'Mechanisms of Action' by Lee Ann Thill

I just finished this. It’s not dry yet, thus the goo is still semi-opaque, whereas when it’s dry, it will be clear. Also, the lighting was poor, so the color is a little wonky. I’m not warming up to this painting, mostly because the pancreas was giving me trouble. What’s that saying about art imitating life? Or maybe it’s life imitating art, in which case, it doesn’t apply. Anyway, the pancreas was being a pill. Maybe if I spend a little time with it, I’ll feel better about it though. Um, I mean the painting, not my pancreas. My pancreas and I co-exist peacefully, but we don’t associate much. Anyway, if nothing else, I’m inspired to make more, so the painting has that going for it. The papers I collaged into it are from an insulin information insert. The title is from one of those papers, “Mechanisms of Action”.

I understand you might be a little burned out on my posts about Diabetes Art Day. I’ve blogged, twittered, facebooked, tudiabetesed, diabetes dailyed, and dLifed it into the ground. I get that, so if you’re done reading about it, I hope you’ll come back tomorrow to see what new topic du jour I have on tap. I really feel like we need a little closure though, so I want to share some final thoughts about it.

I never imagined so much participation, and am so grateful to everyone who joined the effort. You are the reason Diabetes Art Day was so magnificent. I wanted it to be a community event of sorts, and it truly was because so many of you posted art. I can and do post art, and will be doing more of that this month since I’m participating in NaBloPoMo and the September theme is art, but had it just been me posting art for Diabetes Art Day, it wouldn’t have made for much of an Art Day. With so much participation, certainly more than I imagined, finding all the participants has been a project. I’ve tried to track down all the blogs and websites that participated, but if your link and/or artwork isn’t posted on the Art page, and you would like it to be, I encourage you to leave a comment or email me.

Speaking of finding all the participants, anyone who did participate is eligible to win the No-Sugar Added Poetry book. I’m making a list of the participants, from which I’ll draw the names of the five winners. Before I do that though, I want to feel confident that anyone who made art, wants to be included in the raffle, and doesn’t have their artwork or website listed on the Art page has notified me. I’ll give it a couple more days to see if other artwork surfaces, and then I’ll do the drawing.

For those who didn’t participate for whatever reason, maybe you didn’t have a good opportunity to make something, or maybe you don’t consider yourself artistic so figured you’d enjoy it from the sidelines. I hope you were able to participate as an observer. I know several bloggers who posted art mentioned that their page hits were off the charts last Wednesday, so I can only assume that there were a lot of viewers. If you’d still like to add some art because you have extra time this week, or because you’re feeling extra inspired by others’ art, I encourage you to do so. I don’t want anyone who wishes they had participated to feel like they can’t. I picked September 1st because I thought it would be more effective to have it all on a single day, but Diabetes Art Day is more about the experience of making art to express something about diabetes, so in the end, I’d rather you make art any day than not make it at all.

I think it’s fair to say that there were a lot of emotions generated from both viewing and making the art. If you haven’t had an opportunity to reflect on your experience with Diabetes Art Day, whether as a viewer or an artist, I hope you will. If you want to post about it, I know I’d be interested to read it, but mostly, I think it’s a good thing to do for yourself, whether it’s posted, whether it’s something you write and keep to yourself, or whether you just sit and think about it. Not everyone will feel the need to do so, but I think there’s value in doing so.

Looking ahead, I am now the happy owner of www.diabetesartday.com. It’s not anything to look at now, but next year, I hope Diabetes Art Day will be bigger and better, with even more participation. I don’t have any specific plans for the website, but I want the art to have its own home, and I’d like to find a better way to post it so the experience of browsing through it is less overwhelming and more enjoyable. I also want to transfer the art on the Diabetes Art Day 2010 page to the website. It’s a project on my to-do list that I’m hoping to get together in early 2011.

Thank you from the very bottom of my heart to everyone who helped make Diabetes Art Day spectacular. The range of art, the materials used, the ages of the artists, the relationships to diabetes – it was all represented. I thought it very much reflected our Diabetes Online Community in that each piece was so different, much like each of us, but all had something in common, the connection to diabetes. Looking at the collection of art says so much about diabetes, us and our community. I’m proud of us, and I hope you are too. Thank you.

The Base of Dex's Castle

Earlier in the summer, we had a little accident that equated to a big crack in the bottom of Dexter’s tank. We had been talking about upgrading his accommodations since he was getting bigger, but this meant we needed to start building him something roomier… yesterday.

Savannah monitors have pretty specific habitat needs, most notably high temperatures and high humidity. They also like to dig, and depriving them from such opportunities is a tremendous stress on them. Like diabetics, lizards can experience physical health issues as a consequence of psychological stress. A standard glass tank, even a very large one wasn’t going to cut it as a permanent residence. The screen tops of standard tanks are open so heat and humidity escape, and they aren’t deep enough to add enough dirt for a full-grown savannah monitor to burrow. We were going to have to get creative.

We did our research, drew up some plans, and Jason has been working diligently to create a castle for our beloved lizard. The castle is 7′ long, 6′ high, and 30″ deep. We would have made it deeper, but Jason is building it in the basement, and we had to make sure it would fit through the basement door when we get ready to bring it upstairs. It has a plastic utility sink that will be Dexter’s bathtub (which has since been installed since the photo on the right was taken), and a ledge next to the sink that drops into a basin which will be filled with a mixture of topsoil and sand for burrowing – and moonlights as a hide and seek spot until we get Dexter settled into his new home. We designed it in two pieces, the base and a top “hutch”, which will have some shelves for Dexter’s lounging pleasure, and several light and heat fixtures in the ceiling. The entire thing is lined with FRP (fiberglass reinforced paneling), which will help maintain the heat and humidity. A window in the front is our means of viewing and accessing him. The sink has pipes underneath from which we’ll have a detachable hose when we need to drain it. It’s quite elaborate, but he’s my baby.

The FRP is very stark looking though, so I wanted to decorate the interior because I think he’ll be stressed out being in a plain white box. Towards that goal, instead of working in my art space today, I grabbed a can of aqua-colored spray paint, and headed outside to paint the interior ceiling of Dex’s home. Two coats of paint and some drying time later, I painted some clouds. We do have to make some holes in the plywood for the light and heat fixtures, but he’ll forever have a lovely blue sky overhead. I also painted on a scrap of the FRP as an experiment. I’m hoping to paint a mural on his walls if the experiment goes well, but if it doesn’t seem like it will work, I’m creative, so I’ll make it homey for a lizard one way or another.

The base and top together

Painting the sky

Goggles & Facemask are Sexy

Dexter enjoying a swim

'Misnomer' by Lee Ann

I wish I could give you some better insight into where this came from. As I’ve said, I don’t have a plan when I sit down to make art, at least when it comes to paintings. I started putting paint down, decided I needed some diabetes trash, saw the Comfort infusion set label and grabbed it, and once I had that element in place, I decided to add something appealing and contradictory, so I grabbed the heart sparkles. I didn’t think of the name until after I was sitting here looking at the image on my computer. It’s called “Misnomer”.

'All There Is' by Lee Ann

I’m having kind of an emotional evening. I don’t really want to write a post about it right now, but this is my painted response to the feelings that have been stirred up. I don’t normally read a lot of the blogs written by parents of D-kids, but in trying to see all of the art, I have been. It didn’t feel like anything I wanted to rush through, and since a lot of the blogs aren’t familiar to me, I’ve read some of them. Basically, it’s gotten to me. I may or may not write a post, but here is a painting. It’s teeny-tiny, 3″ x 3″, but speaking of all stirred up, that’s kind of how I’d describe it. Funny how art can truly reflect our emotional states, isn’t it? I call it, “All There Is”.