Tag Archives: bulletin board

Seasonal Coziness Chimineas I

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This is probably the latest winter holiday bulletin board I ever did: Friday is the last day of school and I just got it up yesterday. I’m not thrilled with the fact that the flags are just suspended in space but I needed to be done. I spent a lot of hours on it but I never have enough time.

But this is a very Tucson kind of scene. I love that chiminea on the left and wish it were real and in my back yard.

I noticed the kinders all putting their hands up to the fires like they were trying to warm up. I must add that, even though it was cold when I had this idea, it was 82° when I finished and the kinders were pretending to warm their hands by the fire. That’s Tucson for you.

I’ll post more chimineas tomorrow. The third bulletin board just says “STAY WARM” in big letters. I probably won’t post it at all because it’s not that interesting.

Jackalope!

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So, the thing about true cryptids is that they’re all made up. Some cryptids turn out to be real animals, but most of them reside in the collective unconscious, inspired, I believe by the intersection of the natural world with the boundaries of human knowledge. The jackalope, as far as I can tell, is a 20th century cryptid, created, I’m guessing, to sell southwestern merchandise, and perhaps to share the mystique of the desert and inspire romantic thinking about the region. It may not have the same glorious history as some fantastic creatures, but it holds a place in the hearts of many.

I was asked to create banners for the seven columns in the library, and when I asked what I should depict on the banners, I was told “I don’t know. A mix of realistic and magical?” What’s a more appropriate mixture of realism and magic, than a taxidermied bunny with antlers sewn to it?

I wish I could say there was a greater meaning behind this mythology, but I just don’t think there is. I think someone just made it up for marketing purposes.

But I love it, and the kids seem to like it too. One of them told me his nickname at home is Jackalope, and he was quite touched by the homage.

More to come, of course.

This Bonus Board

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Threw this one together in record time. Last night I thought I would get up early and go in and do this work and finish early and leave. But then I thought, “Hey, it’s August 1. I should look at the calendar to see what I’ve got going on this month.” And I realized I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning. And then I didn’t get to sleep until almost dawn and had to get up and run to this appointment and then have breakfast afterward, around the time most people are finishing lunch.

Blah blah blah, didn’t get in until 2:30, the air conditioning still isn’t fixed so it was 90° in there, and it was “Meet the Teacher” day so it was a total madhouse with hundreds of people wandering around.

Still managed to knock this out in under 4 hours. It’s not fancy but it does the job.

I knew last night I was going full rainbow on this one. I showed the background to the librarian before I did the letters and she loved it and I said, “I’m being very subversive” and then her daughter said, “You made a Pride flag,” and then I said, “Shh, we can’t say that,” and she said, “Why not?” and I said, “Because some people are humorless.”

“Humorless” in this case is a euphemism for “bigoted asshats.”

Anyway, the office manager loved it and it really makes huge impact on the space. And also, little queer kids will know.

Back to School 2025: the Hawaiian Shirt Trio

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If you can believe it, school starts Monday.

I can’t quite believe it but I decided to act like I did and get the breezeway ready. Originally I intended to come back today (Thursday) but then in Monday I decided I didn’t want to be rushed, and good thing, too. Because it turned out that not only would I be decorating all 3 bulletin boards in the breezeway again, they also wanted me to do the one by the principal’s office.

I didn’t have any huge inspiration but I decided I wanted to make a hibiscus and then it just made sense to go along with that theme. Which is hilarious because the breezeway is, of course, in the Sonoran Desert. But it’s frankly as humid as a tropical rain forest this week. So that’s cool.

I could have made MORE FLOWERS or made the flowers fancier or added smaller leaves or other design elements, but I had to go feed the Bear’s cat and then I had to give Miss Kitty a yoga lesson and ALSO I still have a whole day of work on that fourth board tomorrow. A dragon’s gotta pace dragonself.

The lettering is based on the De Latto font. The leaves are monsteras.

Stay Cool

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I kind of phoned this one in because I had very limited time and was kind of distracted and there were 3 bulletin boards to cover before the end of the year. But the breezeway looks nice for the Cub Club kids and summer staff and any prospective families who come tour the school.

Closer views:

And then there was this smaller bulletin board on the other side of the library door:

Tyger Tyger part 2

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Somehow I managed to carve out a couple hours to finish this thing before December swallows the clock whole! I start teaching again tomorrow, so that’s going to eat up my Tuesdays until May. I needed to get this thing done.

i feel like I slightly phoned it in. Mismeasured the last line so that’s annoying but what can you do? I mismeasured where I placed the tyger on the first board and had to truncate his tail. O well.

This is basically a joke for myself and the very few other people who are familiar with this poem AND my work. Because the poem is religiously themed. The whole book is about God, a mystic experience of God, but a Christian God, which I don’t believe in. Obviously, I don’t think my hand or eye are immortal, but the evidence is right here—it’s *my* hand and eye that framed this paper tyger’s fearful symmetry.

So that’s what I created. A meta-tyger to illustrate my mortal and two-dimensional fabrication of a tyger.

I doubt anyone at the school will get it or notice.

I had to go back after I finished and change the scissors. The scissors I was using at the time had black handles, so I made the paper scissors black as well, rendering them invisible against the black background. I hastily patched red handles on top when I realized my mortal mistake, so the second pair isn’t quite as perfectly aligned with the hands and blades as the first, but I think this scans.

Tyger Tyger part 1

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This is, of course, an excerpt from William Blake’s “The Tyger” from his book Songs of Experience. This is a famous poem you likely read in English class a million years ago, which explores religious themes about creation. In the book, the poem appears in Blake’s handwriting, accompanied by a watercolor illustration of a tiger, which suggests that William Blake never saw a tiger in his life and had no idea what one might look like (Blake’s tiger looks like a taxidermied sloth-bear-dog) but he didn’t have the benefit of being able to access the sum total of human knowledge from a tiny box from which he could lifelike images of his subject while lounging around the studio in his pajamas.

Not being the religious type, I have a fun idea for the next panel, which I hope to finish next week.

My tiger is also hilariously inaccurate, but in my lifetime I have seen many tigers, real and in images and videos, and I think mine, as comical and cartoonish as I made it, is more recognizably tigerish.

As usual I see a million mistakes I made. But it’s cute. I just don’t have the time or energy to focus minutely on this project lately. I am making a lot of art, and my hand only has so many hours of functionality.

Fall Festival Bulletin Board 2

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And here is the sister bulletin board. It’s slightly bigger than the original and I definitely wish I had had more time to fill it up.

I also wish I’d had time to make the stems curlier.

Anyway, let it not be said that I didn’t do my part in preparing the school and the students for autumn.

Fall Festival Bulletin Board 1

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OK, so as mentioned in my last post, I now have control of the second bulletin board again, and finally I had the chance to coordinate the 2, in this case with a harvest theme: gourds and mushrooms. I don’t know. That’s what came out.

I’m making 2 separate posts even though they’re linked.

I’m pretty happy with the gourds and mushrooms, but I would have been happier if I had more time. I lost a couple days because the AC has been out since May and it’s kind of unbearable in there most of the time, and then I was called away to Kansas for family stuff. So I really jammed to get these up in 2 days.

If I had had more time I would have made more gourds and mushrooms. Some of them I spent a lot of time making and some I dashed out, but they all look OK, I think.

Of course, Arizona is experiencing record-breaking heat, and even Kansas is pretty warm and not at all autumnal.