It was too damn cold to do anything else so....

This past weekend was my 3rd annual ITDCSWMAWMA Retreat
(It's Too Damn Cold So We Might As Well Make Art)

My sister Cecelia from Chicago flies in - she works in water color and mixed media collage

My friend Shari drives across town- she is also a mixed media artists and right now she is into encaustic

I host the event here in the studio.

Here are a few pieces we worked on:

we experimented with color mixing ( Thank you Mary Beth Shaw  for color mixing 101)

we made some really cool art papers!
(Thinned down gloss medium, tissue paper and string, Golden acrylics)

I purchased some Derwent Artbar crayons and we got to play with them. We used Tattered Angels Pure Mistable Paper Frayed Cotton

I think the Artbars are my new favorite wet/dry material to use. I like them better than watercolor pencils.

Shari Kratoska  played with encaustics- I think I need to just spend one whole day with her and the wax

 

   I revisited an old canvas and added more to it

 

We played, experimented, discovered, laughed, ate, talked and bonded. My daughter Biz was home unexpectedly and spent Saturday with us working on a project for school. I have been after Cecelia for several years to try her hand at an altered book. Last year I got her to start one using an old record album book. She painted the sleeves and did some stenciling on the cover and then abandoned it. This year I showed her an up-cycled book I had made using just a cover and filling it with new pages. She made this beautiful book with recipes in it to give as a gift. I was slightly jealous because hers was way better than mine.

 

 

    I started a new canvas. I am trying to paint faces. I am only brave enough to do this since I bought the Stencil Girl face map stencils. I have a long way to go before this one is finished. It was a great weekend and one we look forward to each winter when it's just too damn cold to do anything else!



 



 

 

 

 

 

much arting, conversation and laughter ensued....

My sister from Chicago, my daughter Kelsey , my very dear friends Shari and Carol and I spent all of last weekend in the studio being creative. This is our third year to do this over President's Day Weekend. Each one of us brings something different to the table.

 

Kesley worked on a very large canvas with acrylic paints. We all decided she was working in the style of Monet and the proportions of O'Keefe (both favorite artists of mine) Kelsey's special talent is acrylic painting.

 

Shari worked on an assemblage and collages. Her specialty is gelatin printing. The past two years I have not been able to get the hang of it very well- THIS year I think I finally connected with the process and created some wonderful background papers for future projects.

 

Cecelia is a very talented water colorist and collage artist. She is also willing to try something new and experimented with printmaking for the first time by cutting her own stencils and carving a rubber stamp. Carol worked on her photo cards and then pulled out her ever present knitting- she is currently working on a beautiful cable knit sweater. I spent the weekend being a host, demonstrating some new products and techniques that I learned and learned some new techniques from the ladies. I discovered press and seal plastic wrap is amazing for covering a pallet of wet paint and keeping it wet for several days. Pretzel M&M's are addictive as is red licorice. Fingers make the best blending tools and sometimes what you envisioned in your head on what a piece was going to become just isn't what it really wants or needs to be.

 

I worked on a painting that I started last spring. In my mind it was like VanGogh's Starry Night but with 3D faces where the stars are- and a northern lights kind of feel. Hey- it was awesome in my head. Reality- not so much. Cecelia took one look at my painting and was very polite about it. I knew something was not quite right- so I asked her to be brutally honest- I would not be offended. Because that's why we get together- to get feedback and to learn from each other.

 

C:It looks like boils and pestilence

         whoa- that's honest-

"Okay- I'm going to scrap this canvas and throw it away"

C:No, try layering tissue paper over it and let it build up in places and see what happens

          UGH!

"Still think I should start over"

C: Try taking some of the faces off. Maybe there's too many of them.

        After several attempts and no luck- "I used WeldBond I don't think they are coming off"

C: Let it rest something will come to you.

 

Meanwhile she is working on this wonderful still life collage that I am very jealous of -

 

Did I mention this is my sister? Well, I was not about to allow that canvas to get the best of me. On the wall I have this poster that says

 

"When you think you have made a mistake think of it as an opportunity to make something beautiful"  In other words- a Happy Accident

 

Time to take my own advice. I already hated the piece. What did I have to lose? So I took a page from Kelsey's book and grabbed paint, spray ink some watercolor paint and a spray bottle and started pouring paint on the canvas from the top. Let's see what happens I thought- and if it really sucks I can always paint over it or just throw it away. Guess what? as I was playing with the canvas with no ideas on what I wanted it to look like these figures emerged. They looked like women holding children. The more I saw them the more I worked the canvas to draw them out. I titled it "Women Hold Up Half the Sky"  and I am in awe of what I created. Every time I look at it I see something new. I did that? Wow- I am humbled because I have never really had much confidence in my work.  It was a good weekend.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

when we last left our hero....

she was surrounded by stacks and stacks of paper and stickers and all sorts of scrap booking chaos.

I am happy to report that everything- well almost everything there's still that one little pile that I haven't figured out what to do with yet- has been organized and displayed. Customers are following the paper trail from the old location to the new one.

And we head to the next chapter....

Will I be offering classes and workshops for adults?
Yes.

I am working on some ideas even as I type.

The first thing I thought of was hosting a scrap night in the studio- you know bring your projects and sit in the company of other like minded people and work on those books. Ok- that's a start. What if I tell them I will provide some snacks to munch on while they work? Sounds good......... and what about some wine?

How does this sound- Liquid Paper Ladies Night- from 7:00PM until 10:00PM? Ladies can have a glass of wine, snacks and scrap with friends in the studio. I'll be on hand for creative input and problem solving plus I have quite the stash of rubber stamps from the Tim Holtz collection as well as tons of bits and pieces of not your average scrapbook paper - handmade papers from India, Nepal, Italy and Japan that I can share.  Due to the size of my class room and knowing that scrappers need room to spread out the evening will have to be limited to 5 people. Not to worry- I am pretty sure I will do this at least once a month if not twice a month.

Another idea I have been working on for the past 6 months is an art retreat. My sister Cecelia and my friend Shari and I have done this the past two years over president's weekend. We do a wonderful and intensive total immersion into collage and mixed media and gelatin printing and image transfer. Last year I produced two wonderful canvas pieces and a cello.  I have blogged about the retreat before and posted albums on my facebook page and each year I get more people asking how they can be a a part of this retreat. The retreat would start at 7PM on Thursday evening. then again at 6PM on Friday evening and then all day Saturday like 10 AM until 5PM. Still working out the details....I'll get back to you on this one. I am always open to suggestions and ideas.

What about an evening of creative doodling. Yes I said doodling. Do you have any idea how important doodling is? It's like exercises for the right side of your brain so you can turn on the creative side of you. Check out the Zentangle website. Amazing stuff!

Art journals? Hand bound books? Gelatin printing? Image transfer? Hand colored images on old sheet music or dictionary pages? goodness the ideas are swirling around in my head so fast it makes me dizzy!

Altered Altoids Tins?

Altered books?

Next Friday morning I am hosting 7 ladies in the studio and we are going to make Artist Trading Cards. I am so looking forward to sharing this mini-collage with them. I have making these for years and love doing them! I give them away to people all the time. I use old photographs and burned out matchbooks and words cut form books and wax and...well pretty much anything I have in the studio as long as it fits on a 2.5 x 3.5 card. 

Pssst..........................

Artworks Studio

....it's gonna be BIG!

paper is my Passion!

I have been away from my keyboard the past couple of months. I was in a play at History Boy Theater and then I was directing the Youth Theatre production of Harry Potter and the Obnoxious Voice and then I started my summer classes and I teach all day and it was pretty insane.

I don't think I was home on a weekend from the first weekend in May until just this past weekend.

So if that wasn't enough going on as of June 30th I became the owner of the Scrapper's Nook. It's a scrap booking supply store.I have always had a love affair with paper. I have some sheets of fine art paper I bought in Chicago over 10 years ago.  I plan on selling scrap book supplies just like Cathie did but I also plan on taking it in a new direction. I spent the past 10 days combining her inventory in with mine. Which required pretty much taking everything off the walls and starting from scratch. We hung pegboard on the north wall and slat board on the south wall. Dusted and cleaned every surface and weeded out inventory that had been around for quite awhile.

Did i mention that this was supposed to be my week off and I was supposed to spend it at the cabin at Black Hawk Lake. yeah- that didn't happen. OK I am really not that upset about it since the temps were in the upper 90's all week with high humidity and did I mention there is central AC at home and NOT at the cabin?  We couldn't even take the boat out because the lake on our side is too low...so I guess if i was going to be indoors I might  as well spend it remodeling the studio right?

Messy. Messy. Messy......

I have been spending hours on the net searching for just the right papers to stock. I don't scrap. I never have. I do, however, use lots of scrap elements in my artwork. Brads, and eyelets, stamps and other embellishments. I will be stocking unique art papers- LIKE THIS- I love Washi paper.

I am also working on becoming a retailer of my favorite magazine- Cloth, Paper, Scissors if you have never picked up a copy you should. It is full of wonderful inspirations for mixed media artists.



This canvas was created during our 2nd Art Retreat and it
has 8 layers on it before I declared it finished.



 I have been working in mixed media for the past several years and have wanted to share my passion for it with other people. The past two years I have hosted a private Art Retreat for my sister and my friend Shari. We have so much fun making messes and creating papers using Citra Solv and gelatin plates and transferring images from old magazines onto canvas....and so many of my facebook friends want to know how they can get invited too-

 So I am going to finally offer some workshops for adults. This fall there will be some scrap nights and some workshops on how to create your own one of a kind background papers or accent papers for scrapping. I also plan to introduce some basic easy hand bound book making classes as well as taking the - I can't draw a straight line with a ruler- out of the equation art journal sessions. I hope you can stop in and see what's new and maybe take a class or two.

Spending time being creative is time well spent!