Category Archives: creativity

Gathering and Letting Go

Posted on April 28, 2020 by jyourist

I have an obsession. So does my husband. We collect things. As artists, objects are very important to us. They inspire us, push us beyond our creative boundaries, hold magic for us. Every journey we make, even the most ordinary, … Continue reading →

Posted in aging, collections, creativity | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Annotating To Kill a Mockingbird

Posted on May 26, 2016 by jyourist

My student’s amazing graphic annotation of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Posted in animation, creativity, school, students | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Wintergatan- Marble Machine

Posted on March 6, 2016 by jyourist

The musical band/group Wintergatan (Swedish for “Milky Way”) is a creative group of musicians who utilize unexpected objects and mechanical devices to create their sound. They call their style of music — folktronica. This Marble Machine was created and built … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity, music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Patterned tapes

Posted on February 25, 2016 by jyourist

This photo is of a personalized computer one of my students brought to school today to complete work on a research paper. She used a variety of patterned tapes to create this visual menagerie. At first I thought she had … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity, students | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Memory Lane

Posted on December 28, 2015 by jyourist

Each time I get in to Ann Arbor to visit my mother, I try to do some sort of activity with her and some of the ladies in her wing. In November we made cards using stamps and last week … Continue reading →

Posted in aging, compassion, creativity, family, memory, mother | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Getting Comfortable with ambiguity

Posted on September 9, 2015 by jyourist

Emily Dickinson today! —I dwell in Possibility— A difficult poem but after I dictated the poem to the class and they carefully wrote it in their journals, I then assigned each student a word to look up and define (like … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity, poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Greetings from Niagara Falls

Posted on November 28, 2014 by jyourist

My mother has a friend in her assisted living facility. In fact, we have been hearing quite a bit about him over the last year. After exercise class, he always volunteers to wheel her from the class back to her … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity, relationship | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Vivian Maier’s Chicago

Posted on August 22, 2014 by jyourist

I finally made it to the Vivian Maier Exhibition at the Chicago History Museum. Vivian Maier (1926-2009) was a nanny in the northern suburbs of Chicago, who took photographs on her days off. Born in New York, she grew up … Continue reading →

Posted in art, artist, creativity, photography | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Abelardo Morell

Posted on June 14, 2014 by jyourist

Last summer JB and I saw an incredible exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was the very first retrospective of the photographer Abellardo Morell. He has experimented with the camera obscura, among other things, where he has darkened … Continue reading →

Posted in art, artist, creativity, photography | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Powerful closures

Posted on April 28, 2014 by jyourist

The students presented their creative projects for All Quiet on the Western Front today. There was the annual absurdly funny video of the book by a few of the boys, a collection of poems about the war from all the countries involved … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity, school, Teaching, World War I | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments