The Butterfly Project—Only a million more needed!

In an effort to remember the 1.5 million children that were killed in the Holocaust, the Holocaust Museum Houston is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies. The Butterfly Project is special to me because my father is a survivor of the Holocaust and is part of Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Project http://college.usc.edu/vhi/.

Nicholas Stargardt wrote--"Children were neither just the mute and traumatized witnesses to this war, nor merely its innocent victims; the war invaded their imaginations and the war raged inside them." The war still rages inside many survivors and their children.

I made these butterflies using Kato Polyclay and they are now part of the Butterfly Project. “Joseph’s Butterfly” (the one of many colours.. get it?) was made using a Kraft Lady Art Mould, colored with Jacquard alcohol inks mixed into liquid polymer medium, topped with a gentle layer of AMACO’s Rub ‘n Buff and sealed with Lisa Pavelka’s Magic-Glos. We hope to make many more over the next few months. The blue one is my favorite with its subtle ikat style colouring and a hamsa made of Swarovski crystals.

Please take a few minutes, read up on the project at www.hmh.org/minisite/butterfly/index.html I encourage everyone to read the poem “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” by Pavel Friedman, and help the museum reach their goal.

mz

Clay and CHA

We've all just returned from CHA where we not only had a wonderful time but also lots of success.

Michelle and I, together with Frank were chosen as finalists in the Amoco Bottles of Hope challenge and I won the Most Original award!

We got to hang out with lots of clay people and, at our hotel, we were next door to Gail Richie, Leslie Blackford, Kim Cavender and just two doors away from Donna Kato. Since we were all on the ground floor by the pool we got to hang together which was great fun.

Here are some of Donna's photos too. Check out the right hand side (5th image down), left hand side (6th image down - it was Australia Day after all!) and (right hand side second to last photo)

You can read about some of our discussions with Donna Kato on her blog, including that we seem to have talked her into a competition for CHA next winter - Yeah!

I also met Claudine Hellmuth who had done a commission piece for Michelle and me so that was fun too.

Took a class with Tim Holtz on inks which was great fun as his classes always are.

The show really was wonderful and Anaheim sure beats Las Vegas!