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.

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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. 

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    « Walking in Stones | Main | España en la mañana (almost) »
    Tuesday
    May152012

    Madrid and Art

    DateTuesday, May 15, 2012 at 04:26AM

    Small town girls enter the big city.

    This is the subtext of the Madrid leg of our adventures in Spain. Not so much culture shock (more on those issues later) as size shock. Our Pipe Creek life is quiet and rural; even San Antonio reads as small ciy with its familiarity of 40 plus years. Madrid is major, we remind ourselves as we walk past amazing monuments,more museums than I ever remember seeing in a city, more plazas and churches and cafes and people....When faced with such abundance of sights and sounds and input, I have learned to go for deep rather than wide. I don't feel compelled to see or sense or experience as much as I can in three days, an approach that makes me crazy. Rather I find the one or two do-not-miss experiences for focus.

    We saw two exhibits yesterday, went to the bullfights and ate at the San Anton Mercado. The art exhibits were both incredible, and the photos on this post show my attempts and learning as I use the iPad for art and journaling.

    First, a Chagall exhibit at the ThySsen-Bornemisza Museum. I rediscovered my love and affection for Chagall, and also acknowledged how much his work influences my own narrative work, with flying figures, rich colors, textures and interlocking stories and images.

    Next we went to see Guernica at the Reina Sofia. I had seen this monumental and powerful painting in New York several times, before it returned to Spain. Although the gallery was crowded with school groups and the San Isidro visitors to Madrid, the painting holds its presence. Of most interest to me we're the sketches and related paintings in the adjoining gallery and I spent about an hour making iPad sketches, to much interest of bystanders, I admit. We had to talk our tablets into the musueum as photos are not allowed, and the guards were suspicious until I explained that this WAS my sketchbook.

    PS
    I also have art news:

    +Susie Monday is the featured artist on the d@8 artists blog http://dinnerateightartists.blogspot.com/

    PPS Linda has more to say about the bullfight here: http://cuellarsblog.blogspot.com.es/

    AuthorSusie Monday | Comment3 Comments |

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    Reader Comments (3)

    I presume you are also going to Barcelona - look at the sidewalks in the Gaudi bank area of town. Enjoy!
    May 16, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterSue Pel=Or
    Thanks for taking us along. Looking forward to more...
    May 16, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterB Flake
    These are YOUR sketches on the iPad??? I need to learn more! Thanks for sharing your trip with us. Enjoy and post more!
    May 19, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterDiane Sandlin

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