Susie Goes Live on Joggles

 

 It's here! This week I launch my first online (for real) course on Joggles, Text on Textiles.

I'll be teaching this on on the Joggles forum, and have been working on ways to provide meaningful help and feedback. I am considering adding some experimental videos (on the side, with links on the course materials) so this will be have a learning challenge and curve for me as well. The video's won't be part of lesson one, since it's less a technique than a getting-started design lesson, but I'll work on the videos for others of the 5 lessons. 

The workshop is only $45, so if you are interested, click over to the site and sign up now. The first of the lessons will be posted on Wednesday.

 

That link again: http://www.joggles.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=75_1235&products_id=23449

Designing with Text, Up in the Cloud

In a nutshell, it's Wordle. 

http://www.wordle.net/

The graphic above is the word cloud generated by Wordle using the text in this blog site! You can use any site, any text block, anything you want to type into the program or copy and paste. It's fun to scroll through the gallery, too. Lots of design uses for this program!

This is a great word cloud design site, passed along to me from Caryl Gaubatz via Pat Schulz, who knows my interest in text on the surface. I'm posting it here, not only to share, but I find that it's helpful to use my blog as a kind of electonic filing cabinet of ideas I want to explore more!

MORE: the developer of Wordle referred me (via his posterous page) to another, newer word cloud design generator -- http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html 

With Tagxedo, you can also put the cloud into a specific design shape or form and manipulate more of the criteria for the design. 

The BIg Freeze, and the Studio Thaw

Its COOOOLD outside. Guess that's the state of the union. We had rolling blackouts yesterday, but "they" seem to have figured out the grid for now. And, dispite dripping the tub, the water in the house is frozen, nothing to do but wait for the thaw (tomorrow it will be 43) and hope for the pipes' best. We've never had pipes freeze before so this is a major distraction and anxiety (i foresee torrents of water coming down from the attic). I am glad there is no El Cielo workshop going on! At any rate, send me pipe fairy prayers and, gee, while we are at it, if its going to be this dadburn cold can't we muster up a little snowfall tonight? Just a bit. Just to make the visuals complete.

However, while the freeze is going on its business, I have had some extended time in the studio (where the water still works). And that has been wonderful. It's a creative thaw I've been anticipating and hoping for. The place is still a mess from teaching supplies in and out, but instead of being my (yeah, right) regular neat and orderly person, I just cleared a workspace and dove in.

The piece I am working on is one that's been in my head for a long while, since working on collage examples for the Text on the Surface workshops. I discovered it when I took everything out for the Southwest School class this past Monday. There have been several calls for entries that I want to respond to, and at least one of them had to do with working outside of one's comfort zone (SAQA, I think) and another one has a theme that fits the collage perfectly. So rather than do my usual work-on-the-table improvisation, I actually made a paper pattern, am printing some of the elements, cutting others, and will have this big text based piece done by the end of the week I hope.

So, stepping out of my usual narrative, goddessy, archetypal themes, this one will be modernism, pure and simple (sort of). Its quite scary to spend time on something so different (though I have been ooching toward more formal, abstract work for a little while) but I suspect I have to do so this time in order to renew something important, to step beyond my own pictures of my own work, and to take a chance. That was the thaw I needed in order to get myself back to the design table in an authentic way.

So what about you? I'd love to know what risky business you are trying for your own creative thaw.

What I learned... (Text on the Surface)

Starting today (Monday afternoon), there's a five-week course at the Southwest School of Art -- Text on the Surface. If you're in SA and are interested, I think there is an opening for one more student.-

This was the course I attempted to design as an online course, only to discover that I am "not-so-good" at teaching online (as the kids say). Thanks to all the text test pilots who suffered through it! I suspect that I could get better, but I am not sure I want to until I can't get out there to teach in person any more.  I have a hard enough time with my interpersonal intelligence skills (or lack thereof) in person and trying to interact online in a teaching situation certainly pointed up my weaknesses. (I am the kind of person who can spend an entire evening with a feuding couple or two in the clutches of an extramarital affair and never notice anything.) The nuances of interacting online often evade me, whether it be via email or listserve. So while I have certain technical facility with it all, I seem to lack the ability to make the charisma leap -- or something!

Perhaps just putting out an e-book would work -- but I had a really hard time trying to interact, give feedback and provide guidance in an electronic "classroom." Fostering community online evaded me. And I suspect, as with realtime teaching, that that is what all of us want in an educational situation. 

Believing that its always better to work from one's strengths, I am sticking to the actual world for teaching and facilitating for now, So if you were waiting to hear about an online course, wait no longer. This working from one's strengths means that sometimes you do just make a u-turn. Find another way; back up and begin again.

It smarts. At 62, I, like a lot of people my age, don't really like being a beginner at anything. We prefer to stick with our success stories. We often do know what we like to do and how we like to do it. On one hand, that focuses our attention and keeps us from wasting the time on the planet we have left, but it can also lead to stagnation and boredom. So even though I am not continuing with the online adventure, I'm glad I tried it out and learned something new about myself.