My husband Richard and I volunteer each week to teach art to a group of inner city kids in downtown Phoenix. Sitting at a table, listening to music, talking and drawing with these beautiful children is a wonderful experience. We have been honing our skills doing still-life drawings. Not your typical bowls of fruit – instead, I have been bringing in a pile of strange objects and weird stuffed animals to draw. I encourage these young artists to choose what animal they’d like to draw – and then to use their imagination to create their own landscape – adding other characters, people and things to complete their masterpiece. Last night we got a little goofy after we finished our drawings, and ended up wearing most of the animals as hats. When I see the expression on that young artist wearing a stuffed scorpion on her head, it fills me with joy.
