Day two

After the late night on Thursday, it was hard to make it to Leo Nickerson Elementary School by 9:00 a.m. but we made it! And the enthusiasm and curiosity of the students soon swept any cobwebs away.

Leo Nickerson Elementary School has about 700 students in three programs: English, French Immersion, and Logos Christian.

Andrea Daly is the Art and English teacher. (I worked with her Dad, Gerry Buccini, for years when he was assistant-principal at W. D. Cuts Junior High. When he retired, I made him a miniature of his office - the first miniature of a real room that I did.)

It's the 8th annual Alberta Culture Days and I'm not sure just how long Andrea has been doing it at the school but I think it's my 5th or 6th year. The hallways are lined with tables manned by all manner of artists in every genre imaginable: painters, sketch artists, knitters, musicians, a face painter and, of course, Joanne and I representing miniaturists, to name just a few. In addition, there are workshops going on in many classrooms for a total of 100 participants!

The day began with an assembly with an incredible performance by hula hoop artist, Sandra SaFire, that totally bowled me over! She also slipped in a very good message on making an effort to do something nice for other people that you deal with every day.

Joanne displayed her flower shop, Zuzu's Petals. She took the box out of the case for better visilibility.

We had a free draw for this "Three Bears' House". The draw wasn't made until the afternoon assembly so we don't know who won it. Andrea will be sending me a picture of the winner and I'll let you know. Several of the children really wanted the draw to be for Joanne's shop. LOL.

Mid-morning, one of the teachers went to the art room and brought down the miniature of the room that I had made in 2011. It's great fun to watch the students' faces when they realize that "Hey, that's our art room!"

Even got lunch - and what a lunch! Won't even try to tell you everything they served but there were six 6' tables chockful of food and all of it delicious.

We were home by 2:30 for a rest then off to the St. Albert Public Library.

Evening

We attended a talk by Dr. Ted Bishop on his book "The Social Life of Ink".  As he spoke, audience members passed around two mortars and pestles, first grinding the galls, then gum arabic into a powder to which was added ferrous sulphite and water (in one instance) and white wine (in another). We were asked to sign his guest book with a stick pen with one of the two resulting inks.

We learned about the history of the ball point pen and Chinese inks and calligraphy.

It was just a very interesting evening! Who knew?