I Blew It -- Beach Edition

You know how it is: You organize a ton of stuff so everything goes smoothly and everybody has a great experience. But you miss one little detail, and it's like finding a typo in the first sentence of something you print 5000 copies of or publish to live forever on the internet.

I missed one of those details while I was teaching the Local Color class at Sievers last month. My class went to the beach one afternoon, with the intention of creating something to photograph for the World Beach Project -- something I'd been planning to do for weeks. Somewhere between intention and executions, I should have re-read the instructions for participation. One little detail.

Rightly so, the V&A graciously declined to publish our pattern because the stones were not clearly visible as the subject of the work and we used materials disallowed by the rules. Sorry, class -- I blew it!

So I'll publish the pictures here instead.

This is looking out at Lake Michigan from Percy Johnson Park on Washington Island.

My students gathered and arranged materials they found on the beach.

Then they framed the elements with their shadows.

So I apologize to my students for this error on my part. I still love what you did on the beach. And the greater lesson to be learned from all this? Even if the instructions are simple, it's a good idea to re-read them!