"Spinning Petals" is the name of the art installation piece I created for the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Backcountry Casitas program - a dispersed collection of interactive environments to engage child visitors the Garden and encourage imaginative play. Here's a video about it.  My piece is a collection of six petal or leaf shaped hemp fabric sculptures over welded steel frames that spin when pushed or in the wind. The surface treatments are a virtual sampler of textile art mark making from painting, stamping, stencils, dye, applique, and embroidery.  My goal was to create a vividly colorful space that would attract the viewers interest from a distance while highlighting the textures and images of nature reflecting the local flora. The patterns are either from oversized flower petals or life sized bay leaves, while one petal showcases natural dyes including avocado, and transfer images from flowers including nasturtium and milkweed.  I chose hemp as a natural plan...

 I'm really thrilled with the results of this scenic design for the First Year AOS student production, especially the creativity and leadership of my student design collaborator, Jonathan Millan. He stepped up to lead the construction team and all those kids works super hard to build and realize a set design  that worked very well. I'm grateful and really proud of the whole class. The design was stylized realism, making good use of the inherent characteristics of the theater space itself and building a nice sense of space. I also got to do some nice original art for the set.  Here are the three acrylic and mixed media on canvas works in a sketchy style. I have now had the pleasure of teaching theater production to two cohorts of fine young actors. I hope I get to come back next April and continue helping them understand the thought process and design thinking behind costumes, sets, lighting, sound, props, and all that goes into getting a show on the stage. It has been 20 ...