Rainbow Printing Revisited

I love to make Rainbow Prints. This is my go-to method for making one-of-a-kind versions of iconic images, saints and sinners, angels and other visitors to the design table when I want something specifically matching a color scheme or a one-of-a-kind version of one of my silkscreens or thermofaxes. Over the years, I have featured this technique in workshops, in a Quilting Arts issue, in a DVD (see below) and on many of my textile paintings and altars.

My lovely lightweight Airbook has one difficiency, it doesn't have a big memory. So I tend to have to juggle info and files and the go-to stuff I am working with on and off of external drives. And, (I don't suppose you will be surprised) I don't exactly have a uniform file naming or file storage system in place. SOmehow, I don't think this chore is going to come to the top of the list anytime soon,

So I just find myself on the occasional morning like this doing copying and deleting -- and the good thing is that I surprise myself with all the treasures that I have forgotten! So, before I banish some of these pdfs to the external drive, I thought I would share them here on the blog. 

First, here's a pdf of the "short version" of how to make Rainbow Prints --my term for multicolored screen prints made with watersoluble crayons.

 I'll keep this pdf on the computer for another week, so act quickly if you want a copy via email -- just send a request to me on the comment form on the sidebar. I'll also put you on my monthly mailing list for other notices, unless you tell me PDF only, please.

If this tickles your fancy and you need or would enjoy more information and examples, you can see a video promo on Quilting Arts website or right here

and you can also order the DVD if you decide a full-fledged video workshop is just the ticket to success.

Paying Attention

The just-past post covered a lot of territory. As I take on this new expanded adventure of art out into the world, it's a good idea to think about my story, and what I bring to the table. (Perhaps you should do so, too! Post a link in the comments to your blog about your creative path and we'll see where this takes us...)

Where does my story as an artist begin? With paying attention.

Paying attention, this skill, like any other, needs focus, practice and to be honored within the environment (culture) of its practice. Fortunately from my childhood, I had mentors, parents and teachers who gave me that skill and fostered it's development.

First, a family who loved nature and beauty: Birdwatching was the usual activity on any trip; a geology pick was always in the back seat; composition books for note-taking are STILL a Christmas stocking standard. We looked at plants and creeks on Sunday afternoon drives as we searched for farmland (soon thereafter purchased with the GI Bill). My chemist father shared his love of observation and my intellegent stay-at-home mom nurtured beauty in the everyday life; both of them honored the skill of paying attention and modeled it to us four.

The concepts in The Missing Alphabet speak to my second set of lessons in paying attention. When 12, I was enrolled in a Children's Theatre at Baylor University, part of the department of drama headed by legendary regional director Paul Baker (he also headed the Dallas Theatre and worked with Frank Lloyd Wright on the design of that forward-thinking structure on Turtle Creek). His wife Kitty, and the young woman who became my mentor for decades, Jearnine Wagner, had started a children's program based on the same principles and ideas that were at the heart of the college drama program. These were: that each of us is creative and has a unique story to tell in our art and that all art/perception and creative thinking can be discerned through a vocabulary of form: line, color, shape, movement, light, rhythm, space, sound and texture. These perceptual/sensory tools could be harnessed by the artist (no matter his or her genre or field) as tools for telling that unique story. These, called by Baker "the elements of form," have moved into our missing alphabet book as "the sensory alphabet," a change of language that helps us explain to parents and educators that these are not just "art" words.

I've been able to take these perceptual and creative tools into my life in so many ways, I use them daily as "screens" for my thinking and inventing and imagination. They are the tools that I teach to the participants in many of my workshops, retreats and courses. I find them invaluable in defining and critiquing, in helping other artists find their own strong suits, their own voices and their best ways of working, simply by asking them to pay attention to these perceptual elements in their lives and work. The Missing Alphabet, while its a book targeted at parents, is still a useful resource for emerging artists who would like some specific information about the sensory alphabet, as well as lots of activity ideas that have no expriration date according to age!

Art school introduced me to another set of tools for paying attention, principally, that of drawing. I am not a natural "drawer." In fact, as a young woman (and even in art school) I pretty much decided I could never be a "real' artist because my drawings in junior high and high school never measured up to the cpaturing of reality that I expected as artist should be able to achieve. And though my college drawing classes at Trinity University were dully attended, I still never really fell in love with drawing until much later -- like a couple of years ago.

Paired with the sensory alphabet, some simple ways to approach the blank page have helped  me to get over my fear of drawing and to actually treasure the time I can carve out to pay attention through drawing.* I have a new group of "drawing" mentors, in real life, my friend and artist Sarah Jones, in the digital and print world, the work and writing of John Berger . 

That's why I am looking forward to the next Fearless Sketching workshop here at El Cielo. It's scheduled for April 12-14, costs $180. There is still room for a couple more participants, so if you are interested, send me a note through the comments or on the contact form on the sidebar to the right. 

Pulling Me all Together

Perhaps you have this problem, too. Lots of different people living under one head (or in one).

I've been challenged to tell the story of how and what I do that ties it all together. This book, The Missing Alphabet, my teaching (here and there), art work (big and little), my work with Central American teachers...the occassional foray into designing kid's programs, training teachers at Big Thought in our New World Kids programs or volunteer work in pr for the upcoming SDA conference. (Whew!) What is the strand -- well, perhaps multifiliment cable is a better image -- that ties it all together?

At the core of what I do is a deep and well-grounded interest in the creative process, an interest, and profession, that has 50 years of history behind it. I was one of those lucky kids who found a creative path at a young age, nurtured by a very, at the time, radical children's theatre program. That was not only integrated racially, but integrated creatively. And this in Waco, Texas, go figure. 

What those early experiences in inventing, presenting, working long hours, delving into personal and collaborative visions did was to give me a grounding in both the how and the what of creative work. As a result of that children's theatre I had experiences as a teen, young woman and young professional that took me from, at age 18, running a visiting  children's program for 20,000 participants at HemisFair '68 to the Year of the Child with Erik and Joan Erickson (PS she was also a weaver) at the Smithsonian Institute, to a fulltime model school that won international accolades and a Ford Foundation designation of model educaitonal program, to the Kennedy Center for exhibit and program design, to Cleveland in the era of serious racial disharmony to teach in inner city neighborhoods, from there to Neiman-Marcus with window designs and products that showed up in the Christmas catalog. (again, whew) I am so grateful for such a rich and complicated creative path.

The new book for parents, The Missing Alphabet, is ONE summary of thaat informed inquiry that started when I was twelve and developed through that career in first in arts education, then in journalism, museum exhibit design, writing and art making. This book is what's come of my experiences and those of my co-authors (with similar and diverging paths) as written for parents who want their children to meet the challenge of 21st Century thinking and literacy sklls.

Other summaries have developed into courses I teach to adults, such as Creative Jumpstart, Finding Your Path as an Artist, and the Artist's Journey. But the philosophy and approach informs all of the workshops and retreats that I teach -- even those that are somewhat technique oriented. I always try to move beyond or below or above or inside of a technique or tool, teaching it as a means for someone to find as the ideal expression for her or his story. At the core of my teaching is a deep and abiding belief in the power of individual story and expression. I do firmly believe that each person on this earth has a unique, powerful and absolutely unrepeatable experience to express in some or another medium, be it art, science, music, research, homemaking, poetry or any other field you can come up with. And I make art myself because I am passionately drawn to figuring out what it is I have to say -- and, besides, how could I have any credibility in this world of wonderful artists I find myself in, if I didn't make my own statements?

I've had many ways to express my story and my creativity in my life, in my art, in my relationships, in my teaching, writing and designing. I love having the opportunity to open the doors for other's creative work though example and through nurturing connection and conversation. The personal values I have selected as guiding stars for the next stage of my creative life are: CREATIVITY, CONNECTION (CONVERSATION), ADVENTURE, IMAGINATION, and ALIGNMENT

Post Script: And speaking of conversation between the this and that of our lives, here is another wonderful piece from David Whyte:

What Stories are Just Old Stories?

In an effort to make my story bolder, bigger and more adventurous, I recently signed up with a coach (I'll share more about that as the process processes!) and, as a result, am doing some of that deep-digging internal work that is both exhilerating and terrifying at the same time. Like trying to answer the question: What do I really want in my creative life? And, what do I need (to have, to do, to think about, to change) to make that happen?

And, of course, as often happens when one is paying attention to one thing or another, two smart amazing people whose work I follow came through with related posts. 

First, poet, creative consultant and teacher David Whyte wrote a wonderful "letter from home," and in it he describes this aha moment:

One of the most beautifully disturbing questions we can ask, is whether a given story we tell about our lives is actually true, and whether the opinions we go over every day have any foundation or are things we repeat to ourselves simply so that we will continue to play the game. It can be quite disorienting to find that a story we have relied on - is not only not true - it actually never was true. Not now not ever. There is another form of obsolescence that can fray at the cocoon we have spun about ourselves, that is, the story was true at one time, and for an extended period; the story was even true and good to us, but now it is no longer true and no longer of any benefit, in fact our continued retelling of it simply imprisons us. We are used to the prison however, we have indeed fitted cushions and armchairs and made it comfortable and we have locked the door from the inside.

The imprisoning story I identified by the time the entree was served was one I had told myself for a long time. “In order to write I need peace and quiet and an undisturbed place far from others or the possibility of being disturbed. I knew however, that if I wanted to enter the next creative stage, something had to change; I simply did not have enough free space between traveling, speaking and being a good father and husband to write what I wanted to write. The key in the lock turned surprisingly easy, I simply said to myself, “What if I acted as if it wasn’t true any more, what if it had been true at one time, but now at this stage in the apprenticeship I didn’t need that kind of insulation anymore, what if I could write anywhere and at any time?” One of the interesting mercies of this kind of questioning is that it is hard to lose by asking: if the story is still true, we will soon find out and can go back to telling it. If is not we have turned the key, worked the hinges again and walked out into the clear air again with a simple swing of the door.

Read the rest of the story here to find out what happened when David Whyte took action with that insight. And join me in asking what are just old stories I am telling myself?

Also in my inbox, a newsletter from Lisa Call, another of my on-line gurus. A systems analyst by day and artist in heart and soul, Lisa has a work ethic I admire, and such complex and organized systems for her own creative goal setting that they make my little improvisational soul quiver. I don't even aspire to such a level of organization, but I do really find her inspiring and motivating. She says:

I just received an email from my coach addressed to "Big Rock Lisa". * What a great reminder to stay focused.  I love my coach! I've gone through periods of trying to hold it all together without the support of a paid coach or mentor, and I can do it.  But it's a lot easier with one. Sometimes it's good to get a neutral party to have a look at my ideas, plans and actions as they often see things that those closer to me do not.  It was my coach that said "you are always busy but you don't seem to get the most important things done".  Well duh! And now I focus on the big rocks first.  Like my studio.  I'm spending more time making art this month - with a consistent and sustainable pace - than I have in a long time.  Woohoo!

To come clean about my coaching commitment, I've signed up with Lesley Riley and even after just a week o work on visioning my goals and how to go about them, the universe is responding in kind. I decided to take this step of hiring her as my coach after seeing an amazing panel discussion that Lesley put together (and only half of it at that) at the International Quilt Festival. She invited a group of successful artists to talk about their work, approaches and how they capitalized on their strengths and talent to get where they are. Lesley has online courses and does one-on-one coaching with her Artist Success programs -- check it out!