A HUGE BENCHMARK, STUPENDOUS, MIRACULOUS, AWESOME, LIFE CHANGING BENCHMARK!

98,231 IS TODAYS TOTAL SO FAR!

Wow! Wow! Wow! We are about to reach the biggest benchmark of Rabbit's Moon Studio's two year History! With in a few days we will reach 100,000 and then my loyal readers and accidental readers we will CELEBRATE! 

The Rabbit's Moon Studio story for those who joined us along the way and not at the beginning.  In August 2007 I was vacationing in San Miguel Allende, Mexico with friends.  The wonderful old villa we rented for five with outside living room and open windows with no mosquito nets.  Unbeknown to us, the beautiful fountain in the middle of the complex had sat stagnate until the night before we arrived. 

Mosquito's  had bred for months and months in the compound.  The evenings we sat out and the nights as we slept we were bit repeatedly by mosquito's.  We all became ill, but two of us with immune deficiencies were very ill and hospitalized.  We had dengue fever.  
For the next year we were in and out of hospitals and confined to be with bone breaking fever and debilitating fatigue.  

So on the days and days I lay in bed I began to think what could I do with my time.  I retired fully  from teaching in 2008 never returning to the classroom, but missing art a great deal. 
 Then I found out I had Hepatitis C due to the dengue fever.  My immune system was so compromised that a virus I had carried since 1985 when I was exposed to the virus during an operation before blood was tested.  Now I was in a fight for my life and more bed ridden that ever.  

Me on the left,  My friend Peruvian Monica and her husband Brian

My young friend Monica, from Peru, had an idea about doing a blog, and I thought why can't I do that as well.  It will be about my art, supporting other artists, and being an art advocate, and helping others see through the eyes of an artist the process of creating art.  

So Rabbit's Moon Studio was born.  Now two years later, I am still writing and still sharing rarely missing more than a day or two.  I had no idea I would be so committed to doing this with such attentiveness.  But now a little more that two years later here we are facing a new benchmark of 100,000 visits from people worldwide...from Nepal to the Philippines to Bali to Australia, to England to Russia to China to Bangladesh, to Africa and around the world we go for the love of art and the good it can bring in this world, for you and in your community.  

I thank you loyal readers!!!  You have made this successful by your committed readership.  I honor you, for two years ago I sat ill in my bedroom in my bed ill and started typing to the world.  Now I am healthy, doing art, traveling and meeting other artists who I have made friends with through this blog.  I thank you all for the bottom of my heart.  I am trying to think of a way to honor you back and share something special with you. 

Mary May( my niece, really cousin, but I claim her as my niece, my closest cousin friend's daughter), Olivia Murray(adopted niece) Sally Murray(best buddy who contracted Dengue also and was hospitalized) and June Berkey(long time friend who I depend on for sage advice)

 ps.  an addendum...you may ask why Rabbit's Moon as a name.  That to is more than it appears.  I do not own rabbits nor did I chose the name because it sounds Indian or from a Japanese tale.  It too began as an accident during a difficult time. It is an act of positive affirmation when I was working for a horrible principal who was abusive to her staff, and put on an open stage in a cafeteria with no curtains or wall to three lunches of severely emotionally disturbed teenagers who jumped on stage to fight with my class, taunted them and me, threw food on stage and more.  One 19 year old disturbed young man who had a history of hitting teachers threatened me and I stared at his cocked fist for thirty minutes while I talked him down and talked the class into getting him to calm down.  The principal wanted to punish me and not the disturbed young man, that is how disturbed she was.  So what did I do, I counted Rabbits in the middle of an interstate where their seemed to be no sustainable living situation...little brown marsh rabbits.  One day I saw one, and then two ....I finally got up to five.  I decided in my mind they brought me good luck and not matter how bad my day might be, I could consciously trick my mind...like on a Friday and I knew the weekend was coming, no amount of bad stuff was going to bother me.  Counting Rabbits got me through a horrible horrible year.  So I learned the basis of positive thinking 

The Blog that built Dreams Come True
Martin Stynes, British Abstract Landscape Artist that read my blog, became
friends with Kathie O'leary(red head in the back and fellow art teacher)..and then we
all started to talk and share weekly.  So now here is Martin, blog friend, and his wife
Barbara(printed dress) here in Florida like a miracle realized due to Rabbit's Moon
studio blog!  Amazing!

that year.  So that is the whole story readers.  Now I continue to place my trust in you to love art, share art, build art in your community and to use art to educate and elevate!  Art saves lives, I know I taught 37 years and saw the magic in action.  I have been an artist all my life, all 66 years save the first two...but at two I started drawing and never stopped nor lost the passion or the urge to do art.  Art is my life, art is me, and I am art.  

A Pioneer in African American Women's Art

ELIZABETH CATLETT(CLICK)

A FOUNDING LEADER AND POWERFUL VOICE  IN AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN

ARTISTS

Elizabeth was born in Washington D.C. and educated at Howard University.  She lived grew up in D.C.  and she was the daughter of two teachers,  Her first marriage was brief and she later married Francisco and moved to Mexico to live the rest of her life.

I have been captivated by her for a long time.  For one thing I noticed her birthday was only a few days from mine and she seemed to be an eternally positive person.  Her work seemed so progressive at the time and she has bee a tremendous role model for all women artists.  She is a strong independent and courageous woman.

Elizabeth Catlett figurative sculpture          from google for educational purposed only

"Acclaimed for her figurative sculptures and lithographs, Elizabeth Catlett has been one of the most prominent black artists of the last 50 years. Known for her technical accomplishment, Catlett specializes in realistic art that shows her concern for preserving black cultural traditions, especially as represented in the lives of everyday, working-class people. Since the 1940s she has worked according to her belief that art should be for the benefit of all people, and not for what she termed "the exclusive domain of the elect" in The Art of Elizabeth Catlett. This objective has forged for her a cultural relationship with the country of Mexico, where she moved in the mid-1940s and of which she became a citizen in 1962. "Neither the masses of black people nor Mexican people have the time or the money to develop formal aesthetic appreciation," Catlett remarked in Ebony. "And so I try to reach them intuitively because they have an intuitive appreciation, and thus help, if I can, their aesthetic development."

Catlett has made her reputation particularly by depicting themes related to black women, especially the bonds of maternal love. She has also concentrated on portraying figures of black history, such as Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, and Phillis Wheatley, as well as other prominent blacks like musician Louis Armstrong. "I have always wanted my art to service Black people--to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential," she commented to Samella Lewis in Art: African American. "Learning how to do this and passing that learning on to other people have been my goals." Catlett embraced her role as a black artist in the early 1940s when a position as an adult-education teacher inspired her to use art as a vehicle to teach blacks about their culture. "Up until then I guess I didn't have any artist's philosophy about what I was doing and why, except that I was working with Black subject matter," she told Stephanie Stokes Oliver in Essence. "But then I realized that I had to work for every kind of Black people."

Reference Answers.com   Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/elizabeth-catlett#ixzz2UzEmJtHd