Tag Archives: baby

Arting for 365 Day 286: MAX, Painted Wall Letters

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Three 18" x 13" acrylic on wooden letters

Three 18″ x 13″ acrylic on wooden letters

Goal: To create one piece of art each day for 365 consecutive days

Another friend, another baby, another project!

Some wonderful friends of ours were hoping I’d be able to paint a mural for them in their baby-to-come’s new room, but because they are renting their place, it wasn’t possible. Instead, they came up with the great idea of buying letters for me to paint.

They gave me free reign as to the direction I could take, which is always fun! After looking at the theme of the room, which is adorable African animals with a variety of sports balls, I came up with this. The imagery is definitely a bit older than the rest of the room’s decor, but I’m thinking this means he’ll be able to grow up with them a bit.

I’m hoping they’ll like them as much as I enjoyed making them.

Day 286 Max M Day 286 Max M DetailDay 286 Max A Day 286 Max A DetailDay 286 Max X Day 286 Max X Detail

Arting for 365 Day 43: Wired for Empathy

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Day 43 (6/10/12): Yawn for Empathy

~5.75 x 2 x 3″ Mixed Media

Goal: To create one work of art each day for 365 consecutive days

As I was piddling around, trying to figure out what in the heck I was going to create for day 43’s project, I decided to turn on a Ted talk. I chose a presentation by Frans de Waal titled Moral Behavior in Animals. The talk seemed pretty interesting and chimps, which always promise to be adorable, were going to have a role in it.

De Waal had lots of good info, but what stuck with me most was a very minor piece about yawn contagion. Turns out that those contagious yawns we experience are partly due to people being empathetic. De Waal presented a study proving that chimps are not immune to contagious yawns either, helping to prove that they too experience empathy. I was amazed by the whole idea.

I began looking for images of yawning people and came across a picture of a yawning baby. It turns out, that while babies yawn, they don’t experience contagious yawning. This fact got me thinking about the relationship between human and chimp. I wanted to explore the idea of adult chimps being more human than humans at certain stages of life- at least in terms of morality.

This piece available for purchase at or by emailing me at micah@azzlsoft.com