Welcome to The Chic Assignment for August 2019!
Chic Assignment no. 1 Scott Joplin's Ragtime music- Maple Leaf Rag, The Entertainer
We are departing from classical music this month to explore the world of Ragtime through the wildly talented Scott Joplin. Joplin is most famous for his pieces, The Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer (chances are, if you have a piano student in your home, they have played The Entertainer). I am going to leave a few videos for you to listen to here.
Here is an actual recording of Scott Joplin playing The Maple Leaf Rag (!)
Here is over an hour and a half of Joplin's music, The Best of Scott Joplin.
I will go over Joplin's biography more in the check-in later this month.
Chic Assignment no. 2 We are going to explore the artwork of Childe Hassam
I wanted to choose an artist I didn't know much about for this month's assignment so I could discover a whole new world of art. I looked up artists who were alive and creating around the same time Scott Joplin was, and came across Childe Hassam.
From The Smithsonian American Art Museum...
Hassam spent many summers on Appledore Island off the coast of Maine. Every year, he and a circle of musicians, writers and other artists made an informal colony based at the home of his friend, the poet Celia Thaxter. In Thaxter's gardens and on the rocky beaches, Hassam used the flickering brushwork and brilliant colors he had adopted in France to capture the spangled light of Appledore's brief summer. This painting evokes the leisurely, seasonal rhythms of America's priveleged families in the last years before the Great War. A beautifully dressed woman shields her face from the sun; she looks down and away, as if absorbed in the song of a sandpiper, the island bird that inspired Celia Thaxter's most famous children's poem.
I am leaving a link to this website where you can see more of Hassam's exquisite work. Let me know which piece moves you. I'll share my pick with you during the mid-month check-in.
Chic Assignment no. 3 The art of letter writing
This month we are going to take up the lost art of letter writing. Write a handwritten letter and send it off in the mail to a friend or family member. Think of how neat it would be if 10,000 letters were circulating this month delighting 10,000 recipients!
Receiving a handwritten letter these days is so rare that the person you write to will be so pleasantly surprised. Don't worry if you don't have fancy stationery, any paper will do. I would love to know updates about your letter and how the recipient reacted. Be sure to let us know in the comments.
Chic Assignment no. 4 Prepare your wardrobe for the transition in season. We are headed into fall and our Southern Hemisphere friends are headed into spring. It's time to transition our ten-item wardrobes to the upcoming season. I plan to have some content on my YouTube channel walking through this process. As for your assignment: this is a great time to assess your wardrobe from this season to decide what works and what didn't. What should stay and what should go and how you plan to store your out-of-season items going forward. It's also a great time to start planning for fall.
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Comment of the Week
Jenny A. writes, "In my very early married life and older lady gave me advice I never forgot. Don’t worry about the things you haven’t got, and look after the things you have! I’ve always followed that advice given over 60 years ago."
Hi Jenny, I loved your comment. What great advice!
Thank you for participating in The Chic Assignment for August. I look forward to reading about your updates. Tag me on social media with #TheChicAssignment or leave your comments here.
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