Submitted by Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
March 18, 2016 10:32 a.m.
We have some fantastic people who live and work in our town. One of them, Sandra Dawson, is a Fernandina Beach artist who has just been accepted by Jacksonville’s One Spark. That’s an organization that invites proposals for entrepreneurs, showcases them at a huge fair, and seeks to crowd source funding for them. This year it will be held April 6 and 7 in downtown Jacksonville.
Sandra’s One Spark proposal naturally reflects her love of art. Sandra created Mooi Designs, a line of travel friendly clothes showing some of the abstract art that Sandra loves. Mooi means “beautiful” in Dutch and is certainly valid for this line. The colors are vibrant and the clothes have simple lines that show off the colors. The line is created and designed by her under the name Alessandra Celeste.
The slogan for the Mooi Designs proposal is “Promoting Art Education Through Fashion…One Garment At A Time.” Part of the concept is that each garment will carry an educational “Artcard” with information on the student artist and the historical artist who inspired the work. Sandra had several designs made up into clothing to show at One Spark. One of them is a design taken from an artwork by one of the children she teaches. It shows the student’s interpretation of the Mona Lisa.
Sandra has a passion for art, and for art education. She teaches art to all ages from children through seniors. She said that one of her oldest students was 103. She currently teaches art to children in Callahan through Arts Alive. She encourages children to draw what they see through what is called blind drawing. That’s where you draw an object without looking at the paper. I tried it, figuring it would be a real challenge as drawing is not one of my strengths. Oddly enough I actually produced something that looked like my cat. She also teaches them to draw lines. When I raised my eyebrows over that, she said, “Anyone can draw a boring line.”
Sandra also teaches about artists. She just completed a short course in Masters of the High Renaissance for the Center for Lifelong Learning. This course addressed DaVinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. When she teaches children about artists, she encourages them to look up the artists and find something interesting about them. She said that a couple of times this exercise has led to some very interesting facts. The children loved that Picasso was kicked out of school several times and that Jackson Pollack’s nickname was “Jack, The Dripper.”
Join us in congratulating Sandra and wishing her well at One Spark.
Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. She is a chair of Arts & Culture Nassau, a city commission charged with support of the arts in Nassau County. She serves on FSCJ’s Curriculum Committee for the Center for Lifelong Learning. She is also the chair of the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.