The women

When I was in high school, I did modern Dance. I loved Isadora Duncan and Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham. I remember going to see Martha Graham when she was old but still inspiring. I also went to see the Alvin Ailey Dance Co. and was amazed. I took one year in college and then found that I really didn't have all that much talent and I really didn't have the body for dancing or the pony tail.

Anyway, this past week I finished painting 15 foot flats with portraits of jazz singers for MJC's Jam and Jive. (If I ever get the pictures out of my camera, I'll post them. They turned out pretty great.) It's a modern dance recital and it got me remembering these doodles I had done years ago. The first woman is a drawing I did for a card that Kelly gave Lori Bryhni-the Dance teacher at MJC. It was sort of me if I could be a dancer-I would just stand there. The others are drawings of other dance poses I thought I could pull off (of course this was like 10 years ago-now I don't think I could do any of them and I'm a lot rounder now). I think they could go in any order and make a dance.

About the hair- It's my mom's. She wore her hair like this in the 70's-of course so did every other woman.

I think these women are great and funny.

Romeo, You Idiot

I received an e-mail from Kyle Thompson of Headlands School asking if I drew on the flats that I painted for theater. Yes I do my own drawings-I would love to e-mail Kyle back but he didn't leave me an address when he contacted me from my website, jansfriends.com. So I thought I would just put it in my blog and hopefully he'll read it.

Harry (my 15 year old) is currently playing Romeo in his school production of "Romeo, You Idiot". A week before they opened he asked me if I could help paint the set. So in 3 days I painted the set. My daughter Kelly came to visit one day and she helped. My sister is visiting from Utah, so on opening day when I was really frazzeled, she and my husband came and helped me finish up. There were a lot of little details I would have liked to finish, but it looked good enough. You can't really see from the pictures very well how cool the texture for brick turned out on the Montague house.

The play was really funny. Harry was terrific. We were very proud of him. I enjoyed being his mom who painted the set- in the program we were listed as "Harry Larsen's Scenic Family" under special thanks. Next fall they're planning to do "Dracula". I would love to paint that.