Category: Art

Today, more pictures from Art & Soul, as promised.

These pictures are from Leslie Riley’s "Stitch It" class, which involved working with Lutrador, the stiff sort of underfacing found  at the bottom of upholstered furniture and mattresses.  In the morning portion of the class, we painted, burned, stamped and otherwise tortured the Lutrador to create our background pages.  Leslie taught her method for transferring from transparencies to fabric, and we spent the afternoon decorating our pages.

Although I viewed this more as a technique class, than as a finished project sort of thing, I did end with a small book of pretty (if rather hastily decorated — i always seem to talk to my neighbors too much in class) pages.  Here they are.

Once Upon A Time

Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow

Kapitel

The Good Part

The End

The class was a lot of fun, and Leslie is a gifted teacher.  I was sorry to hear she isn’t going to be teaching next year, but I hope the fact that she is focusing on her personal art means that we can look forward to some good new articles and maybe even a book from her.

It’s always wonderful to come back home!  I got up in the wee hours of the morning, in hopes of getting through Atlanta ahead of rush hour (note to self:  it is always rush hour in Atlanta, even at 5 a.m.) and was home in time to see my precious baby before he left for school.  I think I have been hugged more by all of my kids and the Judge (and licked by my doggies) than I can ever remember in one day.  It’s lovely to be back home.

Sadly, the Judge has spoiled Ollie.  He took him to the zoo or the park, or out for ice cream, every night while I was gone.  No longer content to sit on the couch and watch videos, he has been dancing all night and asking "where are we going tonight Daddy?" Oh the fringe benefits of being gone for a week!  The other kids are wonderful too, although the sixteen year old had a bad experience.  I was checking my email on the family computer tonight when his best friend im’d him:

Damn.
My Mom is really annoying me.
She’s editing my history paper.
&*%^ (expletive deleted) this.

And so on.

I was kind enough to jump on and say "sorry, it’s not Robert." 

It feels so good to be evil sometimes.  I feel sort of bad that I was unable to resist, but it was just far too tempting.  I guess not everyone is happy that I am home.

I have a few pictures from Art & Soul.  This is the very beautiful Belinda teaching a wet felting class.

We had fun making flower rings in her class Sunday night.

I also took her Monday class, felted bags, but mine was a horrible disaster.  It was so horrid, I just had to laugh at myself as I’m usually a very competent felter.  I promise to take pictures of the disaster when I get a moment, and I have some ideas of resurrecting it.  In the meantime, go to Kathy’s blog and look for her to post pictures of the incredibly beautiful flame colored purse she felted in the class.

It was wonderful to see so many of the women from the Divas and the Altered Workshop at A&S.  It’s always lots of fun to see old friends and make new ones.  We spent some time working on a surprise collaborative project.

I was also overjoyed to get to meet Carla Naron from Collage Cats, even though we never got a chance to sit down and talk at length.  Carla brought me a really beautiful collage that has found a new home on the shelf next to me desk so I can look at it frequently.

I’m off to unpack and hang out with my kiddies.  I promise photos of my book from Leslie Riley’s Lutrador class and more from Belinda’s felting later on this week.

Art & Soul is, in a word, wonderful.

That’s saying a lot, seeing as how I arrived sometime around 3 a.m. Saturday morning after a three day business meeting and very little sleep.

A couple of hours later, I was up and ready for Terry Berg’s Poloroid Transfer class and sort of wondering what the heck I was doing there and if I wouldn’t be better off sleeping.

A few hours later the answer to that question was a resounding "No!"  Terry was a really cool, laid back teacher, and the Poloroid process, using a daylab machine, was infinitely fascinating.  We did both dry transfers and wet emulsion transfers and I liked both processes, although I wish in retrospect that I had brought more architectural photos.  Here are the transfers that I did.

Throughout the day, I kept seeing more and more of my friends.  I was so happy to see everyone!  My roommate, Karen O,  stayed up to  see me in the wee hours of Saturday morning.  At breakfast, I finally met Carla Naron in person, after "knowing" her for years, and thought she was as sweet and beautiful in person as she is online!  Lou McCulloch was there at breakfast too.  Andi and Shirley were both in Poloroid Transfers with me — they were both lots of fun like always and it was great being in class with them!  After dinner (and Vendors Night!) all of the Altered Art Divas and extended family got together and had show and tell.  The art was just incredible!  I can’t do it right now, but I’m going to try to link to everyone’s blogs so you can see it all when I get a little time.

The Diva’s trading was as wonderful as the classroom art.  Simply beautiful!

And, I had a wee moment of indiscretion at Vendor Night, when I saw Misty Mawn and had to splurge on one of her beautiful paintings, which I am going to treasure! As trite as it sounds to say that someone’s artwork speaks to me, Misty’s really does and I have always been drawn to the soft, but sort of raw emotional feminine voice in her work.  Seeing a table full of her collage paintings in person was wonderful and she is as sweet in person as you would guess from her blog.

Fortunately, Karen decided we needed to go back to our room at a decent hour, so I have had a bit of sleep and am ready for Leslie Riley’s class this morning.

I have a bit of art inspiration to share with everyone today.  For my trip, Miss Ellie made me a wonderful picture to take along.  I wish I could become half the artist that she already is.

I’m finishing up my Vintage Fabric Book pages tonight — a little bit behind schedule, but they will still get there on time!  I knew as soon as we started discussing this book that I was going to use blues and browns.  The image is off of a commercial CD that I bought several years ago, never used, and fortuitously discovered while cleaning out my desk a while back.  The pretty image, which I have photoshopped a bit and printed out on cotton lawn, made selecting an old fashioned quote to go with it a snap.

My pages will be off in the mail and I’m onto the 24 hour countdown for Art & Soul!  I can’t wait!  I hope to be able to check in  from the trip, at least once or twice.  I’m already in negotiating phase about my suitcase (I can only take one as I have to survive the rush hour trip on MARTA to the Atlanta Airport).  I think I have pretty much decided that I can make do with minimal clothing as long as I can take three to four knitting projects.

This week’s art prompt at the Wednesday Stamper is the word "Framed."

I knew what I wanted to make as soon as I saw the prompt!  I sat at my desk at work and quickly sketched it out and then ran home on my lunch hour to start it.  Everything dried while I was back at work for the afternoon and I was able to complete it when I got home. Dinner is going to be a little bit late in my house tonight, I’m afraid.  Sometimes, Mama just has to make art.

Here it is, my take on framed.

I’m hoping the play on words translates for all of my German artist friends.  Just in case it doesn’t, I’ll explain that "framed" is also slang for wrongfully convicted of a crime or other-wrong doing.