Hello all, I hope this finds you doing well and staying out of the heat as best as possible.  There are definitely some drawbacks to being a motorcyclist, and I'm really getting an intimate knowledge of them over this summer!  Riding back and forth from Denton in the often times crazy traffic with the constant construction going on has been quite an experience.  It makes me feel at times like I'm taking my life in my hands and somewhat leaving it to chance, what with those around me eating or texting or putting on makeup or any number of other things people are doing besides driving!  Oh well, when you have a bike, you gotta take the good with the bad.  That being said, everything here at the Kimbell has been going very well.  I've been working on writing a lesson plan for the Pictures and Pages activities that we do here, these center around children 4-6 years old and one of their parents.  This go around I have chosen a Matisse work entitled L'Asie (Asia), a beautiful oil on canvas with bright, vivid colors and a beautiful female figure with shoulder throw and fancy beaded necklace.  We will read a children's book about Matisse as a boy, view the painting along with other figurative works, then return to the studio to create a mural using cut and torn paper in the "drawing with scissors" manner that Matisse developed towards the end of his career.  I believe the activity will be very fun for the children and their parents and instead of doing individual pieces we will be creating a mural of sorts on a piece of white paper that is 5' wide by 10' long, we will use red, blue, green, yellow, and black colored paper and glue sticks to attach the pieces once cut.  There will be a focus and positive and negative space and the participants can mix and match their pieces, overlap, and pretty much do whatever they want to create and interesting work of art, I'm very excited to see the end result!  I have also been working to develop two architecture activities for high school students focused around a tour of the Kahn and Piano buildings conducted by an architect, then an art-based activity in the studios.  One activity will be to get together in small groups and take the concepts of scale and proportion along with square, cubic and linear feet and design a new purpose built building for the Fort Worth area.  The other activity will have the students take those same concepts and design their own tiny home to be built behind their parents home, what teenager doesn't want to get out of the house and into their own space?!  My time here is winding down, I have about 4 weeks to go until I finish with everything and it's been really great spending the summer here.  We are getting the shop in great order at the university and I have also been spending my time in our new FabLab learning how to use the laser cutters and CNC machines, making furniture, laser etching on glass, making art, it's great!  Thanks for listening and I hope you all are having as good a time as I am.  I will look forward to seeing you all on campus soon and I suggest we all get together for drinks one Friday after class and talk a bit about our experiences, I'm sure we all have a story or two to share!  Take care all and see ya'll soon!

E