bethanylisi

I was raised as a member of a half-Irish, half-Italian family. This meant that depending on which grandmother babysat me, my lunch would either be pasta and meatballs or boiled potatoes and hot dogs. For ten years, my breakfast of choice was a frosted strawberry Poptart. I would never toast said tart, nor would I eat the crusts. I've moved onto more healthy breakfast options since then and the English major in me wants to write something about this detour being a metaphor for moving from an artificial to a natural state of existence, but I'll resist the urge.

My employment history ranges from cashier, to farm worker, to graphic designer, to teacher and tutor, to my current position as a college fundraiser an educational writer. My best job was a day camp junior counselor when I was 15, where I made $30 a week (that's right, A WEEK).

My childhood was like many others - summer days of riding my bike, making brownies on Friday nights, and being chased down my driveway by a donkey. I grew up in a small rural town in Rhode Island that has no street lights, a country general store, and a swimming hole. For two years I lived in New York City, which had millions of people, various cuisines, and a penchant for loud horn honking. Today I reside in Western Massachusetts and moonlight as the Brawny paper towel man.

To some scholars my name, Bethany, means "house of figs." Ponder that one.

"Why reinvent the wheel?"

I learned this invaluable phrase during my three years in graduate school, while working towards a Masters in Education. Never mind the important theories of Backwards Design, Multiple Intelligences, and Constructivism - it was this idiom that I secured tightly in my mind's creative vault.

While my current career pathway has taken a detour from the original itinerary, I find that the art of taking what already exists and molding it to be even better can be applied to any situation. It could be changing the assessment in a successful lesson plan or adding an extra ingredient to a much-loved recipe.

With this mindset, I began to percolate the idea of Copycat Mashup. Why try to invent a new method of art and design when so many wonderful techniques exist? Why not take these techniques and mold them into my own craft? Why reinvent the wheel?

Copycat Mashup is a blog that celebrates art, design, craft and creativity. It is part art history lesson and part DIY project. It is a place for me to challenge myself creatively - the challenge of taking two completely different artistic styles and combining them into something beautiful (and if not beautiful, then most definitely, ahem, "special").