Commit Acts of Art: Art in the Park

 "The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity." —Walt Whitman

On Saturday, 2 May 2026, the Cultural Arts Society of West Jordan sponsored the 4th annual West Jordan Art in the Park event. Last year we had high winds that sent many booth canopies flying. Two years ago, we had cold rain and wind all day.

This year, the day was warm and beautiful with a balmy, spring breeze. Fifty artists displayed their works, chalk artists worked their magic for the crowds, and the performing arts organizations who function under the umbrella of the Cultural Arts Society inaugurated our new permanent stage in the park.

Last year, as a member of the Cultural Arts Society board of directors and a visual arts section member, I organized a free Kids Art area for children and adults to commit acts of art during the event. We repeated the Kids Art area again this year with great success.

The city of West Jordan donated small flowerpots, paint, succulent plants, and soil which were left over from another city sponsored activity. Painting pots and planting succulents was a big hit while the supply lasted.

One young fellow drew a portrait of the solar system with labeling in English and Spanish.

Commit Acts of Art Every Day: A Week of Haiku

"Creativity is intelligence having fun."  Albert Einstein 

After posting my small book of eight haiku ten days ago, I set my mind to conjure up a few more. I have stayed with the three line structure of 5-7-5 morae [sound units], which are commonly misinterpreted as "syllables" in English. How well I remember an English teacher in high school drumming that pattern into our grey matter. Modern English speaking haikuists [I made that up] go in for 10 to 14 sound units in three lines to capture the brevity of the traditional Japanese haiku. Writers/artists can do whatever they want these days.

Is Spring awaking

or just a hint of fragrance

lingering at dawn?

Winter: a bleak time

made bearable by firelight

and Grandma's old quilt.

Circles are magic

creatures of degrees: like squares

or two triangles.

For years, I have been intrigued, and some what enamored, with the curious phenomenon known as the collective noun. Where such curiosities as a garrison of gophers, a twangle of harps, or a court of kangaroos originated gives pause for thought. Years ago, I wrote an article about a Utah educational librarian conference and titled it, "A Shush of Librarians." Hence, the next four haiku feature collective nouns, the fourth being inspired by the Congress of the US of A.

A murder of crows

in bare, black trees commanding

the dusk to depart.

On a wet fence rail

a tittering of magpies

discusses the rain.

A charm of fairies

sings in my garden

at appointed hours.

A pratfall of clowns

is not an invitation

to sanely converse.

Commit Acts of Art Every day: Postcards

 "Not every act of art creates something special, but it does create something. It is the act of art that is important, not the result." Michael L. Goodman

I participated in a "stickerbomb" postcard trade this week on Swap-bot. The challenge was to cover the address sides of any three postcards and send them to your assigned trade partners. As fun as Swap-bot.com has been, I am afraid the site is in danger of  disappearing from the internet like MailArt365. It is almost impossible now to log on to the site and navigate to the various swaps without getting a error messages. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Commit Acts of Art: Bits and Pieces

 "One principle of collage is, you have to kill one thing to make another. It's a small-scale model of revolutionary behavior." Lucy Sante, collage artist, author, and critic.

 It is the "killing" of one thing, tearing or cutting an image, that is sometimes the difficult part of collage for me; especially if it is a piece of ephemera I have had for years or that belonged to someone no longer here. Then there is getting just the right piece glued down where it has to be - not tearing too much or leaving too much. And, what do you cover up with another scrap here, with a circle there, with a cut out "ransom-note word" here or another there. Behind it all: what am I trying to say, if anything.

Anyway, I have been working on 24 small collages for a few days while also making post cards for swapping. While rummaging for papers, I found some that I made almost twenty years ago. They are slick magazine pages that were treated with Citra-Sol causing the inks to run. After the wet pages were pressed together, interesting patterns emerged when the pages were pulled apart. I will use some of these in the collages I am working on.

Commit Acts of Art: Collage Again

 "Circles, like the soul, are never ending and turn round and round without a stop." Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have only been able to create bits and pieces of many unfinished collages this month. Here are two finished works on facing pages in my collage workbook, and two collage postcards made for Swap-Bot trades.

Door  5 1/2 " X 8 1/4 "

Moon Text  5 1/2 " X 8 1/4 "

I love the circle, the oval, and flowing free-form shapes. I use those shapes, especially the circle, in almost everything I create.

These postcards measure 5" X 7". I have my fingers crossed that they will survive the postal machinery and arrive unscathed.

Commit Acts of Art: Growing Collages

 "I work like a gardener ... Things come slowly ... Things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. I must graft. I must water ... Ripening goes on in my mind. So I am always working on a great many things at the same time." Joan Miró

These are two collage experiments I grew yesterday afternoon and this morning. They are in my small collage journal and are 5½" X 8¼".

Commit Acts of Art: Une Petite Galerie de Collages

 "Art is a step in the known toward the unknown." Kahlil Gibran

I

This is a small gallery of some collages I cut and glued together in the mid 1980s. I rarely sign or date the work I do, which is only a problem for me when I want to remember when and where I created them. No one else cares one way or the other. When I pass on, my children and grandchildren will give them a fleeting glance as they discard them. But, I am saving them here on the blog for someone to discover. I can hear them now saying, "That guy is weird!"

Untitled, 6" X 7½" on mat board.

Winged Victory, 8½" X 11" on paper.

Défilé de Passage, 7" X 11" on paper.

Untitled, 9" X 12" on drawing paper

 II

These are a few of the thirty plus mini collages I cut and glued in 2018. They are all untitled, 4½" X 6½" on the backs of colored envelopes.

"Time is repetition, a circle. This is obvious. Day and night, the seasons, tell us this. Even so, we don't believe it." Joy Williams

Commit Acts of Art Every Day! 

Commit Acts of Art: Miscellaneous Wednesday

 "Visual memory is the second strongest after smell. Images connect culture, identity, and beliefs across millennia, generations, and continents." The COMPASS GALLERY

I sent out 11 letters last week, all in decorated envelopes. I have been creating 365 decorated envelopes each of the last five years. Well, I sometimes failed to finish the goal during each calendar year, but I did complete each goal. I am now in the middle of the sixth series of making 365 message containers, so I have a multitude of envelopes from which to choose when I send a letter, a thank you note, or a "Hello, how are you?" card.

I wanted to work on some collages this week, and I finally was able this afternoon to go down to my basement studio and do some tearing, cutting, and gluing. I rummaged through several containers of paper scraps, magazine pages, ink stained papers, gelli plate monoprints, and left over odds and ends  from past projects. It never fails when I start a project, that I get side tracked while looking through storage containers and finding unfinished projects, articles [such as the "Top 100 Western Movies of All Time"], and assorted ephemera to mull over. I found a few paper weavings I started playing with thirty years ago and never used for anything. All that exploring fritters away my limited committing art time! I should be able to use these weavings for something, but what?

Below is the collage I created today. I love circles. I hope I have not over done it on this piece. That is me in the middle as I was 73 years ago: a hot-shot cowboy! I have used that image on Artist Trading Cards. The thought just popped into my head: maybe all those little circles are gunshot holes.

Commit Acts of Art Every Day!

Enveloping the Word: January

" Not every act of art creates something special, but it does create something. It is the act of art that is important, not the result."  Michael L. Goodman

I finished my eighty-two Christmas card envelopes a few days before Christmas. I mailed the cards to overseas addresses in early December. The ones going out of state were next, followed by those within my state. I saved the envelopes for cards to friends and relatives in my city for last. I have a friendly acquaintance with a clerk at the post office who takes my city cards and letters, hand cancels them, and puts them in the next day's delivery. This saves two or three days of delivery time.

I have made a multitude of "chunk-o-cardboard" postcards for swapping on swap-bot. The chunks do not have to be decorated, but it is against my nature not to decorate the cardboard with some little flourish before I send it off to find its way in the world.

My art in December and January has been making envelopes from Southwestern art magazine pages and decorating letters with pen and ink. Here are some samples.

 

I need to develop a new design for the inked envelopes, even though they are fun to do. February inspires some possibilities. We will see what happens.

Commit Acts of Art Every Day!