A Question of Perspective...

I've participated in a few really different art challenges this month, and they made me ponder perspective.

A friend sent me this great article with 47 things you should know about yourself. It's fantastic - you should take the time to read each of them. One of them dealt with what is called the "canonical perspective" that people draw objects with. If you ask people to draw a coffee cup, nearly everyone will draw them from this angle:

I repeated this experiment with my friends Yvonne and Chriss at our stampy dinner last week, and they drew the cups this way too. But this isn't the way you normally see your coffee cup. You rarely have your chin on the table when you are looking at your cup - you're normally above it. And yet our brains picture this canonical perspective instead.

So when the Austin Fiber Artists challenge group issued a challenge to create a piece of art with an aerial view, I picked an aerial view of a cup. A teacup, to be exact. The only other requirement was that it include some sort of fiber. I made a cup of my favorite Wild Sweet Orange tea on a saucer, on a doily, on a blue table.

I just mixed acrylic paints to get the right blue on a small canvas. The doily is from MFT. The saucer I cut with my Big Shot Circle Die, and I edged that and the handle with a Pentel Sunburst Gold pen. The tea is Peach Parfait ink, applied directly to the cardstock, and then covered with Crystal Effects.

I stuck the teabag string into the Crystal effects while it was wet to attach it. That's what tea really looks like from my perspective.

Speaking of perspective - here's something that will make you think, from our family in Minot, ND.

On Mon at 4pm we got the 48 hr. official evacuation notice from our home.  With a call to my brother, at 4:45pm, we began to plan evacuating our home on Tuesday morning. Four pickups, one flat bed trailer and one extended horse trailer arrived at our home at 6 am and began moving all our 34 years of belongings.  Two trips to Glenburn,  (23 miles north of Minot) with each vehicle we called it a day for our movers.  Our evacuation time was cut to noon on Wednesday. With one more trip on Wednesday morning, with the 4 vehicles,  by 10:30 AM, we headed out of town before Minot's north exit was cut off from the valley.

 

We are tired, sore, and still moving on God knows what, but we are safe.
 
Took a little break on Saturday from all the chaos in town and stayed in the country.  That helped. Sunday after the crest, we went in town on back roads where cars have a hard time getting through.  The devastation is so much I can't even express it.  We still do not know how far the water got up in our house. I'm sure to the third floor and maybe the eaves.  Last night. I looked at some photos on Facebook in our part of town and all you can see is rooftops.  Couldn't sleep.  Today I spent all day calling FEMA, deferring payments, etc. Tomorrow will be the same.

 Here are some photos from a fellow stamper from Minot of her home and neighborhood in Minot. I can't even imagine.

If you had less than 48 hours to try to salvage everything you've ever owned, what would that do to your perspective?

Please keep these people in Minot in your prayers. 

If you want to help, you can text Minot to 80888 to donate $10.