Artist, maker, teacher, author, head cook and bottlewasher.
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The art I make is the result of a life-long love of pattern, texture and color. How I teach is a skill honed by experience (I started teaching creative arts to younger kids when I was 12). After earning a B.A. in Studio Arts from Trinity University, I helped lead an internationally recognized educational foundation, designed curriculum exhibits for schools and other institutions, wrote and edited for a major daily newspaper, opened the San Antonio Children's Museum and then, a dozen years ago, took the scary but essential (for me) leap to become a fulltime artist and art teacher.
Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 04:28PM This is from Keri Smith http://www.kerismith.com/popular-posts/the-artists-survival-kit/: (Thanks for helping me out on attribution, Jackie K.)
artist in Creativity and other big ideas Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 04:01PM 
Your journal I mean? The blank book syndrome I call it. We artists often get these lovely gifts of blank books. They can stay that way without conscious effort. I am the last to guilt trip anyone into using a sketchbook or journal. I am erratic, to tell the honest truth. I am frenetic about sketchbooks at time and absolutly immune to their charms at others.
The key, as I noted in a previous post, is to have a reason. Whether its to make an artful record of one's crative life, or simply to have one spot in which to record, paste, glue, stick and stack all the bits and pieces that float in and out of consciousness (that's usually my approach), a blank book can be your friend.
Here are a few more ways to approach the use of an artist's sketchbook, blank journal or all-too-precious book of emptiness:
1. Glue in every scrap of loose paper you can find in your purse or backpack. Alter the papers (unless their content is crucial) with paint, crayons, colored pencils, cutting and wrinkling. See what you can make with nothing.
2. Save a book to designate for a trip journal. No trip on the horizon. Start planning the dream trip of your artistic creative life. It might even come true. Paste in internet printed documents, research ticket prices, look on AIrBNB bfor the best possible place to stay. Instead of watching another mindless TV show, start planning the dream reality trip of a lifetime. Who knows?
3. Take a magazine picture, cut it in half, glue it down on a blank page, draw and color the missing half your own way.
4. Cut colored paper shapes. Glue. Tear out the page, cut and glue again.
5. Cut and glue a NOTAN a day.
Other ideas? List them in comments. Thanks
PS. Still need help? consider coming to El Cielo this next weekend for Artist Journey, Artist Journal. Or one of the other workshops this spring....
ARTIST JOURNEY/ ARTIST JOURNAL JANUARY 20-22
(optional Fri. night potluck & critique session)
This annual workshop has become a tradition at El Cielo Studio. Spend the weekend in creative activi- ties that help you set the stage for a 2012 filled with productivity, imagination, focus and artistic goals. Using original and time- tested exercises gleaned from sources around the globe, we’ll banish procras- tination, make an annual love letter, work on a goals and artist date calendar for the year, and find ways to remind us of what really matters in our artistic lives. Meanwhile, you’ll work with mixed media and surface design techniques to start your artist’s journal.
FROM HEART TO ART; PERSONAL MARK- MAKING
FEBRUARY 10-12
(optional Friday night potluck & heart-centered gentle yoga session)
In this workshop, you’ll start with common and familiar symbols -- like the heart shape of Valentine’s Day for example -- and through a series of creative genera- tive exercises, you’ll make something new and differ- ent to incorporate into your design, composition and surface design. And then, in honor of the season, make some one-of-a-kind Valentines, too. Tools and tech- niques explored include paper lamination on fabric, hand-cut stamps, and gelatin plate monoprints.
CALLING ALL ARCHETYPES
MARCH 23-25
(optional Friday night potluck & work-in-progress critique)
Spend some time thinking and working on using your inner crew for work and support. In this workshop we’ll explore archetypes, inner voices, gut reactions and their influence on your art and art-making with lots of improvisational exercises to loosen up your approach to art. Make a small artist's altar using fabric and mixed media techniques including mono-printing, collage and digital printing on fabric to remind you of a practical and sacred part of your life. (artist altar frame, $10 supply fee)
April 13-15, FROM COMPUTER TO CLOTH.
And at Southwest School of Art: FINDING YOUR ARTIST VOICE, Monday afternoons, Feb 6-March 26
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 08:28PM 
Ok, it's a pill. And a time-suck. You can hear it just take the energy out of your day. But on the other hand, I just spent a little time in a discussion, bilingual, with a former student in Guatemala about the change of government now occurring. Example one of the connectivity. That was on Facebook with instant messaging.
But even more to the point (as far as time spent), as a traveler who loves adventure, I have found a new tool for finding the perfect place to stay: Airbnb. As in Air Bed and Breakfast -- though the listings range (in theory) from treehouses to shared flats to luxury apartments. We are planning a trip in Spain this summer and I just booked a week long stay sharing an apartment in Barcelona and a private apartment loft in Madrid for three days. In between, we will be walking the last stage of El Camino de Santiago, St. James Way, a pilgrimage walk that has a long history, and was recently spotlighted in the Martin Sheen film THE WAY.
After a day of exploration, yes, a day, I found just the right spots. These are places you can't find anywhere else on the web. I reccommend the process, and the reviews -- and recommendations from friends -- seem to suggest that this tool is right on target. I'll let you know when its all in the box!
technology in General information, Journeys, Technology Friday, January 6, 2012 at 09:03AM 
Here's what I've decided: (if you care!)
Make 4 Mixels collages and 3 paper collages a week. Print out the Mixels. Keep them all in a sketchbook. Make the themes important to me, or funny, or random. Just try a one a day thing. Or sit down and do them all at once. Write when I want to.
Another goal: Buy a stylus and try that with the iPad.
Why all the tech? I've proposed a lecture and workshop for next year's International Quilt Festival in Houston about Apps for smart phones and tablets as tools for quilters and mixed media artists. It may not get on the docket but I want to be ready if it does!
On the pragmatic side of things, I am also doing a food diary and exercise log, per my trainer's reccommendations. I'm using a free and very good app called My Fitness Pal. The reason is not completely un-art related-- We are getting in shape for a 100 km walk on the Camino de Santiago in Spain in May. And that I am sure will inspire a whole lot of artful thinking, doing and making. we'll only walk about 10 to 15 km a day but I know from a walk we did in Ireland about 10 years ago, that the joints appreciate less weight on them.
