Abilene Autism Extravaganza

David was able to attend this all day conference on autism and meet one of our heroes, Temple Grandin. She and David talked about science and animals and art and she was very encouraging for him. He came right home and wrote about it. David also had over 10 people from his school attend including his teacher and his principal. His new school has been so supportive and his academic life has been changed forever because of it. We have been so blessed be having the right people around us during this entire experience! Thanks to you all and I hope you have a great day!

Texas Snowman (woman) the 2nd

So, here we are in Spring Break in Texas and we are still able to make a snowman. The boys decided to use some tools to carve this one to get more detail to create a portrait of me. How sweet, right? Well at least they are creative kids! Hopefully we are at the end of the bad weather and we can start enjoying the normal Texas heat!

Appendix Out, Studio is coming along..

O.K., I have taken a bit of a break but I did have a good excuse, I had to have an emergency appendectomy. So I am now one organ less and feeling much better, still not 100% but MUCH better. Thanks to all of you who helped out, stopped by and sent food or prayers my way. Doctor said it would have burst before morning so I was very fortunate! Brad has diligently been continuing work on the studio and apartment. Doors are on the spare room, it is also primed and ready for paint, not to decide for a color... I will post pictures soon, I would like to finish the room first though... I am so impatient. We are gathering our inventory in preparation to officially open up as a business, and trying to clean up the studio portion of the shop, but as construction is underway that is a bit tricky. We will make due. We have another opportunity to put our work up in a backroom in a new shop in town to use as Oilerstudios 1 1/2. Very excited about the possibilities there and ready to get started! I am still waiting for our normally very pleasant weather to come back for me to start spending more time outdoors and in the shop, but my teaching and putting classes online is taking up much more time than I was anticipating. Things are slow but they are moving. We are figuring out our place out here int he country and how to tie that in to our city life and teaching life. Scheduling is so much easier with my mom here for a while and I am so happy about that since baseball season is upon us for William. New art commissions are happening and we are getting paid for them! That has been great news!

The biggest recent news of all is we recently held the Third Annual Abilene Empty Bowls Project and raised something just under $15,000. That makes our three year total at $35,000. Big news for Abilene Texas!

I am anxious to get back into the studio to work on my own work so wish me luck there. I hope you are all finding time for your passions and dreams and follow them every day!

Back to the Daily Grind

O.K. School is in full swing, lectures are going, quizzes are happening, projects and research have started, and I AM TIRED~! I wonder if I will be able to keep up this pace all semester? There is always so much I want to do with my classes, with my family and with my art and there is always so much I never get to. Here is hoping for a more balanced semester!

The Abilene Empty Bowls Project

Join us on February 20th at the Highland Church of Christ from 11-7 to end local and world hunger. Donate money, choose a well crafted handmade ceramic bowl and get served some of the best soup in town. Listen to some music, bid on some great local products and art and educate yourself about the hunger in the big country and the world. It is a day of fun and a great project to get involved in. If you are interested you should visit the website at www.emptybowlsabilene.org

Hope to see you all there!

Almost ready, for one class at least....

I have one class almost ready for the new semester to start on Monday! It has two sections and is two thirds of my load so that is pretty good. I am trying something new. I have put it on Moodle, an online teaching site to help organize the class, grades and attendance. I played with it a bit last semester and found some things to be very successful, others not so much. I have a handle on it now and am ready to begin again! My goal is that by the end of this semester with a little bit of tweaking this summer it could be a fully functional online class. So Art Appreciation is changing!!! I am pretty pleased with the results. If you have questions about the program or if you are interested in this let me know, I am for hire.... Now to start the Basic Pottery class.....

The Ladderback Woodpecker adventure

Today my children got to experience a beautiful morning of bird watching. One of our local bird watching groups came out to the property today to count birds. My son was quite taken with this one. I didn't even know we had birds out here. David was so interested he came right in after drinking his hot cocoa and drew his observation.


Not bad! Welcome to the world of Ornithology.