Journal

Madrid and Art

2012-05-15T09:26:33Z

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/

España en la mañana (almost)

2012-05-12T00:47:12Z

We are off to Spain, with family and friends entrenched at home for dog , cat and bird duties. Even that will be a vacation in itself. I am giddy with the travel bug and have plans to keep my travel journal this year online, a big and different step, but one I think I'm ready for.

In the past I have taken a small, but substantial bag of art supplies and a blank sketchbook; this year I am taking an iPad. An adventure in itself. In case you want to peek at my tools, I am going to use PAPER 53, a sort of free app (you really need to buy the $8 worth of expanded tools to make it worth while) Max journal, a really nice interface for a diary format, easy to add photos, download,etc; and a slew of photo and drawing apps, I will try to keep notes on the tools I use and how I find them, but my focus will be on the travel experiences and how they give me ideas and inspiration for art work when I get back home.

I thought about taking a back up stash or "real" art supplies, but figure if I give myself that out, I won't really experiment with the digital ones now available. My iPad is not G4 enabled, so I will be dependent on wifi, but, from the travel notes on the hotels and the Camino, I don't think that will be much of an issue.

In the Trenches, Teaching via Video, en español.

2012-05-03T13:41:31Z

The catch-up: The past two weeks we've been working on the global stage, as part of a teaching team at Palo Alto College, one of the Alamo Colleges in San Antonio. One of my hats this year is as a creative learning specialist for international programs here. I've been working with this program for about 10 years in various capacities -- some of which relate to my fabric/textile life, but most to my creative process and arts education interests.

Teachers from Central American and the Dominican Republic come here for scholarship residency education programs, funded by USAID to us through grants from Georgetown University SEED/SEMILLA project. I also work with teen youth ambassadors from the same region, and these two weeks, through distance learning via computer, with 6 univerisities in the border areas of Mexico. Whew....

This most recent project also involved our teacher/students as demonstrators of activities on our little makeshift television studio in the portable buildings at PAC that we are lucky to have use of for the program -- this is only the second year we have had permanent space at the university and it's been wonderful as we can use the design of the space, changing the space and making exhibits of work that mirror the kinds of classrooms our teachers go home to -- a portable here is a space that in most cases would be a luxury classroom in their rural hometowns.

Our new website is in progress, but you can see more here -- take note of the student blogs! And here.

Here's one of the videos informing this work. It's quite controversial, as you will understand when you see. it

New World Kids (1) Now on Sale!

2012-04-20T14:21:06Z

My co-author Susan Marcus and I and Dr. Cindy Herbert, another colleague from LAL days have been working on a rewrite/expanded new book for parents, to be released this fall by Greenleaf Book Group. It will be titled "The Missing Alphabet." (Isn't that cool?)

And to get ready, we are having a great sale on the last book for our readers and supporters., So if you would like another (or a first) copy of NEW WORLD KIDS, and the accompanying teacher's guide don't miss this special deal. If you are interested, please order through Foundry Media directly -- the info is in the letter below (YOU ALL count at "a person at one of our events" since I consider reading this blog an event, so you are eligible for the special pricing):

Dear New World Kids reader:

This Fall, the authors of New World Kids, the Parents Guide to Creative Thinking, will be publishing a new book, The Missing Alphabet, a Parent's Guide to Developing Creative Thinking in Kids. In preparation for the release of the this book, we want to extend a special offer to of our customers:

Now until May 30 we are offering New World Kids, The Parents' Guide to Creative Thinking at $7.00 per copy and New World Kids, The Teachers' Guide at $10.00 per copy both with free shipping! That compares to the list price of $14.95/$19.95 + shipping! This offer is being made only to those people who purchased from our website over the past couple of years or in person at one of our events.

Texas residents will have to pay 8.25% sales tax (sorry!) and we will only accept checks. Purchases will be shipped Media Mail.

Please place your order by replying to this message to foundrymedia@me.com, calculating the total cost (with applicable sales tax per above). We will ship your books immediately and you can send us your check.

If you have any questions, email us at newworldkids@me.com or call us at 512-328-1920.

New Workshop Schedule

2012-04-19T18:31:31Z

The new (and somewhat revised) schedule is out and about. Here's a copy:

Nurture your creativity as you come away from a weekend with renewed energy, new materials and techniques in surface design applicable to fiber, ceramics, jewelry, painting and mixed media work. Susie Monday leads artists’ retreats and workshops throughout the year at her studio near Pipe Creek, Texas, about an hour from downtown San Antonio. El Cielo Studio workshops are designed with the needs of the participants in mind; free time is scheduled throughout the weekend for reading, reflection and personal work in the studio. You are welcome to bring projects in process for Susie’s critique and for peer feedback in an environment of trust and respect. You’ll share meals, poetry and stories, music and advice for living an artist’s life. Enjoy the 25-mile vistas from the deck, hot tub and pool time, and strolls down the country roads. The fee for each workshop retreat is $175 for a 2-day event with discounts for early enrollment. Comfortable accommodations are available from $15 - $30 per workshop. Most workshops offer a Friday night potluck option. Limited enrollment. Most supplies included.

Susie has taught creative process and art techniques to adults and children for more than 30 years. Her art is in private and public collections around the world.

TEXT ON TEXTILES

ONLINE course at JOGGLES.com

JUNE 15-JULY 14 includes 4 fully-illustrated weekly lessons, plus a bonus week, $45

Have you ever wanted to incorporate a favorite word, poem or quote into an art quilt, garment, art doll or other textile project -- going beyond simply writing or embroidering the text? This all new surface design/mixed media class will give you a set of process tools for making text and words an integral part of artfully designed fabrics that you can use in a wide variety of projects. Learn soy wax lettering, freeform cut letters, sunprinting and more.

JUNE 15-17

Optional potluck

Friday night

FROM SCRIBBLE TO SYMBOL; PERSONAL MARK-MAKING

In this workshop, start with simple sketches and doodles and end the weekend with an arsenal of new surface design tricks and tools. Explore doodles and scribbles as sources of uniques and personal imagery that will give your art quilts, wearable art, or mixed media work personal depth and layers of meaning. take a favorite symbol -- for example a heart, star, spiral, circle -- and by taking it (and yourself) through a series of creative generative exercises, you’ll make something new and different to incorporate into your design, composition and surface design. Tools and techniques explored include paper lamination on fabric, large scale “mark-making” rollers and monoprinting.

JULY 6-8

CHANGE OF DATE

Optional potluck

Friday night

KITCHEN ALTAR WORKSHOP

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 relative, heroine, angel or other meaningful design as the centerpiece for the altar. (Altar frame, $12 supply fee).

AUGUST 17-19

NATURE INSPIRED

SURFACE DESIGN

Optional potluck

Friday night

Let late summer colors, shapes and even heat inspire your surface design. The weather is perfect for dyeing, dye-painting and soy wax! Sketching from nature, and from collected natural objects (don’t worry, you can do it), we’ll design one-of-a-kind fabrics, silk scarves and mixed media pieces.

SEPTEMBER 7-9

FEARLESS SKETCHING

Face your fears of drawing head on, as Susie takes you on a sketch and draw adventure, with no failures allowed. You’ll try different approaches, learn so me classic tips and tricks, and find out how drawing is a learned skill, not something you had to master as a 6th grader who “couldn’t draw horse like your best friend.”

WHAT PARTICIPANTS SAY ABOUT SUSIE’S CLASSES & WORKSHOPS:

“ The exercises we did this weekend were freeing on the one hand, but will also help me focus.”

“This workshop was a fabulous, uplifting, nurturing environment to create in. The journaling was particularly helpful, I would definitely recommend it to a friend.”

“Thank you for creating such a fun, yummy, comfortable, and inspirational experience...”

Get out of the Middle

2012-04-13T13:29:26Z

Sometimes the universe delivers just what you need to hear/see right to the mailbox.

I susbscribe to the BOX OF CRAYONS newsletter and always enjoy it. Here's their latest video message:

Stretching an Art Quilt on a Wooden Frame

2012-04-11T13:20:01Z

Here's a stab at explaining how I mount my art quilts around a wooden frame. It would be better with video, but until I get a tripod mount for my phone or iPad, I can't quite manage to do the work and video the process!

TEXT Projected, Jenny Holzer

2012-04-10T20:05:53Z

San Diego, Projection, Jenny Holzer LAST NIGHT: I watched on Netflix an interesting documentary about conceptual text artist Jenny Holzer “About Jenny Holzer; Protect me from what I want”. She works (ed) with “truisms,” short statements from various perspectives that she may or may not personally agree with, but that are concise restatements of what she thinks is “in the air” in our Western culture. More about Jenny here.

Here use of text, messages and meaning is striking and ephermeral, the material is often projected LIGHT; her space, the architecture or natural environment. I highly reccommend the documentary.

Holzer's work made me open to looking for a "truism" in the text collages I had made recently as part of demos for teaching a Joggles on-line course. It was about finding a message that already existed in the text work that I had done, a kind of unconscious writing come to consciousness.

Here's the raw material: (text collages printed on fabric, erser stamps, paper cloth text collages, etc.)

And here's the process toward Art Quilt Complete:

I found: “Unseen messages never settle.” The cut letters are from fabric that was a direct print of a collage (now deconstructed into individual letters). a print of red “S”s from an eraser print and “NEVER SETTLE” from a paper cloth collage.

POETRY!

2012-04-02T13:33:05Z

From my friend Jim LaVilla-Havelin

SLAM THE TOWN!!! National Poetry Month in San Antonio 2012 - March 10-May 13,2012

Wherever you are, on April 1 (and because April 1 is a Sunday, April 2, as well): Use this sheet to type, hand-write, print – a poem you like (your own, someone else’s, famous, unknown). Make copies and get them out to everyone you know, and folks you don’t know, too.

Under windshield wipers, in work mailboxes, at restaurants, on chairs, on buses, to your email list. SLAM THE TOWN with poems, poems as gifts, poems as a way of letting everyone know how important poetry is in all of our lives. (If you use a poem that is copyrighted, in a book, please note where the poem can be found, cite the source.)

Hold Everything Dear

as the brick of the afternoon stores the rose heat of the journey

as the rose buds a green room to breathe

and blossoms like the wind

as the thinning birches whisper their silver stories of the wind to the urgent

in the trucks

as the leaves of the hedge store the light

that the moment thought it had lost

as the nest of her wrist beats like the chest of a wren in the morning air

as the chorus of the earth find their eyes in the sky

and unwrap them to each other in the teeming dark

hold everything dear

the calligraphy of birds across the morning

the million hands of the axe, the soft hand of the earth

one step ahead of time

the broken teeth of tribes and their long place

steppe-scattered and together

clay’s small, surviving handle, the near ghost of a jug

carrying itself towards us through the soil

the pledge of offered arms, the single sheet that is our common walking

the map of the palm held

in a knot

but given as a torch

hold everything dear

the paths they make towards us and how far we open towards them

the justice of a grass than unravels palaces but shelters the songs of the searching

the vessel that names the waves, the jug of this life, as it fills with the days

as it sinks to become what it loves

memory that grows into a shape the tree always knew as a seed

the words

the bread

the child who reaches for the truths beyond the door

the yearning to begin again together

animals keen inside the parliament of the world

the people in the room the people in the street the people

hold everything dear

–Gareth Evans

I found the poem on this wonderful art blog by painter Deborah Barlow, http://slowmuse.wordpress.com/. She (and many others) have picked it up from painter, essayist, political activist, writer and Marxist John Berger's book of the same title. (The poem was written for Mr. Berger and before you slink away from the term Marxist, read his comments in Orion magazine here.)

I have not been able to exactly trace Mr. Evans, but he might also be a producer. Anyone who knows if there are more poems of his out there, let me know, as I would like to read them!

Traveling with Text

2012-03-29T18:19:22Z

With my aquisition (thanks to birthday bonanza from Linda) of a NEW iPad with the camera, I am afire with digital imaginings. Here are some of my most recent experiments using several iPad apps one on top of another, as well as a few text-based Mixel collages.

The one above was a "physical" collage made with text cut from magazines (one of the exercises in my Text on Textiles courses, like that I am teaching on Joggles right -- and in the summer semester, too). I then photograhed it with the smart phone, sent it to the Cloud and my iPad and altered the colors with an app called PhotoPad (free, and a good photo editing tool). Then I drew on top of that saved image with some other tools and also erased part of the image -- it looks to me like "Pollock takes on text."

Below is another physical collage that was altered, first with an iPad app called ArtistaHaikuHD that gives one a variety of watercolor effects/filters to use on photos. Then I loaded that saved image into the PhotoPad App and played around with the colors. Que Cool!

Here's the watercolor versions in ArtistaHaikuHD:

How did I start? You can see the original here.

Or, rather the intermediate stage that was done on Mixel. The first product was actually this little 4 by 6 collage (shown here with two copies taped together):

WOW! It's amazing how these tools can morph one image SO MANY ways. I love to play with the possiblilities -- so the challenge is not in fluency, it's in when to quit and put my hands back on the wheel, so to speak. Where does what I can do only with hands happen?

Here's one way:

Print it with inkjet transfers on an old piece of tablelinen: