Dori DeCamillis

Last weekend I went for a relaxing vacation in Fairhope, Alabama with my husband and daughter. Fairhope is a cozy and charming hamlet half hour north of the Gulf of Mexico, on the Eastern shore of Mobile Bay. (Description probably useful for a tourist guide, if anyone wants it.) We stayed with an artist friend, Susie Bowman, and hung out with two other artist friends, Tony and Rachel Wright. One evening as the sun was setting, Scott and Tony fished from Susie's dock (that is surely bigger than our house in Birmingham) and caught some whopping catfish and croakers--at least 5 or six inches long. The rest of us sat in rocking chairs with our feet up, taking in the colors and laughing at the men's persistent display of unmanliness. Anyway, the best story of the evening came from Rachel, who relayed her tale of living as a Bohemian in Greece for a couple years, so poor they had to walk up 6 flights of stairs to live in a run-down place with no running water. One night while walking...

Noah Gentry is one of my 7 year old students. He is bright, sensitive, funny, and wiser than most adults I know. He saw a list of art class rules on the door of my teaching space, and decided to make his own rules. Here they are. 1.) Please follow this rule and all the other rules. 2.) Read all the rules, but only if you're a first time visitor. 3.) Get messy. (This rule is actually very different from Miss Dori's real policy. Her motto is "You spill, I kill.") 4.) Only come in here if you like art. 5.) Don't be a bully. 6.) Have skills. If you don't , just learn from Miss Dori. 7.) Admire the artwork. 8.) Complete every assignment. But if you can't, just try and finish it next time. 9.) Whenever you mess up, turn it into a happy accident. 10.) Don't think that your art looks bad. 11.) Know your colors. At least your primaries and secondaries.