Sessions, Sessions and More Sessions, and of course, FREE STUFF!

The art conference was AWESOME!  I went to a whole  bunch of workshops on making art projects, saw some seminars about cool things like the Google Doodlers, and got a bunch of free samples from the exhibition hall.

Here are some of the coolest parts of the conference:

Making Art Projects:

I learned that you can use the recycled paper insulation (for your house) to make really cool paper mache sculptures. 

Definitely making these at my next job!

Cool Things I Learned About:

Google Doodlers:  One of the Google Doodlers gave a talk about how the doodlers make doodles and showed us a whole bunch of different doodles.  He also talked about the Doodle 4 Google competition (which all kids reading this blog should do because it is super awesome, and if you win, you get your doodle on Google and all sorts of other good stuff.)  Check out some awesome doodles here.  See what I learned about here.

Wayland:  Wayland is a marine artist that makes giant murals- in fact, he's made over 100!  He gave a really inspirational talk and showed some images of the murals he's made.  We even got to do a "draw along" with Wayland.

Wayland painting in the exhibition hall.

FREE SAMPLES:

All I have to say on this one is I'm glad I brought an extra suitcase.

Seattle is also a really cool city for Art Glass.  We saw a lot of fancy glass art, espcially by my favorite glass artist, Dale Chihuly. 

West Coast Here I Come!

Thursday I left for the west coast, which is very exciting because I've never been further west than Texas.  This year, the National Art Education Association's annual Art Educator conference was held in Seattle, WA.  Since I'm not teaching, I figured at some point I should do something art-teacher-y, and this was the best thing I could think of.  Since I have no art teacher friends in New Hampshire, I brought my mom along for the ride.

We left NH at 6am and arrived in Seattle around 2.  After a harrowing ride in the "downtown airporter" (we walked the airport from end to end looking for it- thinking it would be with all the other "airporters" (which it wasn't), ended up finding the shuttle in the PARKING GARAGE, got in, though the driver couldn't find our reservation, drove into Seattle, stopped at a bazillion other hotels to pick people up, even though the van was full and couldn't fit anymore people, arrived at the hotel where the driver insisted we hadn't paid yet even though we had paid online, paid AGAIN, and finally were left off on the hotel curb...) we made it to the hotel!!

After getting our bearings and taking a rest (the plane ride to Seattle is surprisingly long), we went to the Crayola Opening Night Event. 

Me inside a cool sculpture.

 The event was held at the Experience Music Museum which happened to be right next to the SPACE NEEDLE.  You can't visit Seattle without going to the Space Needle....



Even the outside of the museum was awesome.



The Space Needle.  Very needley.

The Museum was really cool inside.  There were a lot of make-and-take events sponsored by Crayola, like a fish printing station and a "make a latte out of model magic" station, and lots of desserts and COFFEE.  The coolest thing in the museum was definitely this:

Super amazing guitar tower.

After we'd had enough dessert and music museum, we decided to go up the Space Needle since it was night  (which is the best time to go up) and we were right there.

The view from the top was AWESOME!

Friday and Saturday of the conference are full of sessions about teaching art, and learning about art, and making art, and getting free art stuff...