What an ART themed Week!

Wow this past week has been brimming over with artistic milestones for "The Expressive Palette"!
The first time my art was published, the first time my art was featured in a blog, and the first time i "hosted" an art challenge, all happened within one smashing week!


First, Jenn McLean, artist and blogger extraordinaire  of Just Add Water Silly,  did a feature on this artist and her art! She took me by surprised when she initially asked if she could write a feature about my art. It has been barely a year since I began my journey  back to art; and I am still finding my voice & my medium.  Yet Jenn wrote as if I am an established artist already. Bunches of thanks Jennifer for your generous spirit, talent and encouragement! You may read her feature here.

 Second, it was the very first time i  hosted the Inspiration Avenues Weekly art challenge. The theme I selected was art "Inspired by Words". We had twenty four awesome entries, making it very difficult selecting just one winner. In the end I selected a 3D piece of art by Angie called "Unwritten Poem".

Then, lastly, the magazine "Featuring" came out, and I'm in it! All of this thanks once again to Jennifer for asking me to submit a butterfly painting for "The Butterfly Project".  This project is for the Holocaust Museum in TX.  Jennifer wrote a wonderful article that "Featuring" published!

and on the back cover....

 :)

the Butterfly Project

"The Butterfly"
	The last, the very last, So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow. Perhaps if the sun’s tears would sing against a white stone....

Such, such a yellow Is carried lightly ’way up high. It went away I’m sure because it wished to kiss the world good-bye.

For seven weeks I’ve lived in here, Penned up inside this ghetto. But I have found what I love here. The dandelions call to me And the white chestnut branches in the court. Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly was the last one. Butterflies don’t live in here, in the ghetto.

Pavel Friedman, June 4, 1942

Born in Prague on Jan. 7, 1921. Deported to the Terezin Concentration Camp on April 26, 1942. Died in Aushchwitz on Sept. 29, 1944.

Whether it was the fact that my early childhood was in a Jewish neighborhood, or that the mother of my first childhood "crush" was a survivor of the camps; I have always held a special place in my heart for the Jewish people and especially for the victims of the Holocaust. So when I heard about the Butterfly Project by the Holocaust Museum in Houston, it wasn't a question of "if" but "what" shall I make. The inspiration for this, was the poem itself. I tried to put myself in the ghetto or a camp, & think about what seeing a golden butterfly would represent. It would represent Hope of a life outside these walls, Freedom to fly wherever without fear or cruelty, and Life instead of death.
This is the piece I am sending for the Butterfly Project. You can learn more about it here.