Art – Page 25 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

Mary Jo Mcgraw

Posted on August 26, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

I have taken a lot of art classes in the last few years with some incredible teachers. This has always mean leaving Birmingham, which isn’t exactly a haven for altered artists. But yesterday afternoon, a local stamp store offered a short class with Mary Jo McGraw. My goofy friend Susan (I have to say that, because she refused to be in a picture saying "no, you’ll just put it on your blog and say ‘this is my goofy friend Susan’") told me about this class a couple of months ago and I have been looking forward to it ever since.

I’m just going to have to say that Mary Jo is an incredible teacher and try to leave it at that because otherwise I would go on and on and on. She’s smart, she’s practical, she’s funny, and she’s a great teacher. I’m going to make a point of taking as many of her classes as I can from now on!

Here is a picture of me towards the end of the class. In my left hand there is a print using Color Box chalk re-inkers to create Madras inspired backgrounds. The right hand is a mono-print done using the same reinkers and rubber stamps — definitely a technique I’ll be using a lot. And I was so happy that Mary Jo showed a lot of new ways to use one of my favorite products, Microglaze.

The Exciting & The Ordinary

Posted on August 24, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

My day was split right in half between the ordinary and the exciting today. It was a regular old boring day at work. But, I came home to some yarn from last night dyeing on my racks and I was really amazed by the depth of the colors (yes, I’m still on the patina thing).

This is one of my last eight skeins of organic suffolk yarn — no more until they shear next April. But it’s beautiful and lovely and I’m going to sell at least a few skeins on Midday Faire. It’s always fun for me to do yarn on Midday Faire because we only open the store up every other Tuesday, right at 12 noon eastern time. I’m also excited because my long term website redesign is almost complete and I am looking forward to having my new site up over the weekend, complete with collage art, hand dyed yarns, handpainted fabric, wearable art and some very cool altered journals (and no fear — I won’t be leaving behind our playsilks or other creative playthings. Even though they have no place in that mix I’m very attached to them and won’t stop offering them). Make sure you come back and check in over the weekend because I will be linking as soon as the new site is up!

I also came home to *gasp* this incredible package of yarn. Silk and Cashmere. Oh my.

The ordinary was nice too when I got home. My sweet doggie, Tori was happy to see me.

And my sweet husband, who endured a sort of difficult week at work because he is a man of his convictions, came home. I’m always happy to see him, even when he screws up his face and gives me the "why the hell are you taking a picture of me?" look.

Creative Musings

Posted on August 13, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

This has been one of those weekends where everytime I turn around to put something down I see something that gives me an idea and makes me want to start something new — creativity overdrive. There are now approximately 27 1/2 projects scattered throughout the house, ranging from a 3" tall altar to a new fall jacket for my daughter, and lots in between. Also lots of dust bunnies and piled up laundry. I’m trying to ignore everything that falls into that category.

Some fabulous notebooks I picked up a couple of months ago suddenly inspired me and I’m working on turning them into altered journals. Here they are in progress — I’m still working on the design and working in some pieces of old lace but they are fun, even incomplete.

Cool yarn happened this weekend too. My friend Amy was talking about making some body stuff with a day of the dead theme and it got me thinking about knitting and I ended up doing some graybrown/black yarns, thinking about fall, cooler weather, and scarves for the men in my life (or at least pretending to make scarves for them so I could wear them myself). This is some of the Suffolk I got last month, dyed up in a Day of the Dead inspired colorway. Although the pictures don’t show it too well, the black runs completely through the yarn in a most delightful way.

I wasn’t the only one whose muse ran wild this weekend. My seven year old altered a cigar box for her new penpal. When I grow up, I want to be half the artist she is.

Color That We Don’t Always See

Posted on August 7, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

The colors that we saw on vacation were spectacular. I know the colors around us all the time are probably equally as beautiful, but I seem to get sensitized to them and don’t notice them. At Callaway they were omnipresent and I was so struck by them a couple of times that I stopped to sketch or note color combinations I wanted to use in collage pieces or for dyeing later on.

I found that the few pieces I did while we were there were influenced by the colors around me. I worked in bolder colors, and used more red, a color I generally don’t focus on, or at least not starting out, but I found myself choosing red over and over while working after the children had gone to bed at night.

There was one specific spot on the lake where the colors were so beautiful — the sparkling water touched the shore that was mostly evergreen, but had touches of pink laurel and some purpley-blue flowers i didn’t know the names of. I was so awestruck by the way it made me feel to sit there and look at the reflection coming off of the water. I’ve done a couple of text mixes today and am going to try and represent those colors on some yarn, maybe even for a sweater for myself, later on this week.

Inspiration from a friend

Posted on July 31, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

My wonderful friend Karen made a beautiful pink collage and posted it on her blog last week. The image of the white writing over the pink text really stayed with me and I decided to use her piece as the inspiration to play with some pink pieces, since pink is a color I don’t seem to work in very often.

These three collages are the result:

Art Girls

Posted on July 25, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

This is the piece I’m going to donate to the preamble party for Birmingham Artwalk. I’m quite attached to it, having only made it this week and specifically for this purpose. The Preamble Party is August 10, in the loft district in Birmingham. If you are reading this and you are local, come on down to the party and say hi! I am nervous as a cat about this whole little deal and it would be great to see a few friendly faces.

Art Partners

Posted on July 22, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

I want to tell y’all about my day.

My friend Joyce Darby and I volunteered with a group called Art Partners. Local artists volunteer to provide art therapy in the community. I have a child with genetic/heart/immune system defects, so the opportunity to work with kids at The Children’s Hospital of Alabama, where everyone has been so good to us, really appealed to me.

Joyce D. is a really cool artist. She makes the most fabulous wooden horses I’ve ever seen — I can’t even begin to describe them, but suffice it to say her studio has some huge pieces of wood and heavy duty power tools. You can see her work at www.jadarby.com.

The child we worked with was a beautiful little girl with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. We had lots of fun and spent pretty much the entire time laughing. She used color very boldly and told us right off that she wanted to paint flowers and butterflies. So we did.
Here we are getting started (that’s me in the first photo and Joyce D. in the second one).

This is the finished Masterpiece, which will be auctioned off at a special event in honor of the young artists in order to further support Art Partners. Our young artist explained that on the right were the deep dark woods and on the left, was the light, with the sun, flowers and butterflies. And if you look down at the bottom, you will see the tiny people surrounding her signature, who are walking from the light into the dark. We had a really great time.