Two Weekends for Play and Passion

Not to mention: pears, peaches, pool (cool), plenty, and well, just lots of fun.

Coming up: July's Play Art and Attention and August's El Cielo Workshop will be hot-as-lava, fired-up with spirit and full of heat-based artcloth techniques that take advantage of the weather, the countryside and the grand vistas to inspire a new perspective on life, the artist's path and your place on the road.

First, we'll put play to the work of imagination and inspiration, with a variety of surface design techniques and creative exercises that open up possibilities for all kinds of new mixed media on paper and fabric. AND, we'll take a mid-year look at your annual art goals, how to reinvigorate your artistic studio focus, and set up some targets to hit with intention. Play and focus come together with a bit of yoga, some time in nature, and your hands in a zappy happy mix of new and fun materials.

In August, spend a couple of days exploring heat related techniques: textile paint sun-printing, rusting (afterall, a slow oxidation -- or burning -- process) and kitchen utensil and vegetable printing. We'll put your new fabrics together in a small art quilt art  Kitchen Altar, using a wooden frame and stitched work. Enjoy an August retreat from city's heat -- sure South Texas and the Hill Country are hot even up here in on the ridge, but it's always 10 degrees cooler at night than in the asphalt-ribboned city (and there's the pool, too). 

We'll be taking advantage of the  heat, with dye processes, using batik on fabric and to create screen-printing and more. Use the heat of the season to ignite your creative imagination, enjoy a convivial time with other artists and feast on the bounty of the season (some of it from El Cielo's own new veggie garden). 

If you're interested in making artcloth like the ones you see here

PLAY, ART AND ATTENTION

July 29-31

Making time to play with odd-ball materials; learning to focus upon artful tasks at hand -- sounds like opposite sides of the coin? At this exploratory and full-of-play weekend, we’ll explore the relationship between the time, play, art and focus. Where does time management intersect with open-hearted fun? Expect bubbles, playdough, sparklers, jello, yoga and seeing the world from new angles and attitudes. 

BURNING WOMAN WORKSHOP

August 19-21

Embrace your inner goddess of summertime. Design and make a small art quilt “altar” for kitchen or dining room with tools and materials that depend on heat, sunlight and passionate delight: sun-printing, vegetable prints, fusing, hand and machine stitching and “found” fabrics from attic, thrift store or kitchen closet. We will recycle napkins, tea towels and other like objects and design a thermofax featuring a meaningful symbol, favorite fruit, icon, saint, culinary heroine, angel or other meaningful design as the centerpiece for the altar. 

For more information, email me with the contact form on the sidebar. 

Developing an Idea for Textile Art

Thanks to my friend artist Rosa Vera, who sent me these shots after a recent workshop at El Cielo, I have a nice documentation of some design work "in progress." 

This workshop -- designed and executed for a group of four working artists who get together for occassional studio time -- was focused on developing an image through different tools and media, with drawing, cut paper, collage, etc. It was play time with a purpose. 

I was working alongside the group, demonstrating, but also taking my own image of a dried up cactus pad (dessicated after the hard winter freeze) though the process. The final result was a small art quilt -- you'll see that at in the final picture. The only thing I don't have is an image of the original cactus pad -- I'll try to find it and post it later. Thanks Rosa, for the photos.

Above is the final piece, still in progress. I made the thermofax from one of the pen and ink drawings, drew on the cut out shapes for the applique pieces and played with a color palette from some previously monoprinted fabrics. Will try to find the original and the final soon!

Art Quilt at Southwest School of Art

The Southwest School of Art All-School Exhibition opened last Thursday, and the show is a lovely, varied, strong one, and not just because I'm in it. It was great to see Rosa Vera's Crow piece open the show, a mixed media fiber and paper work she shared during a March workshop out here at El Cielo.

Detail of Rosa Vera's Crows.

With such a diversity of media and approaches, its remarkable how well the curatorial staff does at getting this show on the walls of the  galleries. If you are in San Antonio this summer, be sure to stop in and see the exhibit. You'll also so a beautiful piece of Lisa Kerpoe's art cloth, a fiber piece by Miki Rodriguez of Laredo (also a participant at one of my workshops) and a host of other beautiful masterly works of craft/art.

 This art quilt is titled Just Beyond My Reach. It is about 3 feet by 4 feet (measurements are somewhere!) and is fused, raw edge applique and free-motion quilted. I used fabrics that were hand-dyed, stamped, stenciled, batiked and created with monoprinting, as well as a few pieces of recycled ethnic textiles from thrift store finds. I decided quite a long time ago to only buy fabrics at thrift stores, with the exception of Indian silks, indigenous textiles and cotton batting. So far, so good! I use my own body as a template pattern (which in itself is an interesting process sometimes.) 

If you are a working, selling, making-a-living somehow artist you can probably figure out what this one is about. But I guess it even has a more universal text, as well. We are all probably living with that feeling, and it's one that generally does no one any good, but, hey compassion for one's foibles is a necessary kindness.

Here is a detail from Lisa's art cloth work:

 

 And here is a shot of Miki Rodriguez' work, Arroz con Pollo (chicken with rice)

Mark it up as Success/FUN/Beautiful

Last weekend's Markmaking Workshop at El Cielo took us all on a path to beautiful, deconstructed screen-printed fabrics. Each of the participants worked from a visual motif, developed in a half day of cut, paste and draw, then adapted it to different tool-making and technical processes.

And of course, we ate well, swam, set and looked, walked dogs (at least Linda and I did!) and talked and shared our lives. Thanks to Margaret, Heather, Mary and Ellen for all the creative energy flying through El Cielo. 

Here's just a few photos from the weekend. (Don't you love these panoramas, created by Linda with a new app on her iphone 4.)