Baseball creating Art!

Listening and watching the world series and thinking about my connections to baseball...



In the Zone monotype Christine Kashuba

I didn’t always love baseball, in fact when I was in elementary school I would be the kid who was purposely too sick to go to school on Sports Day.  In Grade Seven I started to play flag-football and my love affair with sports began. I wasn’t really good, but I loved the teamwork and the feeling of accomplishment that came with playing.

 My exposure to baseball continued to expand when I met and married a baseball fan and player.  Early on he tried to teach me to pitch, and it’s a good thing I was throwing towards the side of a very big brick building!  Participating as a team mom when our boys began to play ball helped me to understand the basics of the game. I listened, watched and learned more about the game of baseball and all it entailed.  When our youngest son started to play I thought I might be able to coach beginners so I signed up to coach and went to the coaching clinic.  I studied the coaching manual, went to the library and researched the physics and history of baseball, asked a lot of questions and got lots of help from other parents.  I ended up coaching for a few years which even included pitching to the kids so they could hit. Baseball was a staple of our summer activities and we spent a lot of time at the ball park.

 Fast forward to the fall of 2008 when we went to watch some of the last games in the old Yankee and Shea Stadiums in New York and a couple of games at the famous Boston Fenway park.  I absorbed the feelings, sounds and sights of being at the ballpark. When I returned I wanted to incorporate those experiences into my UBC Okanagan printmaking class.  I thought I would be incorporating the textures and visual imagery of the ballparks, but then the idea of throwing baseballs to create prints was born resulting in monotypes created using the baseball as the press...

 

UBCO Permanent Collection      http://gallery.ok.ubc.ca/pac/main.php?g2_itemId=4085