Time to Leave

This has been a tremendous week of hard work and great fun and lots of growth. I have had such a delightful time with this group of women. It has been so exciting to see people recognize that they are artists and have some ability and will keep on working to create even more art. Each person has wandered through the exercises and have made their own work in their own way. For some, working with fused fabric allowed more spontaneity, for some working in the abstract was a little difficult. But all created some wonderful designs.

The first three days were spent working through the exercises and elements and principles of design. On Wednesday they each started making for 8 x 10's which have been posted. They continued working on those on Thursday, some doing some stitching and some waiting to stitch until they return home. And then they got started making even more art!

Unfortunately I did not get pictures of all the work that each person was producing. I don't know quite how that happened but it did.

So enjoy the ideas coming from my students!

Suzanne was working really hard and created some great pieces:

Susan H. finished off this little piece and went on to do several more which I did not all get but here is one more of them:



Our other Susan went charging ahead and did this piece and one other that I just didn't get a picture of but was just great and so very different!



And then Sheila, from Canada, went to town! She finished two of her 8 x 10 pieces and put together these two small pieces, working from her design thumbnails:



Not to be outdone, Moira from Tasmania, Austria, produced a number of interesting pieces but unfortunately I failed to get pictures of them buthere is one:


Melinda worked on a eye study for three pieces, did several other interesting things and finished up with the dancers below:


Mary was also very busy and created this piece which is ready for quilting:


Alison came in with three huge notebooks of photographs from her travels all over the world and said she needed to learn how to focus as she just had too many ideas. She created several great pieces, which, again I didn't get photographed but these two studies were done from her thumbnails, same image but different color ways.


And, last, but not least, Alice did the stitching on the piece she had started earlier and also did other work which I didn't get.


As a teacher, I can't tell you how happy I am to watch students absorb so much, internalize it and play with it.

I leave for home this afternoon and return to my own commitments for a magazine article due in a couple of days. I am also still waiting to hear exactly what the county is looking for in their commission as in December I will need to submit some samples to the board for their final input. And then to get another article done! Well, at least I don't have to pack up and ship anything for Form Not Function at the Carnegie! Didn't get in there this time so will try again.

Better Art by Design Class in Person

My poor students. They have been working so hard for the past three days and finally things slow down a little bit so they can begin doing some bigger pieces of work more or less on their own with guidance as they desire. It has been a busy three days with lots of little exercises to do, ideas to learn and colors to try out. We are absolutely enjoying our stay at the Greenville Arms Inn in Greenville, New York. During the summer they have painting workshops and during the cooler spring, fall and winter they have fiber workshops since we are in doors. A great place to study.


Above are Susan and Suzanne working hard on one of their exercises. In the next picture you see Susan, Suzanne and Susan all working together, hard on their color exercises on Tuesday. They were still smiling then.



Above are Shirley on the left and Alison on the right. In the next picture is Moira from Australia on the left and Sheila on the right.

Above is Melinda, working away with her glue stick. The next picture shows Melinda and Mary hard at work with their color exercises.


Alice is trying to find the just right color.


these images are of 8 x 10 exercises done on Wednesday afternoon and evening. They have not been quilted yet, although the one on the right has been started.


More images of 8 x 10 exercises.. some appear larger because I had to take them by themselves so the images are larger but the work isn't.


And some more...


and some more....

And some more....


And the last two of these 8 x 10s.

Each student did two 8 x 10's yesterday afternoon. It was really a lot of fun to see what everyone did. There are some big growth spurts for some of the students. One student has only been quilting for a year and is off and ready to fly. What fun for a teacher!

They have all be filling up their sketchbooks with notes and their many exercises along with the class lessons. I will get some pictures of those to show you.

I am so proud of these ten women who have committed to working very hard and being open to change. What a delightful group of women to work with! They all have a great sense of humor and put up with me very well!

A Day Exploring

What a fun day this has been. I got a great night's sleep and caught up and woke up rested and ready to go. The weather is wonderful...in the low 60's, with a nice brisk snap to the air. One of my students, Sheila from Ottawa, arrived yesterday and we met at breakfast and decided to go exploring for the day. First we headed to Hudson to stop by the quilt store to pick up a couple of things and then wandered some around town which is delightful and interesting. Then, since we are not far from Woodstock...off we went to Woodstock.

Aging hippies live there along with lots of normal people. Lots of tourists there. Of course, the concert did not happen in town but out at a farmer's field out of town. I gained some credit when I was speaking to someone who had been here "when" when I explained that during that time I was at Cal Berkeley during the free speech movement. Can't be at both places at once!

We had lunch in town and then decided to head back to the Greenville Arms. Well, the road we thought we were on disappeared and all we had was a map without a lot of detail. The countryside has a lot of detail, including many little roads that were not on our map. We ended up going up and down the Catskills and in circles. Finally, we saw a man out working in his yard and pulled over to ask for help.

TGhe nice man, around 60+ years came over to the care to help up. He was right at the passenger window so I had a really good look at the longest, straightest chest hair that I have ever seen. It was much longer that the hear on my head! And white! I had a hard time listening to his directiolns between my unreal interest in his chest hair and the one inch long hair standing out on the top of his nose. Fortunately, Sheila listened carefully and we found out way back in time to change before our evening wine time and dinner.

There were still a lot of leaves on teh trees...many yellow ones and the red maples were everywhere. It was so much fun looking around and seeing a different kind of countryside. I took pictures but then my battery became worn down. I will download those tomorrow and then post some. What a fun day!

My students are all here except for the one day student so we did an orientation tonight and tomorrow we get started on our class! I am really looking forward to this and I think the students are also! (at least that is what they have said!)

On the Road

I am now at the Greenville Arms in Greenville, New York.

I have come to teach my Better Art by Design class in person for five days. What a treat for me! After an all day trip by plane, I arrived at this beautiful inn and got settled in, went for a short walk and went to sleep for 10 hours. I just have not been sleeping very well for the past week and this was the perfect place to get caught up. I am going out today with one of my students who is from Canada and we will look around before our big welcoming dinner tonight.

A week ago, in a moment of weakness, I allowed myself to agree to a short deadline for an article for Quilting Arts magazine. It has to do with a new line of paints and how they work for textile artists. Well, when Pokey said yes, she asked for the finished work to be to her by Nov 10...of course I could do that! Well, the past week has just been spent creating the fabric in order to create the work! I have found that I really work best if I have a challenge and deadline...at least most of the time. But at the same time I have been getting ready for this class and will be gone a week.

Not to worry, I do intend to do a lot of the work in the studio in the evenings, which should be lots of fun. The studio here is very nice and will work well.

So, I am off to take pictures which I will post later! Stay tuned!

My Web Site

I have spent hours today and on a couple of other days resizing images and then today uploading those images and getting all the information on to my website. Then came the time to actually check the website and find all of the errors and go back and fix them.

I know why I don't do detail work...

So, come on by and check out the new work in the Abstracts Gallery and the Small Works Gallery!

Great Fun and Great News

Well, I got to my studio yesterday and finished the cleaning up and then was able to sit down for about fifteen minutes until I got a call that the group was only a few minutes away so I went outside to flag them down. This is the view from my door...BART travels parallel to my studio...when it is heading toward the left it is coming from a station so it isn't very noisy. When it is coming the other way, it is really so loud you can't hear someone talking to you when you are on the street. I am in an old industrial neighborhood.The group from PIQF arrived and were able to park right in front of my studio. I had been outside sweeping the sidewalk before they got there as the street is so filthy from the cars, trucks, and BART, etc. I didn't get any pictures of the bus or the people as I was a little too busy.

So, they all came in to my studio via the first studio and then back to mine...the entry way is to the left of the window in the back...you are looking toward the front of my studio at my design wall. The table is one I use for sorting fabric, etc. Beneath are boxes of decorator fabric samples and I put out three boxes for the ladies to help themselves to...they had a a great time cutting out fabric and some took the books home...I have so much I just wanted to get them out of there!
This is from the same vantage point only looking toward the right side of my studio...you can see George int he background and get an idea of the windows that I have in this place...the light is wonderful but in the summer it gets hot. I have just realized that a lot of the windows have the caulking coming out so maybe if I recaulk some of them the wind won't come in so easily! That's what I get for cheap rent! You also see my big table on the right which had a lot of my 8 x 10 color blocks on them.
So, turning around from where I was standing, I am now looking toward the back section.

Going in to the back area, you see my metal shelving unit with dyes, etc and my paper table. This is where I am now doing my collages which is very nice to have as before I have been working on a little 3' table which is completely covered so I really only work on about 1 square foot of cleared space!For decoration I have put up three of my collages which I dutifully put on mat board so they would look better.
And now we are just past my paper table and are looking at the big bookcase which is only slightly filled at this point. It is holding a few of my books that I use for collaging and I will be moving more down there along with other stuff.

You can see the table at the end which was put up for this and has some of my smaller works on it for show.
And then coming back around you can see my feeble attempt at further decorating by putting some of my many type blocks out right in front of two bins full of silk screens from my themorfax.
And here we are right back in the main area with all my paints and surface design stuff right handy for the big table.

Poke Bolton is never going to want my studio in her Studios Magazine! It sure doesn't look anything like Jane Davila's really nice and neat studio with her hand made furniture that she built...no exposed 4x4's for her!

This past week, along with cleaning and arranging the studio, I have been busy doing more color blocks. Each of these is 8 x 10 and I am really happy with them. The black and orange pieces use left over pieces from my Life Circles series but with turquoise added to them which I think is really cool.
When I got home last night I was checking my email and found a letter from the Arts Commission. I am one of several artists who are receiving commissions but the details are not available yet. I should get that information as to how many pieces they want and what type within a couple of weeks. And then there is a board meeting to attend so I can bring some examples to show them. Oh, I needed this to pay my rent! Happy days!

The Studio, Almost There

Last weekend my husband, son-in-law, David, and Spider Man helped create the shelving unit.

Then, during the week my husband came back and finished it up. This is a very primitive unit but is 24" deep and 16' long. They have been created to hold bins of fabric.

This area is the new part that I have just acquired. It is 20 feet deep and ten feet across. Below you can see one of the tables I have put just across from the shelves. There is also a six foot bookcase along the same wall back in the back.
To the right of the table, which I am using for paper arts and am currently working on altering a book, is the industrial strength shelving unit that I have moved around and it holds bins of dyes, paints, all the stuff I use with them and assorted silkscreening stuff. The book case in the back holds books for ephemera, old type sets, some art books that have worked their way down to the studio, and assorted other stuff but it is only 1/3 filled at this point. Against the back end of this space is some stacked lumber, etc that I need to get out of there so I can hang art work on the wall.

Below is back to the main part of the studio with California Dreaming 3 hanging on the design wall and a table in front piled high with batiks that are already fused. They are there because I am currently working on more of the Color Blocks.
Below is a color block that I was working on today but when I got everything fused and hung up to look at for a while, I have decided that I am not happy with it but may be able to salvage part of it by cropping.
This is just the start of the piece. I work standing up, either at the design wall for big things or on my 4x8' table that is counter height. This is a great table and I have made a 2x4 ironing board that sits on the end of the table or can be taken off to get it out of the way for painting fabrics. I also have a large cutting mat that covers half of the table.

What you don't see is where George sits in his table. As you can also see, the place is not very exciting and I have to get it "decorated" with my work in the next two days so the space is presentable for the tour coming on Friday from PIQF.

I did take a little time off this weekend to care for the grandsons for a little bit while their parents went shopping. Ashton is becoming my drum player...we play my drum together. He is the only one allowed to use a stick on the drum as he can't strike it strong enough to make a problem but he also can't hit it hard enough with his hand to make a good sound.
He is very serious about what he is doing and will play with me for half an hour. Sometimes he stands at the drum but he only reaches three inches over the top but he will flail away at it.

Tomorrow I meet with the Alameda County Arts Commission to discuss my proposal for art work for the Juvenile Justice Center. I got through the first round and there are 22 artists going in for presentations during the next three days for the Juvenile Center and then another 11 are going in for another project. Two weeks ago I took in my written proposal and tomorrow I will take in work to show. Then I have to wait several weeks to see if I can any commissions. In my category, mid-career artist, they have commissions up to $8000 but all the work must be smaller than 50 inches so I have presented several plans. Wish me well!

Time in the Studio

I have been spending a lot of time in my studio, which has grown. Unfortunately, it hasn't been to get art quilts made!

Previously I had a space that was almost square and another woman was renting an area just past mine which was about 10 x 20'. Not really much room but she was a painter and stored most of her work there. There was a large cabinet about 18 x 4' within which paintings could be stored as in vertical racks. Our land lady asked her to move out due to some difficulties with her and she was supposed to be out Sept 15. Well, since I was going to be gone in Texas for part of that time and she wanted to do a last open studio and sale before she left, the exit date was moved to Oct 1. She didn't get out, completely, until late Oct 4.

So, since that time I have been really busy working in that space to get things organized. My dear husband and my son-in-law have taken that big storage thing down and are remaking it so that I will have three shelving units that are 24" deep and 18' long. So while they were working on Sunday, I was busy doing other things there...like sorting through stuff.

Monday I went back in to really work on sorting things and getting the bins straightened out. I have now moved a big heavy shelving unit which had my paints on it to another wall, added a table to work on, and have made two trips to Wal Mart which is just down the street from my studio in order to lug in more storage bins of assorted sizes. Things are getting much more organized and after I did a lot of work yesterday, I sat down at my table and was working on an altered book that I am doing for some friends about their two trips to Paris. It is a lot of fun and I will be posting pictures of it and my studio.

Tomorrow, DH and SIL will go down and finish the last of the wooden shelving unit for me. My DH builds things to last...or rather, he tends to overbuild. I have learned through the 39 years that we have been married to just get out of his way when he decides he will build something for me.

Once that is done, I can finish getting things organized. Then, I need to decorate it!

All of this is in preparation for the PIQF tour coming to visit my studio on Oct 15! I do hope to get some work going so they won't see an empty studio!