Creative Play

FAMILY THROUGH THE EYES OF AN ARTIST AND WRITER : Shirley A. Blair Keller ©2022 From left to right: Levi, Skye and Ford Jones, and Granny. The event is to celebrate the marriage of Skye and Molly Jones, Long Beach, CA.   I sat at a table with their grandfather Buddy, step-grandmother Lori, daughter-in-law Carla, and granddaughter Annie Mae. The grandsons grabbed both hands and pulled me up a step to a chair, sat me down, and posed behind me for the official photographer.  JOY! That is the only word that comes close to what I was feeling.  ARTS WITH ELDERS As the pandemic became a reality of life in isolation, I was contacted by family who lived in the Bay Area. Some of them lived in a retirement community that held art classes for elders. Artists taught classes in not only retirement communities but in hospitals and full time care homes.The organization that sponsors these classes is Arts With Elders.   The fear of the contagious virus was every where. The ...

APRIl 2020  Chapter One:  The Beginning Back in the 1980's I attended an exhibit at the Oakland Museum. There was a woman who painted in oil, adding words to her pieces. But you could not read her words because she scribbled them. I liked the overall paintings but wished I could read her words. Later, I attended College of the Sequoia's to take a Calligraphy class. I did not think of myself as an artist, but I did write in journals every morning, and out of those writings came stories of my growing up. I dreamt of a quilt. At close range, I realized it was not made of cloth, but of collages, each illustrating chapters that I'd been writing. The next morning I began to make what I call Ink Quilts. I was doing art, just not thinking of myself as an artist.  At some point I re-married, and we bought a home in Three Rivers. A studio was built in what as a garage type room outside of our house. It became my home away from home. Eventually, I made friends with l...