl.

and more...

experimenting with a new medium— all digital, freehand drawing...

Pittsburgh has some pretty gorgeos parks, this one, that we went to today is called North park...it was so peaceful ...

My kids spend the whole way there and back fighting and complaining and all that, but when we were there the tranquility miraculously overtook them and they were perfect angels.

the 1st class went o.k.

I made it through, we didn't get 1/2 of what I planned done... and boy do I have work cut out for me! Next lesson — "drop the fear, girls"! And I thought teenagers like risk, hmmm.

so I was asked to teach at our school an art class for highschool girls — frightening... the high school girls ; )

after much thought, research and more thought, the curriculum shaped pretty nicely, i think.... we'll see what'll happen when I get there tomorrow.

Yes, so I thought curriculum was very nice, it's a 6 session program, I though we'll do:

#1 composition, positive negative space etc.

#2 color theory, would have to brush up on that one

#3 3-d in 2-d representation — need a project for that one

#4 expressing movement in 3-d and 2-d

all spread out through the 6 classes and then I thought, hmmm — boring, so boring to come to an art class and have a teacher start about negative/positive space!

we need a BANG, we need to open up with a bang and close it with a BANG... (first of all I need those girls to like me!) and sooooo tomorrow, we are going to open, elbow deep in paints, textures and creativity, with a "Kelly Rae" project! I'm so brilliant : ) I think the girls are going to LOVE it! And when we do one more at the very end they'll be so into it and so good!! So exciting!

except that I'm still really nervous...

here's our supplies and boards, I got from a contractor/friend

thank you thank you Dovid!!

check out those cute bins!

here's me testing the gesso on the boards

and here's the sample I made for the girls: )

we went to Simmons Farm and I wanted to just stay there for like a month )

here's to flying!!!

Today my son donated bloodstems for someone with leukemia.

He was a match and felt very honored to be able to do it. Aside from massive headache due to the injections he had to get in the last 5 days he did fine if a bit nervous. He's only 19 and now wears the badge of a life donor proudly, and we just hope hope hope, that it will bring a speedy recovery to the person on the receiving end...

Here are couple of new pieces in my Shop!

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things." -Elinor Smith

I guess it would help to post that link — like I said— really tired ))

http://www.etsy.com/shop/tanyazcohendesign

Just a quick check in. Here are the "bits and pieces" — fired, the color changes are inevitable, next step is creating the actual mosaic, by gluing the pieces to a board and the last step — grouting.

And the last but not least, my Etsy Shop is up and running!! Yay!

Now I have to figure out how to find people to come and check it out : )

That's it for now— just came back from a wedding and really tired from all that dancing — which was great fun.

Work in progress — these bits and pieces are going to be a whole mosaic picture, one of these days. But first they have to be glazed and fired one more time. Here you see them fired once and painted with underglazes.

I was trying to teach my 10-y old daughter how to do mixed media sort of painting a la Kelly Roberts . Half way through it she did the whole thing how "she's not good" and "can't do it" and all that. Eventually I threw my hands in the air and walked into the other room, lest I say "something" ....

"FINE", — I heard a grumble behind my back....

That's what I found later waiting for me on the dining room table : )

so the girls and I went to the zoo/aquarium... it was very hot, so we stayed mostly inside with the fish...

My older daughter and I kept taking the cam from each other and snapping pictures

I LOVE fish, I think the colors and shapes in an aquarium are most gorgeous and everchanging

I also LOvE carrousel horses...

okay, so I'm completely neglecting my blog — shame, I read my old posts and was happy that I documented all those thoughts that went through my head.... now i have them and they're not vanished along with the days gone by...

So here's a work in progress, I got a bunch of pieces in the different state of completion, but this one's ready to be put together....

she's turned out to be a very powerful women, physically and spiritually

painting watercolor postcards with my daughter and

drinking hot chocolate : )

Just finished grouting these.

Now I have about 4 more to go. Not sure if I like that brown grout so much, tomorrow I want to try the black one. I think the black should work more less like the white one, creating nice contrasts and making the pieces pop. Problem with the brown is that it blends in and needs to work with the pieces by blending with them not contrasting, which doesn't always work so well.

Very hard to figure out if what you have to offer is something that somebody else is missing. Is your little world makes a diff in someone else's little world and in the big world as well... I guess we are lucky if it does, but how do I find out?

so the big question is —"WHY"

why do we do what we do?

why do we want to create the art that we create?

why do i have to make my art????

.............................................................

maybe because I know that no matter how dark or overwhelmingly fantastic my day is, no matter how dark or bursting with joy is in my heart might be today, i should always have that bird. The bird of my heart and my soul, who wants to come out and sing her song.

And I should let it sing!

WE should let our birds sing. Because we each have that one and only bird, and no birds are alike ...and ...... at the end of the day that's what we are here for ...??

tonight one of my friends had a BD get together and there was a chocolate cake, it was really yum, however one of my friends wouldn't touch it, she said she had stopped eating chocolate because she had an addiction to it, which resulted in all kinds of physical symptoms, when she just got near chocolate, never mind eating it... So addictions were the topic and I realized that even thought I tried many things in my life I never developed an addiction, or rather was always able to break it as soon as it started to resemble one. The only thing I NEVER tried are drugs.

I was always afraid that that would be an addiction I won't be able to break thus I won't be in control.

When we create, when we are in the process of giving life to our ideas, dreams, yearnings don't we have to, at some point, be able to relinquish control and give ourselves completely over to the process ?! Don't we have to be able to let go in order to access the deepest parts of ourselves where there's no rules or reasons to constrain, but only the essence?!

seems to me to have an addictive personality might be a plus, or in my situation, the luck of it might be a disadvantage! hmmm

at the farm

going strawberry picking with my daughter's class... and my creative biz will have to wait!

my creative biz, incidentally, has to wait a lot, while I make dinners, pack lunches, fold laundry, go shopping... I squeeze myself into this tight ball of functionality and try not to forget to breathe from time to time. So I find my function being void of any creativity at all and if I'm being creative it's a totally different activity all together. I'm in awe of mothers, who make beautifully creative lunches http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/dining/09bento.html, paint murals in their kids

rooms, sew adorable clothing and make awesome birthday cakes (well I kind of - sort of do that)

maybe that's the reason I never called myself an artist. To create art I actually have to leave the "room" I'm always in— my life, and go into another one "my art room" and only than and there my art happens ...

off to pick strawberries I'll look for art there, note to myself— I won't get bogged down by running in search for a bathroom for my 4-year old

here's work in progress — tulips mosaic—I'm thinking black grout...hmmm

this is some of the design stuff