Visioning for Online Teaching

I'm on the SAQA Visioning Project (I think you can still join up if you are a SAQA member) and my goal for the year is to get-- finally -- my online courses into reality. I looked up some previous posts and I have been dithering about this since 2007, so its time to do it or stop thinking about it. At least see how and if I can make one work!

I'll post more on this and the Visioning Project, but in case you've showed up from my Tweet or Facebook or other announcement, here's how to put your name in the hat to be a beta tester (or test pilot as I prefer to call you!). Just send me an email either directly or though the form on the sidebar of this blog.

The test course will be launched in January, so you don't have to worry about holiday commitments. I will also send you a survey between now and then and ask you to share your technical experience, your web use and your gut feeling about how my courses can be adapted for online students and participation. There are so many options, that I think that's why I've stalled out on this one!

El Cielo Artist Retreats and Workshops

 

Finally, the Fall-Winter planning is done -- it's taken me a long time to get my thoughts straight and then to plan an all-new series of workshops. I've been running repeats of some favorites during the past season, so it seemed time to develop a new group of inventive weekends.

The problem with that is, that for all the new toys and tricks and materials that we artists (especially we quilt art/fiber art/mixed media artists) are bombarded with, there are really only so many with substance and style and staying power. So, I have decided to concentrate on what I do best, focusing on creative process and on helping others to find their "sweet spots," their strong suites. Yes, there will still be fun and new and different techniques to explore during these weekends, but the majority of them will have more to do with digging deeper, loosening up, starting from scratch and pulling rabbits out of our (proverbial) hats --if any of this makes sense, then you are a better mind than I!

Nevertheless, here's the fall-winter rundown, with a link here to the brochure up in la-la land -- you can download it (in theory) by just hitting the button, or by pasting the address into your browser bar. If you don't get it and want a pdf copy to print, notify me by email --use the form on the sidebar if you don't have my email address handy. I'll email you an attachment that is sure to work!

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 and strolls down the country roads. A spa and pool, and large screen media room are also available to participants. The fee for each workshop retreat is $160 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. Call 210-643-2128 or email susiemonday@gmail.com
Susie has taught creative process and art techniques to adults and children for more than 30 years. Her art is in numerous private and public collections around the world.

NEW AT EL CIELO
FROM SCRIBBLE TO SYMBOL; PERSONAL MARK-MAKING
SEPTEMBER 25-27
(optional Friday night potluck & critique session)
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.

OCTOBER
Find Susie at the Houston International Quilt Festival, See www.quilts.com
NEW: A CREATIVE STUDY:  PETROGLYPHS, POTTERY & PREHISTORY
NOVEMBER 6-8 (optional Friday night potluck and critique session)
Many artists have found inspiration in prehistoric and archetypal imagery from caves, cliffs and ancient ceramics. This is the first of a series of “creative study” workshops that will illuminate how you as an artist can take inspiration from the images and imagination of the past, while transforming the images into something uniquely your own. This workshop models a time-proven creative study process (based on that developed at Learning About Learning Educational Foundation and the Paul Baker Theatre)  that can be adapted to many inspirational sources. We’ll go from collection through synthesis to creating, and explore textile and mixed media techniques that relate to the aesthetic and philosophical qualities and intent of the earliest art-makers. Explore some simple natural dyes; use handmade brushes as tools, make pigmented paints with ashes, earth, rust and minerals.

NEW: MEMOIR, MEMORY and MEMORIAL
DECEMBER 4-6
(optional Friday night potluck and critique session) Continue the season of Dias de los Muertos by creating a memorial altar to a person, to a personally potent memory (or past life of your own), even to a summer vacation! Learn to transfer photos onto a number of interesting surfaces including plastic, metal and fiber; add words, names and text with resist crayons; microwave dye custom fabrics, and embellish your textile and mixed media altar with all manner of beads, trinkets and meaning-full treasures. (Additional $10 fee for wooden altar frame.)

ARTIST JOURNEY/ARTIST JOURNAL
JANUARY 8-10
(optional Fri. night potluck & critique session)
This annual workshop has become a tradition at El Cielo Studio. Spend the weekend in creative activities (All new this year!) that help you set the stage for a 2010 filled with productivity, imagination, focus and artistic goals. Using some new exercises gleaned from sources around the globe, we’ll banish procrastination, make an annual love letter, and find ways to remind us of what really matters in our artistic lives. Meanwhile, you’ll work with mixed media and surface design techniques to start your artist’s journal for the year.

WHAT PARTICIPANTS SAY ABOUT SUSIE’S CLASSES & WORKSHOPS:
“It was just what I needed right now. I have been in a creative slump, questioning what I do and how I do it. 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.”

“This weekend was totally awesome! I am humbled by Susie’s talents, her teaching abilities and her hospitality. I will come back as often as possible.”

susiemonday@gmail.com
www.susiemonday.com

210-643-2128
3532 Timbercreek Road
Pipe Creek, TX 78063
Read Susie’s blog at http://susiemonday.squarespace.com
You’ll find a downloadable pdf version of this flyer on a front page link on Susie ‘s blog.

In Print, New Porch, New Pooch

Gap in posting is to be expected. When Linda goes on break from teaching, I tend to forget my (self)employed status for a while  (well, until I look at my bank account) and revel in summer in the Hill Country. And a lovely one it is so far: cool in the mornings and evenings, spectacular thunder and lightning storms, clear skies and billowy clouds and sun during the day. The tierra has finally gotten enough rain to green up and the tomatoes in the garden are ripening!

There's a new pooch, a new porch and I'm back in print in the magazine world after a long sabatical from that strand of the tapestry -- My first piece in the quilt world is in Quilting Arts in the June/July issue: a profile of Alaskan artist Ree Nancarrow. I love writing and profiles of artists are a perfect genre for me -- I get to talk to artists whom I admire and then shape a story to communicate what I find special about their work. Thanks to Pokey Bolten (and Leslie Riley who introduced us at last year's International Quilt Festival). So run out and buy a copy, send a letter to Pokey about how much you like my writing (I'm sure), and lets keep that path open!

As to the Pooch. Linda picked up a dumped black-and-tan coon hound (we didn't know at first and thought she was a bloodhound) on the highway and its been a roller coaster ride ever since. You know those free dogs -- she had a bad abcess from a fight with something; she was going into heat; she had to be spayed and her very long nails groomed; the long beautiful ears where filled with bacteria and she and Rodeo, the resident alpha animal gentle spirited border collie, have spent many a testy moment posturing about status in the pack. Not to mention that Bandera (she's named for the highway, county and county seat up the road) seems to think resident cat is a coon. Not so good, since resident cat is fearless and loves to provoke said coon hound. And that a coon hound is mostly nose. So she can't be trusted to stay home guarding the resident sheep (us) as can border collie Rodeo. But, as things will have it, we love her. Find her fascinating and goofy, and are now walking 3 miles a day to give her the run time she needs. We are all looking much trimmer.

The new porch is a big hit with family  and friend visitors, as well as the residents, two and four legged, and I can't wait to use it for opening morning sessions (if it stays cool enough) for the next workshop (completely sold out, thanks to a final registrant who found me and the workshops due to the published profile!). What a sentence.

Our neighbor Bill (That's his house, which he and his wife also built, in the background) built the extension to an existing deck, making a sleeping/dining porch about 25 by 15 with an open porch 8 feet out and poised over the cliff side overlooking the cedars and water oaks. The roof is clear near the house, letting light into the kitchen and DR and metal on the part further out from the house. Three screen doors complete the picture.

So, what are you doing this summer, so far? It's a great time to dye, to sunprint and to rust, so we're dusting off the rust bucket and the dyepots and getting (back) to work!

 P.S. Here's Rodeo, so he won't be too jealous about Bandera's star role in this post.

Color Us Fine and Dandy

This weekend's "Field Guide to Color" put us elbow deep in hues and harmonies. Five of us went to the edge with hands-on explorations, more than a little bit of theory, and enough dyeing to keep the inner kindergartener happy indeed.

I'll get a few more pictures to post later from my new studio assistant Laurel Gibson (yeah, Laurel), since I have a major problem taking photos while I am teaching. However, the lovely swatches above should give you an idea of our color box projects.

Meanwhile, here's a sample of one exercise that is really helpful in training the eye to look at color:

1. Tear out a magazine photo or illustration and cut out a 2" square of one hue (color).

2. Try to mix that color using only primary colors (cadmium red, cadmium yellow and a nice medium blue -- throug in a fuschia red for colors that cabn't easily be mixed with a warm red) and white and black. See how close you can come to duplicating the shade, tone or tint. (shade=hue +black, tone=hue+gray or hue+complement, tint=hue plus white.

That's it. But you'll dind it a remarkable challenge and you'll also be surprised I think at how quickly your ability to mix these colors improves. You can also do the same thing with swatches of fabric or paint chips from the home improvement store.

We let them dry, then cut them out and added our paint chips to a handy file box of colors each participant put together -- in addiditon to the beginnings of a dye diary/dictionary. I forget how handy that is until teaching a workshop like this one reminds me of its use.

My next "Field Guide to Color" will be presented as a one-day workshop as part of the Contemporary Handweaver's of Texas conference in San Antonio on Saturday, March 28. My small art quilt, "Pomegranate Cross" will be part of the faculty exhibit for the conference, on display at the Southwest School of Art and Craft March 18-March 28 in the Russell Hill Rogers Lecture Hall at the Navarro Campus. The workshop is open to conference attendees, so if you are interested, please check their website for enrollment information.

For more color fun and games, try a peek at one or more of these color site links:

Color the White House purple or ??? (Shades of Sandra Cisnero's purple house controversy?)

shape+color

This one is a designer's almost daily links to fab color and design sites around the weboverse.

livelygrey

Here's where to find a color blog that has lots of interactive games and posts. Look at the ones on saturation, hue and brightness.

Big Huge Labs

One of severyl sites that generate color schemes from your photos.

Sherwin Williams

The paint company has a cool site that lets you look at ways to find good color schemes for rooms -- and art.

Wet canvas

Good info and online series of lessons.

And finally, on this long, but I hope helpful post, an excerpt from New World Kids; The Parents' Guide to Creative Thinking -- here's a few ideas about color from our book. If you comment on this or any of my posts or my guest posts on other sites at any time this month from Feb. 15 to Feb 28, your name goes into the raffle to win a free copy of the book.

Color
Human vision is distinguished by the color-detecting
ability of our eyes, and so for us color is often the
element of discernment — and the visual language of
emotion. Green with envy, seeing red, walking around
under a black cloud, emotion transforms itself into
colorful characters, colorful language, poetic passion.
Paint on canvas creates sunny weather or an emotional
storm; and music paints a picture solomn or spritely.
Where is your color sense alive? In cooking or
chemistry, stargazing or paint mixing, finding
rainbows, delighting in a feather’s iridescence or
in an outlandishly fashionable fashion sense?

So, where is your color sense alive?