Sorry this post is so disorganized; but that’s life.
Big step this weekend, finished all the paperwork for creating a 501(3)-c foundation. So I’m now the president of the California Sculpture Academy Arts and Education Foundation. Big title for me. Sounds more impressive than it really is at the moment. But if we could learn to raise money; perhaps it could become more. Right now we have a small group of people; but by the end of the year; we will be able to ask for donations and give people a receipt for tax purposes. And that’s a good thing for my sculpture academy.
Other news is that I will be teaching a class starting next February on computer programming for artists. It’s going to be a great class, I’m going to have them build a small light fixture of 3x3x3 LEDs controlled by a stand-alone computer board. And then we start programming it, making a bigger one, adding in color, and lots of exotic patterns. Think how many ways you can sequentially turn on 27 unique lights. All at once, one a time sequentially, use a progression (1, 2, 4, 8…) lights, a star burst pattern, ripples, groups of 3. And all those patterns will be controlled by code.
Of course I have to learn how to build this box first and that means learning a lot about electronics, soldering, and arduino boards. And I’ve already lost money on the deal, because Bob bought me a laptop. To be fair, I have wanted one for years and this was a good excuse. Liz and I will build a couple of boxes and set up programming environments on her laptop this week. It’s going to be fun. Now I’m getting way ahead of myself.
This weekend was really busy and I’m getting a house full of people. It’s fantastic. Mags arrived on Saturday, Josh (Mag’s friend) arrived yesterday, and Liz arrives today. Starting tomorrow I’m off work for a week. And so we get to play. So Liz and I will be building light boxes for fun and work. Remember the link published a few days ago about a great electronics project; well that is the project I want to use for my class; the one I’m teaching for California Sculpture Academy. It’s really cool and if I can teach an artist how to do this, they can expand the concepts to all kinds of projects.
So I”m going to learn a bit about electronics. And I’m going to teach programming to a lot of people who don’t know much about computers or anything about software. That’s OK. We’ll start with a basic project, dissect it, and start adding on to it. It will be fun and I’m confident that I can do a good job at teaching. The class hasn’t even been advertised yet and I have 3 students. Liz, a techie geek, is looking forward to playing with these things and she might even get a good project to take with her to Albuquerque. Mags wants a finished box, she’s more interested in dissecting bugs. And Kate, she hears so much about this that she’s blase and ignores it. But Bob is fantastic; he’s even helping me set up the programming environment.
If I can pull of this class, it’s a big step towards getting the school going. My vision which has been embraced by the other founding members is to add technology into classical art. And our academy, the California Sculpture Academy, will teach job skills along with art. We needed the foundation to raise scholarship money. So that was another skill I had to learn — filling out complex paperwork. Good skill, if you shop around and ask for professional help, it costs about 5,000 dollars to get advice. Perhaps I can sell that skill as well. Or make a class at the academy out of this.
I’ll post some pictures later of everything. Bob just called me to breakfast.
Puppy Tales 