Susie Monday

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.

About This Blog

This weblog is about the maker's life. The teacher's path. The stitching and dyeing and printing of the craft of art cloth and art quilt. The stumbling around and the soaring, the way the words and the pictures come together. Poetry on the page and in the piecing of bright scraps together. The inner work and the outer journeys to and from. Practicalities and flights of fancy and fearful grandeur, trivial pursuits and tactile amusements. Expect new postings two or three times a week, unless you hear otherwise. 

To reach me, leave a comment after a post, OR email me at susiemonday@gmail.com 

 

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    Entries by Susie Monday (563)

    Friday
    May252012

    Sketching along the way, Way

    Here are just a few sketches from our walk along. I am using Paper 53, because I decided that I really liked its limitations .... Other sketch Apps I used were either too clunky to manipulate, made lines that all looked the same, or took too much time to master as tools. Paper has serious limitations, such as the color palette, but I love the lines it makes. Yes, as an app, it is a bit pricey, $7.99, but I figure that is about the cost of one pad of paper!

    And, one thing I learned from Lisa Call, setting limitations as rules can be a good thing.

    Friday
    May252012

    Textile Sampler

    The textures are mostly stone, slate and tile, forest and path, sky and bird sound. But lace making is a cottage craft here and most inns where we stay have lovely embroidery and lace-edged linens. Our hostess at Casa de la Samoza in Coto said that the winters were long and quiet and lacemaking filled the days.


    This season, the textile inspiration of the day is that of flowers, amazing colors and form and thousands of them making a carpet of every meadow. I have never seen a country as full of flowers as Texas in a good spring until now. In addition to the wild vistas, every garden is festooned with roses, enormous camellia trees, honeysuckle and wisteria.

    Tuesday
    May222012

    Continuing the Journey

    As we walk, our bodies adjust, complain, grumble, and our spirits at times weary of one or more of the rituals of the walk, or take on a complaint about the sun or wind, or the kind of path underfoot or the highway noise on a particular stretch. But as Linda reminds me, we, almost miraculously, recover with a night of sleep, renewed for the path, ready to take on patience again, ok with trying to find wi-fi only when it appears.

    We've now competed 5 days of walking from 8 to 12 miles a day, more than half our journey to Santiago de Campostela. Each day has its surprises, beauties, frights, frustrations and delights, many of them culinary, I must admit. In addition to my journal and sketches, I am keeping a food of Spain journal, with images altered and original, and some sketches, too.

    So, with walking, eating, sleeping we refresh and renew. At the inns we meet and talk more each night, a kind of moving feast of stories.

    Monday
    May212012

    Walking in Stones

    Galicia is as unlike ones stereotypes of Spain as it could be. The music is Celtic with its own harp and bagpipes, the lanes are green, green, green. The stones here are slate grey and rich browns and all is covered with mosses, succulents and wild flowers as thick and varied as a good Texas spring.

    We are staring day four of our slow easy last 100 k of the Camino de Santiago, we will be on the way until next Saturday when we will attend the Pilgrim 's mass at the cathedral where relics of Saint James are venerated.

    Internet service is a bit sketchy so my posts will be sporadic, but once home I will upload a PDF of my trip journal for anyone interested.