Name Art

Today I wanted to share with you an idea that I borrowed from a friend. I’ll do my best to explain it in words first, and then I will show you examples below.

Last year I was over at my friend Kendra’s house, and she was showing me her little girl’s room. In the room was a piece of artwork. This certain piece of artwork that I will be telling you about was made by Kendra’s mom, Candi, as a gift to Kendra’s daughter. To give a little background, Kendra, her husband, and their daughter Jerzey (who is Jayla’s age) were living in Jerusalem for about the first year of Jerzey’s life. Kendra’s mom (Candi) and family came to visit them while they were there. And, Candi’s mission for this artwork was to capture photographs of everyday objects in Jerusalem that spelled out Jerzey’s name. For example, the photograph for the J could be in the swirl of a stair railing, the E could be written in the sand on the beach, the R could be in the stained glass mural at a church that they visited, etc. Candi was able to capture each letter of Jerzey’s name in the form of photographs, and then she put them all together in a lengthwise frame to spell out Jerzey’s name. The significance of the artwork was that Jerzey would always have a piece of Jerusalem with her. This artwork hangs in Jerzey’s room, and will serve as a great memoir of her first year of life living in Jerusalem.

Do you see where I am going with this? :)

Well, OF COURSE when I saw this artwork in Jerzey’s room I knew that I had to borrow the idea and do the same thing for who we would be adopting. What a great way to capture a piece of Ghana that would forever be with our child! When we visited Kendra last year, we didn’t yet know of Samuel….but, the idea stuck with me 6 months later, and on our trip to Ghana last month, I made it a point to try and capture these pictures in the form of Samuel’s name. Well, let me tell you, this was MUCH harder than I thought it would be. Candi, you really have a creative eye, because my mind just could not ‘see’ letters in everyday things! So, needless to say, this is still a work in progress. I ended up creating all the letters (you’ll see what I mean below) except one. And, I still have to find two more letters on our next trip, but this was a good start.

S
(drawn in the beach at Cape Coast)

A
On our next trip, I plan on getting up close to this sign and zooming in on one of the A’s. I liked these A’s because they have the Ghana colors in them, and this sign is at the airport right when you arrive in Ghana.

The two letters I couldn’t find were the M and the U. I thought the U would be the easiest but WRONGO! I found tons of archways, but those were upside down U’s so they didn’t work out.

E
Made this one out of bananas. I really like this one!

L
I don't think I really like this one anymore....looks too fake. Not to mention my foot got into the picture!

So, there you have it, my borrowed artwork idea in progress. I am hoping to do better on our next trip….I really want to capture a letter within a palm tree…..like if the branches could come together to make a perfect L or M that would be awesome. I don’t really want to unnaturally form anymore objects to make the letters like I did with the E and the bananas, and the L with the snake plant. It is much cooler looking if I can find the letters already created in everyday objects.

Thanks for the idea Kendra and Grammy Candi!