broke out

I gave fair warning that my life changes rapid fire, and bam, it’s all different again. I broke out of the cubicle life…feel a little like Paris Hilton, I’M FREE! I did my time, served my sentence, gave it a shot…knowing full well I didn’t belong. What got into me, thinking I could go to work everyday in clean pressed clothes, with clean hands and no opportunity to sit on the floor or sing out of tune to music too loud. Yeah, what was I thinking?

Just like school, I looked forward to recess, and watched a clock and schemed how to make it through intensly boring meetings…pinching my arm to keep awake, pounding too much caffeine, doodling on the legal pads.

I took this job to please someone in my life, wrong reason.

Here’s a little truth, I love having 15 plus different projects spinning around me at once, i love the crazy life of meeting deadlines and jumping through hoops and making a mess into something interesting. So….I took not one, but two new jobs, just cuz they sound really fun.
I am now a Mad Scientist….my job is to go into schools and get kids jazzed up on science, by doing wild hands on experiments with them. Workshops, birthday parties, summer camp, after school science clubs. Slime, dry ice, mud, magnets, rockets….cool, very cool.

And, i also started waitressing at the Improv in the flats last night. It’s insanely fast paced and pitch black in there, but fun and i get to see some cool acts.

I also took on a couple ‘out of my league’ art projects with unrealistic deadlines, to stress out about and stay up too late trying to figure out how i’ll ever pull this off….

To top it all off I still have my regular job of teaching creative writing and poetry, painting and getting ready for art shows and pushing my creations onto the general public…..

….. my life is back to normal, and i love every second of it.

Enter the Enchanted Garden, an article for the Jewish News

ENTER THE ENCHANTED SCULPTURE GARDEN

By Leslie Cohen Jeffreys

Inside a wall of honeysuckle, at the corner of 160th and Waterloo, you will find a secret sculpture garden, an enchanted setting for an upcoming art show. This magical place is the home of a pink elephant abstracted in steel, and a variety of welded steel geometric or organic forms. Some intensely colored, others in grey and black, rest beneath sloping trees. Jerry Schmidt is the creator of the metal sculptures and the designer of the garden. An iron worker by trade, Jerry Schmidt had a built-in mentor, his father, Fred Schmidt. The legacy to manipulate steel into elegant, sweeping sculptures, which his father passed down to him, the younger Schmidt is now teaching his own son, Tyler Schmidt. See Jerry Schmidt’s work at http://schmidtsculpture.com/.

Enter “The Enchanted Sculpture Garden” for a gateway to a multi-media experience. In addition to the metal sculptures of Jerry and Tyler Schmidt, the intriguing work of several local artists will be featured.

Rita DiCello will be showing her beautiful, abstracted flower paintings for the first time. Rita DiCello spent her youth on the outskirts of Rome, Italy, where she soaked up her heritage of the great masters by osmosis. Visiting Florence and adoring the work of Michaelangelo, she later received her BA in Art History and MA in Italian Baroque Art. Besides her love for painting, she is also an art appraiser. Her young daughter, Maria DiCello, helps her choose her colors in the studio. Mother and daughter will show their paintings together. View Rita DiCello’s work at http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/rita-dicello.html.

Through his travels, self-taught photographer, Chris Dixon captures breathtaking moments of natural beauty. A mechanical designer by trade, Chris Dixon uses EOS Series cameras, both digital and analog, to savor a precious point in time and reflect upon it. The fluttering of a butterfly’s wings, an insect crawling on a sunflower, a row of thick clouds framing the backdrop to a mountain range are transformed into art by the artist’s eye and his camera. With an artistic mother, Chris Dixon was inspired in his youth to choose a creative path. Chris Dixon’s photographs urge us to cultivate our sense of wonder about life. Enjoy Chris Dixon’s website at
http://jinker42.deviantart.com/.

Russian-born Alice Kiderman is a Cleveland sculptor, who has an MA in linguistics. She has received many awards in juried shows for her stone and bronze sculptures. Her exquisite forms have a variety of hues and textures, depending on the material used. Often she uses soapstone, sandstone, Portuguese pink marble or Carrara marble. The colors of the stone flow with the form. The bronzes often appear to have an exotic green patina. Alice Kiderman studied sculpture with Bruce Bilek, raku with Sarah Clague, and stone carving with Lothar Jobczyk. The sculptor’s goal is to express her deepest emotions in her work. Visit Alice Kiderman’s website at http://sculpturedimension.com/.

Shannon Marie, a full time professional artist, has the soul of a poet. She teaches creative writing and poetry to small children and the elderly. The bare essentials of a tree, which Shannon Marie believes reflect the human essence, are a major theme in her paintings. Passionate Pursuits is her line of dance, yoga, and running related whimsical paintings. She celebrates the deep meaning behind fairy tales by creating altered art, magic wands, shrines, and jewelry about them. This multi-talented artist pushes her ideas about trees into three dimensional wire sculpture paintings. Shannon Marie’s enchanting work can be seen at http://secretsaboutsecrets.blogspot.com/

Leslie Cohen Jeffreys was inspired by her mother, Shirley Skloff Shapiro, a portrait painter, who introduced her to modern art. Living by the ocean in the U.S. and France caused the artist to flow, pool, and glaze her abstract paintings, to offer a connection to beauty, healing, and harmony. It was a joy for her to study painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art, BFA, and Kent State University, MFA. Because of her fascination with color, she became a Master Teacher in The Michael Wilcox School of Color. Her themes include the Hebrew alphabet, womanhood, and nature. Currently, she is teaching painting at Ursuline College. The work of Leslie Cohen Jeffreys can be viewed at http://www.fineartamerica.com/profiles/leslie-cohen-jeffreys.html

Enter The Enchanted Garden promises to be a fascinating variety of local creativity. Saturday, 7/28/07, 11 a.m.-7 p.m., and Sunday, 7/29/07, 11a.m.-5 p.m. Corner of 160th and Waterloo.

( this article will be appearing in The Jewish News…Thank You Leslie! )

Shine

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

~Marianne Williamson

In memory of David Lytle, who never played small.
He pulled me out of the shadows with his bright light and made believe in myself.
Thank you Dave. You are my north star.

This quote was spoken at his funeral by Brian Jupina, it perfectly sums up the mandate I feel Dave left us all….shine.

Super Dave

Super Dave is gone, and he will be deeply missed.
David died suddenly Saturday night.
I wouldn’t be where I am today if he didn’t see me when I was invisible,

he pulled me out of the shadows

and pushed me into the light.
He connected so many of us

and the connections go on and on….

thank you David, I love you.

Enter Blog

There’s a new blog in town, http://secretsculpturegarden.blogspot.com/
it highlights each of the artists involved in the Enter show July 27th through the 29th
( a few more to be added shortly )
stop by, check out, get a tiny taste of what’s in store for the show!

ENTER

Enter

the enchanted secret sculpture garden

July 28th and 29th

at the corner of 160th and Waterloo

featuring the intriguing artwork of;

Rita DiCello, paintings
Maria DiCello, paintings
Chris Dixon, photography
Alice Kiderman, stone sculpture
Leslie Jeffreys, paintings
Shannon Marie, 3D paintings
Jerry Schmidt, metal sculpture
Tyler Schmidt, metal sculpture

the flier is still in the works, hidden away in my computer for now, as soon as it’s done and all of us agree, I’ll post the real deal. But for NOW, mark this date in your calendar, tell all your friends, put a sticky note on your mirror, scribble it out and hang it on the fridge…this is a going to be a great event, guaranteed. See, it’s in writing, but it’ll only be great…IF you attend!

Okay, now I have to go back to watching the Cavs game!

Today is a good day to do happy art, all of Cleveland seems to be sporting smiles…happy Clevelanders, that’s something to write home about. There’s so much anticipation in the air, so much energy and good wishes going on…”rise up” they shout to each other in the streets. So many people of all different stripes wearing the same t-shirts, speaking the same language…basketball. There’s nothing ‘basketball’ about this piece, I know that, you know that….but the swirls and the flowers, the clear colors…good energy, just like I feel walking down East 9th…..

I’m working full time now, in an office. The BBB, right across from Jacobs field. Never before worked in an office, have very little marketable skills and honestly am quite shocked to have been offered this job. But absolutely love being downtown at such a time is this, it’s exciting and with a whole hour of free time to explore the city…I can’t complain. ( I have though, and to all of you that had to hear my whiney whines, I do apologize, jobs are few and far between around here it seems and this is a good one, so I have to admit how very blessed I am)

Regardless of the outcome of this series, and regardless of how long I stay at this job, for the moment, well, I am really enjoying the moment, each and every one. Life is short, let your soul swing.

Go FIsh

Publishing another weird piece of poetry that I wrote last year.

“……I’ve accepted your “Go Fish” piece for the summer issue…..” ~Debris Magazine

this is fun.

Go Fish

when the prayer to be rescued is answered by a hook and a lacerated cheek
when the grand escape is nothing more than a suicide stunt for all to see
when you look down and declare yourself ‘too small’ and jump back into the poisoned pond
when being fillet, sauteed and even chowder sounds like a viable option
when the fish story …. is your story
the fishy is mired in the muck
not well
the cesspool has distorted her vision
played havoc with her hearing
corroded her looks
and yet the dreams are not disabled
the visions clear
she harbors a secret……
…….once it grows…..
she’ll never be thrown back again.