Moondance

Well, my digital camera died on me, last weekend, so I had to use my film camera to take pictures during this week’s Art For Earth workshop. It’ll be another few days until those photos are ready to share.

In these spaces between, however, I would like to share some photos about another art class I taught, just a couple of years ago…

It was spring of 2007 when I began to approach a few schools to interest them with my art programs. Janet, from Matthews Hall Independent School, was delighted to share in my stories and photos from my adventures across Canada. A few weeks later, we had scheduled my first art workshop with one of the grade three classes. Three days later And The Band Plays On was completed. (I’ve shared this story before, way back in the summer of 2008 – here’s a link: http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.com/2008/07/and-band-plays-on-newsarticle.html )

This workshop was so successful that Janet invited me to work with the other grade three class, to create another painting.

The theme for both was ‘Good Vibrations’ and I used this theme to talk with the students about how all of life exists because of the good vibrations that our sun shares with the universe. We understood that energy vibrates outwards from the sun to the Earth. All the plants on this planet receive these vibrations and then the energy is collected in all the fruits and vegetables, which we eat. The students thought it was really cool to realize that every time we eat something we are putting the sun’s energy into our bodies. Then we talked about the things that we do with all of this energy. We talked about sports, hiking, playing musical instruments and other activities.

The idea about using our energy to play musical instruments was the spark that inspired And The Band Plays On.

For this second painting, I took this idea one step further. I figured that since we had painted a picture of musicians that our next painting should have people enjoying this music. The idea of creating a painting with people dancing was stirring in my mind. Later that day, I happened to be listening to a Van Morrison album and the song ‘Moondance’ was playing. A light of inspiration turned on in my head…

This idea linked the two paintings together in theme and I thought that it would be interesting to show a different perspective in the second painting, with the Earth being in the distance while we view the dancers on the moon.

For three afternoons we painted…


I made a lot of new friends, over the course of those three days, and I am very thankful for the memories that we created together.

Jim