Hellooo people!
Are you excited? We sure are! Earth Garden starts in just few days and we are already packing our cats pictures, figurines and other goodies into bags and suitcases. It will be our fourth time at Ta’ Qali National Park and we are truly thrilled! There’s nothing better than Maltese summer, good music, great company and lots of cats! Earth Garden is known for its excellent atmosphere, interesting visitors and good organization – you just cannot ask for more.
We have to make a bit of confession: last year has been so busy that we forgot to upload some beautiful pictures taken by Malicia. As you know, Rita is the marketing side of Vanadian Avenue and she is responsible for arts, crafts and stand at Earth Garden. Mal is the artsy – fartsy photographer, running around the whole festival site with big Canon camera and taking billions of pictures. Her photographic archives are bigger than those of Magnum and Reuters combined together and sometimes it takes weeks before pictures are edited and ready to be published online.
Since we haven’t posted anything from the last year’s festival on the blog yet, we decided to show you what have you missed. Please be aware – it’s going to be so cute, you will faint from sugar overload! Don’t say we didn’t warn ye – kids and cute animals are ruling the Internet!
A bit of reminder – last year’s Earth Garden took place on 31st of May -2nd of June 2013. Thousands of people arrived to celebrate ecology, culture, healthy life style and bohemian freedom. Ta’ Qali National Park was packed for three consecutive days – some guests even complained that they had to look hard to find a place to sit! It was a great event for us. We had our small store at Ethnic Market, we listened to some great tunes and had a lot of vegetarian delicacies to snack on. Rita sold several of her paintings and had a great time posing for pictures. This is what we call a life of a celebrated cat portraits! Meow!
Our biggest success, however was the cat drawing workshop for kids. The idea to teach the youngest visitors how to create abstract art was not new at all. For several years, we have been thinking of actually doing it, but for one reason or another, it was never used. It was Malicia who decided to give it a shot for the last time and the rest is history as they say. Many people stopped at our stand and discovered that painting could be so much fun. It’s not as easy at it seems but you can start doing it at any stage of your life. The results are beautiful. Please take a look at the pictures below to see for yourself!
Kids are wonderful creatures, we have to admit it. Give them a piece of paper, several coloured pens or markers and watch them create real masterpieces. They do not need much encouragement at all! A simple “please tell us what you think” is enough to have them talking, laughing and drawing at the same time. “Truly wonderful the mind of a child is” – Master Yoda was perfectly right on that (as about everything else too!)
Many kids approached us and took part in drawing classes, but we were only allowed to photograph only few of them. We are grateful to every parent that helped us to document the workshop and gave us their permission to picture the kids at work. Majority of adults were a bit suspicious and refused. We are not going to criticize them at all for doing this! The world is a big scary place and not everybody is honest. Please show respect to the kids and their wonderful parents and do not save or use those pictures anywhere. If you are parent/guardian of any child pictured here and you have changed your mind, please send us an email to rdabrowicz@yahoo.com We will take the pictures down if that’s your wish (but we will be very sad as we love how they turned out!) If you’d like to receive a bigger resolution of any photo – we’d like to hear from you too. Pictures are professionally edited and can be printed into posters of great quality. Let us know! (We will only send bigger resolution to family members – do not contact us if you are a stranger!)
1. Samantha – the girl in yellow cardigan: six year old cat lover and a great artist.
2. Jaimelee – art lover and creator extraordinaire: 8 years old. She drew two cat pictures and we are know a real talent when we see it.
3. Sam and Jaimelee together – great minds think alike and great artists usually collaborate with excellent results. Sam and Jaimelee are sisters and the talent runs in the family!
4. Liam and Julian – two best mates and partners in art. Liam is 8 years old and Julian is 6 years old. Both equally gifted with real passion for kittens and drawing. Julian even named his creation Max. What a lovely name!
5. Alissa – This four year old princess traveled a long way to Malta from South Africa and she wouldn’t miss Earth Garden for anything in the world. She sadly missed the workshop but was kind enough to leave us a lovely picture. Thank you kindly Alissa, you are a great artist as well!
Isn’t it wonderful? Art can bring the best out of everybody, that’s why we should create more. Forget about war, politics or conquests. Let’s grab some pencils and create something unique ! Don’t believe when they say that everybody is a critic. Everybody is an artist and that’s the truth!
It’s getting late so we need to go. Please visit us soon. We will show you some excellent artworks from adult participants!
xxx
Hug your cats (it’s an order!)
Rita and Malicia Dabrowicz
