The green shiny double decker in front of Platt with a talkative smiling well dressed driver on its steps certainly brought  an excitement to a calm uneventful morning on 63rd Street in front of  Platt. Fifty one students and four teachers are hurriedly boarding the bus as none of us rode in such a luxurious  double decker!

Before we know it we are off on our way  to Los Angeles to see an architectural marvel Walt Disney Concert Hall and a magical Tim Burton exhibition in Los Angeles County Museum.  Everyone aboard is in  great mood, talking, laughing, joking and  two teachers  quickly put on red Platt aprons to serve fresh bagels with cream cheese. Anything to make our students happy while offering them opportunities to widen their horizon and inspiration!

Just in two pleasant hours we are in downtown Los Angeles and a quick  turn into Grant Street  reveals the beautiful shiny curves of Frank Gehry masterpiece: Walt Disney Concert Hall. What a magnificent sight. We stand in front of one of the most intriguing buildings America has with quite a story  of its creation to share. As Jorn Utson and its unique and unimaginably attractive Sydney Opera House has its thorny road behind, so does Gehry with his Disney Concert Hall. But that’s the past: Today it stands proudly to share a great  admiration of a great genius Walt Disney, and to offer music to our souls. We are lucky to see the entire interior including the concert hall with almost perfect  acoustics (acoustician Y. Toyota), appealing welcoming  interior with replicas of Disney’s’  colorful living room carpet and theirs blue chairs and couches scattered everywhere. We admire the roof garden with 45 mature trees donated right from the garden by different families around Los Angeles (community!),  and we all love the “Rose for Lilian” – a very large rose fountain made exclusively from Delft’s Dutch porcelain that Disney family used and loved. (Gehry hand selected in Holland 200 vases and 8.000 blue and white tiles to make the fountain.) It is hard to believe, while admiring the surface of shiny or buffed titanium surface, that the former plan was to clad the hall in stone but the budget cut dictated to use titanium instead.
The entire building  is a true homage to a genius Disney, built by his colleague genius with an  extraordinary talent and extraordinary revolutionary vision. All of the studenst were at awe.

Los Angeles County Museum is the biggest museum west of Chicago with a million visitors in a year and 100.000 art pieces.  The  large campus (built in 1961) is not impressive at a first sight as its architect William Pereira (he built  among other buildings- Geisel library at UCSD and Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco) belived only in building’s function. The new addition from 2004 from Renzo Piano is much more attractive. Nevertheless it is a place to be  for various extraordinary shows and programs. We came mainly to  view the Tim Burton Exhibition and some of the permanent collection.

It  could not be better exhibit to take our students to than the  Tim Burton’s . Not only because his art is so close to our students’ heart but to see his personality.  The exhibit  mainly follows  Tim Burton’s diligence, perseverance, it shows how uninhibited he was from the initial refusals of his art, it shows his constant hard work, ethics, style, stories, and especially  incredible leap of imagination. I could not get over the fact how consistent he has always been. Consistent in his urge to offer his work to publishers ever since he was fifteen; consistent in his  magical albeit macabre style, consistent in his visual language, consistent in his long list of influence. (Ensor, Redon, Rouoalt, Nolde, Dix, etc.) I was astonished by his talent but especially by his drive and unusual vision. He knows what he wants and especially what he does not want. His art has uniqueness and charm of unusual stories peopled by unusual characters that just strung the right accord in us…

To view on the way home his Corpse Bride was a fit end of one great trip. I came home and indulged myself in reading all I could about one modest, hardworking, extraordinary artist.

We went to the trip, we enjoyed tremendously and came back inspired. We could not ask for more!

[View with PicLens]

Brad Maxey is our well respected and loved teacher’s assistant. Everyone at Platt  College knows that he is not only an excellent graphic designer but also a fine artist.   Next to his graphic design education, his academic background is in painting and print making (a bachelor degree  from Virginia Commonwealth University).

In August 2011 Brad’s artwork was accepted to a prestigious  juried  exhibit  called XX, held in a charming music and art library Anatheneum in La Jolla.

Several of us, his Platt friends and colleagues, went to see his unique acrylic paintings.

What a success Brad had! His paintings take you to a places where all is calm, only gentle breeze is ruffling your hair and you get lost in the beauty of  moment.

Congratulations, Brad. We are  proud of you!

Enjoy several Brad’s thoughts on art  and life, and photographs of his paintings.

I am always taken aback by a vision of people offering events bringing joy, beauty and showcase of skill. White Rock, British Columbia, Canada, started 62 years ago a Spirit of the Sea Festival, fully driven by community, to show off the beauty of the seaside town. Several Imperial Beach residents, in 1980, were inspired by the mentioned Canadian festival’s sand castle competition. Living in Imperial Beach – the sweeping beaches, historical pier and half forgotten seaside town – offered opportunity to invite professional and amateur sand castle builders to show off what they can do.  Here we are thirty one years later and the event attracts 400,000 people! It is admirable even more that it is all volunteer accomplished.

Platt College ten member team worked for some time to come up with a theme and a modus operandi how to turn the vision into a piece of sand art in only five hours. And they did.  Our students belonged to an  amateurs category “Sea Creatures”, as they did last year, and decided to sculpt a sunk boat “USS Drowning Man” over which sits a giant octopus, its arms wrapped through the remnants of the ship. What a challenge!

The team arrives on the designated spot early on Sunday morning to plan and discuss their strategy. Nine o’clock strikes and Platt group  jumps into the sand. All members are equipped with shovels, buckets, brooms, knifes, smoothers and such, especially with wide smiles and contagious enthusiasm.  It is joy to observe them work bent down in sweat  only  to see them straighten up the back every so often, shield their eyes and peruse gradual progress of their creation. Everyone has his role – bringing buckets of water, shoveling, smoothing, offering solutions, moistening the sand, sculpting details, chiseling letters… The end product is not only attractive, clever, well rendered, and quite popular  (there was an ever-present crowd around the working team expressing their support), but the judges thought so highly of the piece that Platt team was again rewarded second place in their category! What a success! Congratulation!

I think it is important to support activities offering inspiration and good time. This time our students were the one bringing joy to many festival participants, at least several thousands of them. The beauty of the California beach, the surf, the sun, the happy crowd and hardworking competitors made of  ordinary July’ s Sunday one joyful, memorable summer day. We are glad Platt contributed to the summer beauty with its own talent. Congratulation!

The glory goes to: Victor Silva, Otto Lai, Janie Johnson, Carrie Ann Caranci, Krysha Brzuza, Geoffrey Canady, Alana Brannon, Adriana Aguiar, Erica Miller, David Wagner, Gloria Aguilar.

[View with PicLens]



Every five weeks or so we  like to put up at Platt courtyard a celebration of various events. In June we celebrated nothing more than the arrival of summer! We wanted to make one ordinary  Wednesday into a special and enjoyable Wednesday by dressing our courtyard with colorful  baloons and several canvases with fine art for inspiration, and  by offering a nice snack of muffins, tasty lemonade and fair-trade delicious coffee.

I love to listen to our courtyard’s happy buzz  – loud talk, background music, laughs…. I love as much the scent of coffee  in  the air and to observe our students huddled over  baskets full of muffins…  It sets a pleasant tone for the day not only for the students, but as much for us, the teachers and administrators.

We all  share one purpose: To offer to our students the best ambiance for their education and to offer them an opportunity to enjoy their school life.  We hope that eveyone enjoyed!

[View with PicLens]

There is nothing more pleasant than to hear children’s laughter at our college courtyard! It brightens my day  to hear “Good Morning” sung in unison by twenty two third graders smiling from ear to ear when  our Photoshop teacher Terry Warner shows the kids the  tricks and magic of that imaginative software. “Can you make the girl a purple mustache?” “Of course!” And once the mustache appears on the display the kids  giggle and laugh so loud that our students cannot help but burst in laughter, too. The beauty of child’s innocence and the  ability to play and enjoy is contagious!

It is our second year we invited Grande Vista Elementary School third grade students and their devoted, effective and creative  teacher Marilyn Possela to Platt.  How did it all come about? Our English teacher Lynda Felder goes to elementary schools (within Old Globe reading program) to read to the students stories, and the children, inspired by the read stories, write about the characters and illustrate them. Once Old Globe ran out of money for the program we offered to publish the stories with the illustrations in a booklet form that goes home with each child. So – an idea came about to invite the students to a college for a fun field trip.

And the children were fascinated. Of course! We teach animation that they love, we devise websites that they visit, we create creatures for video games that they love to play, we can make things disappear and reappear, we can make people look funny, we can take a picture of our children-guests and make the picture into a postcard sent from  Hawaii, Japan, Paris or London…We are a school of magic for an eight year old child. A child wanting nothing more than to be lost in the world of fantasy and make-belief, magic and beauty.

We showed them all we are about and explained what it is to be a college student, what it is to set goals and what it takes to fulfill them. The third graders were truly fascinated. I am glad they were. I am glad we were able to put concrete images to an abstract word as “college” is. I am sure at least one of them came home that day and said at the family table: “I think I will study at college”. And his or her mom smiled to herself and perhaps did not even realize that maybe, just maybe that day at Platt one small child from Tierra Santa Elementary School may slowly albeit unconsciously work toward an already set goal. To study something fun at college!

[View with PicLens]