Just finished this video for the exhibition

http://www.vimeo.com/9094349

Hi,

My sister Barbie wrote that I forgot to mention that ..Gigi and Glen were here.  Yes….Glen and Gigi were here weekend before last, and I only told y'all about the last 5 days..

I think that we had no Internet at home at the time that they were here also... I can't recall ..I think it was out a total of 11 days.  Also Kurt and Jan were here.

We had local fun with Glen and Gigi.  We stayed in Casa and did a small bit of scurrying here and there and about the city.  We traveled around locally, and did not do any special "tourist" things.  You should understand that the tour books say  …"oh yeah, right, um-hem, Casablanca, .... if you are on a time crunch, you might want to skip this city, or perhaps spend two days and you've seen it.”

Regardless, we love it here and it is our home, but the other cities, Rabat, Fez, and Marrakech are all more typical and full of tourists stuff. Fez haz a completely restored souk which was paid for by funds from UNESCO. These are not close by, and require folks to make a bit longer stay. 

The reason we love it here in Casa is the diversity; and of course our new friends, and the work.  In that regard, Leslie and I were talking before any of the guests came  ….

Jan and Kurt - weekend one,  Leslie traveled to meet Jan - weekend 2, Gigi and Glen - weekend 3 , Don and Rose Ann weekend 4, and next...off to M A I S conference in Florence (our school pays for professional developement  courses after two years of service and about 50 of us are going) weekend  .. yikes! ..

so anyway, Leslie and I talked about just what is it that we hope that each person will come away with, when going home to US. ...

We agreed that we hope that each goes home with a new understanding of what it is that we are doing here, about our work, about the children and the school, and about the diversity of friends and relationships both expat and Moroccan ....all that the Lord has blessed us with, and just what He is doing here since arriving.

We hope that guests will come away with a little understanding that the people of Morocco are extremely hospitable (almost to a fault) very kind, sweet and are mostly, just “available” to talk and “be” with you.

We did a lot of just “normal” stuff when our guests came.  Like our house meetings on Sundays, like our typical Saturday, spent  shopping at the smaller family-owned grocery store that has most of what-we-need, and then spending the next hours or so, finding herbs, veggies, and nuts and pampers at the even smaller street vendors nearby. In fact, in every case we mostly hung-out and talked, ate and drank together and saw the local Casa sights; (what there are show) and the rather strange diversity of our life just getting around and  getting into town and back.

Kurt and Jan told everyone the last Sunday that they were here, that if they had not come here and particularly gone to the school, that they would have no idea about what is happening here.  Suppose I will need to be more diligent in my correspondence, but the fact is that we hope that if you haven't visited that you will, that if you have you will again, and the guest room is now available for reservations.

It is wonderful to hear back how that our visitors family and friends catch the vision here. Please send any stories!

Love to all,
Tom
(Dad)

Last year in September 2008,  the Director of the school asked me to do a large mural during In-Service.  This is a week-long session prior to the opening of school.  He asked me to do this during the In-Service training "live" while the talks were in session.  I did not do well with that,  so finally took the whole piece home.  The result was acceptable but I was not so pleased.  It now hangs to irritate me everyday in the school's multi-purpose room.

This year he asked again but I was ready for him.  I suggested that I would use this as a teaching time, invite my students to come and received his OK to bring students to create, plan and produce this years mural.  Using facebook and email I invited 15 of my best painting students to join the program.  Six took the offer and came every day for the entire week. 
I had no real idea of what we would do.  I felt that if I was to allow the students to really participate I would need to relinquish control of the creative portion to the team.  We worked in an atelier method for a full week.  We met starting the Friday before the in-service sessions, and continued daily except Sunday.  In total, they worked about 30~40  hours each.  We worked together to plan the mural to be original yet appropriate to this year's theme "Learning Heart to Heart".  The problem was to communicate this idea without using obvious trite images or symbols.  No one wanted to use little cutesy hearts.

We struggled together with concepts for two full days. The sketches were quite terrible.  Finally, somehow, we came up with repeated hand-prints in some kind of pattern.  We later established a unifying grid of  5 bands or stripes across the image to hold it in a kind of controlled patterning.  The canvas is comprised of three large canvases each 1.33 x 1.9 meters (50 x80") to make an overall piece of  4 Meters wide by 1.9 M tall (160 x 80")

First, we all painted sky cloud-like forms and overlaid tints of pinks, light blues and yellows as a kind of field painting.  Afterward we masked off five equally divided horizontal sections and mixed up rich full-tone colors on a glass palette, rubbed our hands into the fat paint and all six students and I planted hand-prints on the large mural ... over and over and over.  We worked on this for 2 more days laying more and more prints. 

On Friday, at the in-service closing dinner,  we presented the work to the director, the entire staff ,  and the teachers.  We asked everyone to come up and place their own prints on the canvases.   The staff were directed as to where to place their hands in the colored paint and where to place their print.  We had board members, teachers, teacher-aids, kitchen, janitorial and guardian staff and their spouses and children all waiting in line to place their respective marks.  It was very a special time.

The work will soon be mounted in the large multi-purpose room where we eat our lunches, and have assemblies, family events, exhibitions and festivals.  This years work will hopefully over-shadow last year's cartoony and weak attempt at a meaningful response to the in-service theme.

This year was a much more rewarding experience and event; and the result stands well against both the objectives of the Director and yours truly.  The stiuThe work communicates its meaning without fail.  - T

OK, so blogging is easy e a s y.  Not so easy to move.  I just want to move the old stuff over here so its all in one place.  But low and behold, I need to strip-mine my old blog for the gold and move what is of value.  Otherwise I will be here till school starts and there isn't time. 

I've asked several friends and apparently there is no great quick answer.  But this weebley.com interface is pretty intuitive so I am pressing on. 

In fact I think it is pretty easy to use and I will suggest it to students. Maybe next years ad art class we can all build a website.  Tom

Diana's Graduation - See the story on the Blog

Michael Relth Graduates .... (see the blog story here)