Creative outlets

This was the third deMeng class - and the wildest. First, I mixed up the venues. How I managed to do that on the last day of the retreat I have no clue. But I did - and I came in late. I gathered junk from the common pile (as I did not have any metallic objects, mesh, wire or any of these things) and I started playing with it. Again, no idea what I was doing, no theme, no plan. Just texture at the beginning and then color.
I made 2 pieces - one rectangular (an old photo frame) and one round. I thought about them as 2 separate pieces until Michale looked at them and decided they belonged together. And in fact they look much better together than apart - with the round piece on top of the rectangular one. And there are common elements between the 2 (the game aspect of the pieces). In part. they reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.

Morpheus box

This was the second class with Michael deMeng. The process was the same, except that I was frustrated most of the day. I am not sure why, I think I panicked, afraid that I will not finish, I forgot the paints this time so I had to go around borrowing from people. It was also the first time I tried to incorporate more junk in the pieces. I think I found the end result to dark. In the end though, after a good might sleep, I like the way it turned out. And I finally found a place for the small gourd I brought from the Camino de Santiago!

Each side of the mobile piece in the middle has a saint or a buddha. I regret not having taken a voice recorder with me. Michael's comments at the end of the session were very good; they would have been helpful now on one hand to remind me about my pieces and also to help form an eye for things to look for in a piece so that I c an improve my work.

I can see clearly now

This is the first class I took with Michael deMeng in Phoenix. It was also the begging of the mix ups that lasted the whole week. I forgot to bring the box that was part of the supplies. I was convinced I needed it for the Wednesday class! So here I am with nothing to work on. Luckily I found a cigar box at the supply booth - I liked it au naturel and I almost felt guilty to alter it. But the end result was interesting and unexpected of course as I did not have a plan and not a clue how it will look like. This piece was sold.

Assemblage

Michael deMeng taught 4 classes in Phoenix. I took 3 of them. I don't think I ever worked so hard for fun! There was so much to do and I wanted to finish my pieces. I altered a cigar box, made the Morpheus box and 2 sculptures using electrical outlets. All of these pieces use junk parts from the junk yard. I had to follow my intuition - there was not enough time to change the design around too much. I'd grab the stuff that appealed to me for whatever reason (I did not question anything. For those who know me, thes might be a surprise as I suspect they will all agree that there is not one thing under the Sun that I do not turn upside down. But that is a whole other story). Then, with a generous amount of caulking, stick everything together. Pray that it dries. When prayers did not work, used all other means to my disposal to speed the process (heat gun, sun). Apply washes. Screw, nail, glue, wire, tie bits and pieces. Some people knew what they wanted to make, they had a theme and all the necessary doodas to get where they wanted to go. Not me. I have hard time working with a theme. 99% of the things I made start the same way, sometimes from a focal image, a color, something I find on my desk. I keep adding to it until I feel the piece is complete. Then I try to read the story. There is a story in everything I make,except I do not know it all.
I will post pictures of the finished pieces soon.

Selling art

Judy Wise lead this workshop one evening. I knew her art from her blog.This topic is seldom discussed, so I was curious. One of the things that came up was blogging. I mentioned that I use a pseudonym for my blog and this raised some eyebrows. How do you want people to find you then?! Truth is, I do not want everybody to find me. Ok. I am privacy-freak, I confess. In this day and age when anything and everything is up for sale, trade and to the mercy of hackers of all kinds, do I really need to have my name out there for the eternity? But things are not so simple. They never are. If my name was not on, I could still hide. Pretend it isn't me. Show the blog only to the chosen few. Not worry about criticism. In the end, I took the plunge. I put my name up there.

Collage of metal

I have never worked with metal before. I don't think I will a lot of this work, but I will probably do some every now and then. Metal adds a nice touch in mixed media pieces. Jacqueline Sullivan gave us a lot of information, tips, recipes etc. There is no control over how the metal will turn out though. It takes a lot of practice, patience and let go because the patinas will work in their inprevisible ways.

Composition

This was a fun class. Three hours of pure play. Don't get me wrong! All classes were fun, but there was a lot of hard work, too. This time, I let loose the 5 year old who has been told she has the ugliest drawing of the whole kindergarten class! I've got my revenge allright!
The class was fast paced. We received instructions and we had a limited time to work on the page, so I went with the flow. I worked on five pages:

Figurative fabric

This was a two-day class taught by DJ Pettitt. What a challenge this was! First, due to my inability to paint faces. I have tried in the past, with disastrous results. This time, I was well prepared. I even made my own sketches! It was to paint, the heat dried the paint almost as soon as they came out of the tube. The first day, all I seemed to be able to mix was an awful shade of grey for the darker areas of the face. And no matter what I did, the painting just did not have the shinny finish that I was looking for. Only later in the process I learned that the finishe painting has to be ironed to flatten the paint and achieve the smooth appearance I wanted. I enjoyed the class, it was very well taught and we had guidance all along. I painted the second painitng all by myself (the blu-eyes one)! Very proud! I hope I will remember what to do when I will find the time to sit down and paint another one!

































The inspiration for my sketches came for an unlikely place. I was watching season 2 of Lost and, as usual, I had my sketch book handy, waiting for the muse. I don't remember the episode, but there was a nice close up of Mr. Eko which seemed like a good idea to use as practice. I wanted to draw him - Mr. Eko! Instead, I drew her - Mrs. Eko! She is the one with brown eyes. Go figure ....certainly, the mind has a funny way of putting things together!

Leather image transfer

The class was taught by Dorothy Egan. I worked with image transfers in the past, but not on leather. We used the image to make a buckle pendant. Mine looks like this:

Collage Purse

I am behind with the updates to the blog. School started last week. I am taking French translation 1. I waited so long to register that I almost did not make it. All the other courses were full, so I have to settle for only one course this semester. I also signed up for the chunky technique book for ArtUnraveled. Each participant will make a number of pages with techniques learned in Phoenix. Maximum 45 pages. I have never done anything like this and since the pages are small (4” x 4”), I decided to try.

But back to the updates from Arizona ...
I took the Collage Purse workshop with Kathy Cano-Murillo. In retrospect, it was a bit stressful because I did not have a sewing machine, not to mention I did not sew in many years. I was never very good at this anyway. Always struggling with straight lines. But it turned out that there is no need for straight lines!!
I also wanted to make sure I finish in class – and this was true for all the workshops. Always rushing to make sure I am done. I did not even take lunch breaks! Kathy had a lot of wonderful fabric to choose from. Really hard to make up my mind. Then, I had to decide how to place the designs – and since I cannot stand anything symmetrical, I placed them in an “organizes disorder”. Here is the final product:





















Here are other samples from the class:

Back from Arizona

I came back few days ago from Arizona. I spent one week in Phoenix at Art Unraveled. I spent a weekend in Sedona and I took a mule ride down the Grand Canyon to Phantom Ranch. Pics from the trip and from the art workshops to come soon.

I happened upon some comments about blog layout on the Art Unraveled yahoo group.
I did not give it much thought when I chose the black background - at least from the reader's prospective! I chose black because I though the pics looked better against a black backdrop. But people are right - it is hard to read white on black. So I changed it to white. Hope this works better for everybody!

Thanks for the nice comments about my altered book!