Full (not) Moon/Fool Moon

Here are the details about my next workshop. You can find the complete brochure on the righthand sidebar link to  "Coming Up:Workshops"

Artists’ Retreat and Workshop, February 17-18, Saturday and Sunday

 

The moon has long been seen as a symbol of the unconscious, and a sacred goddess of feminine instinct. How does the unconscious, the instinctual, even lunacy, influence your art work?  Do you make room for accidents, for the spontaneous and unplanned. This El Cielo Studio workshop will take advantage of the February Full Moon dark of the moon (Don't ask me what moon calendar I was looking at when this went on the calenday!) to inspire a weekend of intentional accidents (or accidental accidents, as the case may be), spontaneous expression, and improvisational techniques for fiber and mixed media art, as we open our hearts and eyes to the power of the uncontrolled. Among the activities: guided meditation and journaling, moonlight storytelling around a bonfire and moonlight hike (weather permitting), time in the hot tub, and making an artist altar that explores your understanding of the divine feminine. Fabric art techniques covered include silk painting effects with salt and other additives; faux shibori and low-water dye techniques using the microwave; shaving foam dyeing and other improvisational dye and paint play.

El Cielo workshop/retreats are designed to meet the needs of the participants, so there is free time scheduled throughout the weekend for reading, reflection and personal work in the studio. You are welcome to bring projects in process for Susie’s critique and for peer feedback in an environment of trust and respect. We’ll share meals (bring a sack lunch for Saturday, Saturday supper and Sunday brunch are included in the fee), 25-mile horizon vistas from the deck and strolls down the country roads, as time permits.

FEE, including meals: $145 per person. 10% discount for registration before 2/5/07 ($131.50). Limited enrollment. Overnight accommodations are available for a modest fee ($15-$30). Supply List: your favorite kind of journal or notebook, a box with lid (any size and material) for your altar, warm clothes and walking shoes.

Susie Monday has taught adults and children for more than 30 years. Her art cloth and quilts have been included in international exhibits and private collections. Recent teaching credits include Gemini Ink, Southwest School of Art and Craft, University of the Incarnate Word, King Ranch, and McNay Art Museum. See her work on-line at http://monday.myexpose.com and  read her blog at http://elcielostudio.squarespace.com

Iced In

Here ,we are stuck inside one big ice cube, though it be one with a few thorns and spines. The north-facing windows are coated with at least a half inch of ice, lending the living room and bedroom the feel of a modern church sanctuary built around 1952 (a better image than that of a mental institution, right?). The caliche driveway out front is a skating rink. The  car doors simply won't open (yes, we have a garage, part of my studio building, but being inexperienced at winter, we didn't put the cars inside, go figure). The good news is that I have made it through almost one year of financial record recovery.

 

 

Also, we stretched frames and mounted two stunning pieces of African textiles that Linda bought several years ago -- now in a starring role on the living room wall. I don't know anything about African textiles and haven't had the time to do a good search for information yet. I know that the one on the left is kuba cloth from Zaire -- a rafia fabric with cowrie shell embellishment. The other is a wedding cloth, but I don't know where its from. If anyone with knowlege or a good web information source is reading this, please leave a comment.

 

Meanwhile, I am planning the weekend journaling workshop (Jan. 20-21, see workshop link) and hoping the meltdown is on its way.  Cabin fever has not quite set in, but the warning signs are nigh. I don't live in Texas for no reason.

One Thing Leads to Another

One thing leads to another. Well, that does go without saying. Still, pursuing the Quiltart list today (by the way, thanks to everyone who helped me master its usage given the amazing volume of discussion on and off topic), I was led to the amazing work of Nacogdoches artist Mary McCleary, and then, through her "news" link to the homepage of the journal Image: Art, Faith, Mystery. The serendipity of the internet answers me with such directness sometimes. (No doubt what people feel like when they open a Bible at random and sense that the verse gives them the answer sought.)

Here I sit this winter afternoon, confronted by sleet, by my own shortcomings in the organizing and business side of personal and professional life, by doubts and hesitation about going to the studio (the fireplace is so tempting), by haunting critique of my work ("hands and hearts are trite imagery"), by that nagging doubt that shows up when I look at my bank balance and how I chose to spend my time on this planet.

 Finding Image and digging into it, just for half an hour, was restorative and challenging, invigorating and thought-provoking. Just what I needed to combat the woe-is-me-what-am-I-doing-I'll-never-make-it glum that had me frozen to the windowpane.

Here's what the website says about it:

About Image

"Image, a literary and arts quarterly founded in 1989, is a unique forum for the best writing and artwork that is informed by—or grapples with—religious faith. We have never been interested in art that merely regurgitates dogma or falls back on easy answers or didacticism. Instead, our focus has been on writing and visual artwork that embody a spiritual struggle, that seek to strike a balance between tradition and a profound openness to the world. Here the larger questions of existence intersect with what the poet Albert Goldbarth calls the "greasy doorknobs and salty tearducts" of our everyday ."

I won't say too much, you can take your own stroll into its text and images, but be sure to look under RESOURCES at the Study Guide. That alone could keep me engaged for a month of sleet-bound afternoons. Leaving you then, with this quote from said Study Guide, (copying the guide is encouraged, by the way.)

"One of the perennial tensions in the Judeo-Christian tradition is how the inwardness of faith relates to outwardness of culture. Believers often withdraw from culture on the grounds that it is worldly and dilutes or corrupts religious truth. But from the moment that John began his gospel with "In the beginning was the Word," a statement that would speak to the wider Mediterranean culture of his time, it can be argued that the church was committed to incarnating faith into creative language, story, and image. The tradition of Christian humanism holds that faith becomes abstract and meaningless unless it engages culture, seeking not only to preach to the world, but to listen to and assimilate what the world is saying. The material covered under this theme heading can be said in some way to grapple with this tradition."

Professionalism

What makes a professional artist?  (Let's just leave aside the bigger and plagued-with-over-opinion, "What makes an artist?"). If you follow the thinking presented today by Jane Dunnewold at our Saturday FASA meeting, the answer is not too far from what makes a professional physician, or engineer. Using studies and surveys from these fields Jane found parallel qualities, beliefs, values and practices that, whatever the field, can furnish guidance to us as we work and relate to our peers, our collectors, the galleries, schools and museums, and -- perhaps most telling of all -- to our own psyches.

Dunnewold's talk, which was first presented at the opening of the Visions exhibit in San Diego, looked at the quantifiable qualities that professionalism entailed in one of the studies (that for the medical field) and then, with her experience as a teacher, maker, juror, curator, extrapolated the three areas -- interpersonal professionalism (between artists), social professionalism (between the artist and our world of interaction), and intrapersonal professionalism (within ourself). There was much worth pondering, including the practice (or lack thereof) of whistle-blowing when needed (how many times have you let an unsafe studio behavior go by unmentioned?); the thin line between being influenced by our teachers and being copyists of their work, when we should have moved on into our own; the necessity of practice as well as philosophy to guide us; and the necessity to confront our weaknesses, whether they be technical (drawing, for instance) or procedural (keeping good records), and doing some study to advance our skills.

 But most of all, I left the program with two questions in mind, those that Jane shared at her conclusion.

To paraphrase: As you do the work, you should be able to answer these two questions with a yes -- 1. Did I do the best work I could at this particular time? and, 2. Did I learn something from doing it? It is these affirmative answers that move us along as professionals, artists, doctors, retail merchants, human beings.