Cultured Sunday

We both went to the early service at church and then to Sunday School. In church this morning a missionary to Russia spoke...so we were exposed to Russian culture very early in our day. Woody taught his sixth-grade boys class. We came home and had a light lunch and then headed on down the highway to Lebanon, Tennessee...about 1 1/2 hours away from Tullahoma (east of Nashville). We were going to our next cultural event of the day...Melany's first art exhibit as a graduate student. She is attending Cumberland University in Lebanon working on her Masters Degree in Art. This summer she took her first two classes in the program...a painting class and a pottery class. She and her fellow students in those classes have their work on display and today was the reception for them and a showing of their art pieces. Melany's technique in her painting class was very unique...I'm not sure that I can describe it adequately and I know that the pictures don't do it justice. She painted with acrylic paints on glass...let it dry...then peeled it off...and then cut it into small pieces (some very small) and then made her paintings much like mosaics. Her painting of the dragonfly and then the two lizards were done in that manner...some of the pieces of paint are very thin and some are quite thick...the wings of the dragonfly are long pieces of paint. The background for the two lizards looks just like they are on sand...she put pumice in her paint medium to make it look grainy. The piece that is hanging above the picture of the two lizards (in the picture where Melany is standing) was made in her pottery class. The dean of the art school inspired this piece (he made a suggestion and Melany flew with it!)...you can see the details of the lizard's head just below that picture...it was made on individual tiles and all the little scales are made of little balls of clay...so another mosaic of sorts! Then the tiles were glazed and fired and later put together like a puzzle and mounted on a board to make the picture. I tried to capture the fact that the glaze Melany used makes it shiny...looks rather metallic...a coppery tone...but it was hard to capture. Let's just say that hours and hours and hours and...(you get the picture!) of work went into this lizard pottery tile picture and the dragonfly and lizard paintings. In the painting class they were supposed to paint three large paintings in the three weeks that they had the class. The professor realized that Melany was having to put in much more time doing her paintings this way so she was allowed to "just" do two. Be sure to click on the collage twice so you can see the details better. Woody saw a theme in Melany's pictures/pieces...dragonfly and lizards. The chalice that she made in her pottery class also has a lizard wrapped around its stem. Her teapot is very unique too. I have tried to include pictures of the entire pottery piece or painting and then some of the details of her pottery and paintings in tonight's collage. I would vote Melany's work as the most unique of the exhibit. The bottom picture on the right shows Woody and me with Melany, Wade, and our grandson Alex. I look like a shrimp!!! Everyone else seems to be about the same height...and looks like Alex has just about surpassed the others! Erin is missing from the picture as they took her to East Tennessee State University yesterday. Tomorrow starts classes for her. We stayed at the art show for about an hour and then headed home. Woody is now at our evening church service.

I came home with my very own signed pottery piece from a very special artist!!!!