Bye from me!

Thanks Ms. Stacey! Just a quick note to say that I am shutting down my blog youcantakethegirloutofthecountry

Be well! Elisabeth

Summer School Student News

One of last year's students has just published a novel:

Allyson Shaw- The Desperate Ones

My super talented friend Ally has just published her new novel and I recommend you buy yourself a copy from here. Ally is the person who hooked me up with Edith Abeyta and hence she is responsible for some of my unicorn related goings on in recent months, she is also responsible for re-kindling my love of real ale (who would've thought an American could teach an English girl to love real ale). Here's some more info about the book and the lovely Ally herself:

The Desperate Ones is a genre-crossing, renegade novel: part cyberpunk, part fairy tale, part poetic apocalypse.

Dominion Capital has slated the walled city of Pottersfield for obliteration. Those within must survive or be subsumed. While hackers invent a resistant religion from Dominion Capital’s tech discards, they discover survival rests with one man: Rhubarb Ward, a war veteran and ex-con whose military issue implant holds the key to the future of Pottersfield. Rhubarb is newly released from prison when he meets Lola. Fierce, cunning and addicted to the drug blue, she is the secret to his captive past. While the city’s wealthiest residents are lifted out, the rest are trapped behind. Among them are a history Professor obsessively recording his memories as he forgets them, a suburban runaway compelled by the glamor of implosion and a call girl bent on meeting a new god even if it means martyrdom. Their lives intersect with a certainty that only some will survive to see the strange new world that blooms in the exit wound of the disappeared city.

Allyson Shaw is an award-winning poet and also author of The Bon-bon and Love Token, a Powell’s poetry best-seller. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her poems have been selected for awards by Pulitzer Prize winners John Ashbery and Charles Simic. Much of her fiction and poetry has appeared in anthologies and literary journals, including the National Gallery Publication Tiger Seen on Shaftsbury Avenue. She has recently worked in collaboration with the artist Edith Abeyta and currently blogs about London at Feral Strumpet Teatime. She has taught writing at Long Beach City College and received her MFA from the University of California, Irvine. She now lives in London where she knits, brews beer and writes while trying not to lose her Californian-by-way-of-the-Midwest accent.

ISBN 978-1-4092-8487

And here's a photo of Ally and a horse we made friends with when we went on a day trip to Wales last year, i'm sure she'd rather I included her author photo, but I think this one is much cuter!

Happy eat a lot and have a quarrel fest

Happy eat a lot and have a quarrel fest, originally uploaded by crunchcandy.

My dear Students,

I've been a terrible teacher, but I just wanted to wish you all a very happy festive season, and try not to have too many quarrels!

Miss Stacey

ps- I have grand plans to re-open school in the new year.

Clunks treasure hunt challenge!

Hello fellow students!
Well. Ever since finding out that I have to set a project for everybody I have felt 1) Hopeful that I'll come up with a nice art challenge that people will want to do and 2) Guilty that I've been a bit slack in completing other lovely arts challenges that other people have set over the past few weeks.

So, I have tried to catch up with a couple of past challenges - and can hand in this photograph of my beautiful growy polytunnel which is now FULL to the brim with handsome sized tomatoes, peppers, sweetcorn and chilli plants...it is a place that I love.


I have also managed to get a few rough ideas together with my biro's this week. I have made up a funny character. He is a space monkey... but I have been unfortunately lacking in any storyline inspiration. Having seen Elisabeth's challenge for this coming two weeks I am hoping that I might get the chance to carry on what I've started, and do some funny doodly type comic strips with Space monkey over the next couple of weeks...


So, onto my challenge for you.
I really like finding things that I don't expect to see, in places where I least expect to find them. Sometimes it can be very obvious that somebody has left something in a place on purpose, or sometimes I worry that the thing I find has been left behind by accident and that someone might be missing it. Either way though... I always feel like I have found something special that feels a bit like treasure. For this reason, I have decided that I would like us all to try to choose a special place (maybe somewhere that is special to you) and make or find a special thing to leave there for somebody to find. I'd like you to post photographs of the chosen place as well as the object, and also a photo of the object sitting in it's location - ready to be found by a stranger. Hopefully we will bring happiness to some unsuspecting treasure hunters over the coming weeks!


Hopefully some of these might inspire you:




You might fancy making something out of found natural materials - like Andy Goldsworthy...




or




Richard Long.



I also found a few interesting bloggers who make and leave 'found art' - see pocha-foundart.blogspot.com or sherisfoundart.blogspot.com


or look at the link to the toy society - what they do is nice isn't it?
Or, if you want to do something a bit risky you could have a go at something like this...

Banksy Link

Ahoy, mates!

If I had to guess a phenomenon we have all experienced in this class, I would venture that it is how art brings joy.

I can't help but smile when my son serves up a batch of line drawings. He almost never lifts his pencil and yet manages to create the most amazing expressions in the figures he brings to life. Talk about flow!

When I ask him how he does it, he says he just uses his imagination. So I challenge you to be like my little boy. Draw with your left hand and don't even bother with what others might think. Do it because it's fun. Share some of those kooky characters in your head.

And yes, I am partial since he is my kiddo, but I promise I will put your drawings up on my fridge too!

Project Six

For the next project I would like to ask
Miss Ally
Miss Elisabeth and
Miss Clunk

to come up with some ideas for us. You have until August 24th to think something up to test us with.

Thanks to everyone for taking part!

My Hybrid

Here is my solution to my Hybrid Project. The human figures came from a 1984 Vogue I rescued from the trash.