Susan Shie

May 18 - 24, 2011 Turtle Art Camp

2011-05-22T09:38:00.007-04:00

The sun came back out this week, during our second Turtle Art Camp of May, 2011, again with only one student, feisty Pauline Salzman from Treasure Island, FL. Here's the front yard, as you look through the Moon Garden, showing the wisteria that doesn't always bloom. It's blooming like crazy right now!

Pauline arrived with a bang, and soon we were walking Libby, as Pauline said she could cure our nine month old pup of pulling on the leash. And sure enough, she DID!! The trick is to give Libby a slack leash, hanging down a bit like a "J," so that when you have to correct her with a strong jerk of the leash, she notices. When I took the leash, it worked for me, too! I'd been giving her a very short leash, and she was always pulling on it, and my arms were ready to fall off! Bliss, bliss, bliss, and Libby's been walking well with us ever since. Pauline continues to help us learn to control our very friendly, energetic Libby, so we can walk her without having her jump up on people, etc. Life is good! Above is my library time sketchbook drawing of Libby walking ever so sweetly, for the first time without any pulling!

So here we are in the studio, doing our first Library Time, after a Libby walk. Library time is my term for just ten minutes of being quiet and seeing what naturally comes out of you, any mixture of writing and drawing.

Then, after we made up a list of themes for our week together, Pauline and I chose the theme Superstition for our first painting and went back to our sketchbooks, to work something out for that. I settled on my personal thing of empowering a Magic Penny (any shiny penny will do) and flipping it once only, when I can't make a decision. To illustrate this, I decided to sketch how I had to make a final choice between two Double Doodle puppies, to pick Libby. (I had picked another puppy, when we'd visited the kennel, Yesteryear Acres in Heath, Ohio, but later realized that Blue Collar Girl would shed, because she had straight, silky hair. And we'd chosen to get a Double Doodle because of their non-shedding quality.) So I flipped and Turquoise Collar Girl won, and Renee told me she thought that was my best choice, since that puppy loved to explore, so she'd love my long walks. And Turquoise Collar Girl became Libby.

Pauline did a bunch of online research about superstitions and ended up making this sketchbook drawing. We were ready to go!

Here's my Rub-a-Dub permanent marker drawing on a fat quarter size piece of Kona. I only use the sketching process to get my ideas clear in my head, for who's going to be in the painting, what they're going to be doing, and where they'll be in the composition. I tell my students to only glance at their favorite sketch, not copy from it. This keeps the painting's imagery fresh and full of movement. It won't be the same composition, but will be its own thing, probably with some changes you decide to make, and with some additions.

Pauline's off and running, having dealt with her freak-out that I wouldn't let her sketch with or draw on cloth with a pencil first. The permanent marker makes you have to accept what comes out the first time, and she did a great job.

Here we're ready to start painting on our drawings on cloth, with our Jacquard Textile Colors paints and boar bristle brushes. The drawings with Rub-a-Dub marker (ink) have been heat set, which is what we do after each step of making paintings this way

I put yellow into my painting first, because it's the weakest pigment, and anything you put over it will change it. Think watercolor. With yellow I also demonstrate at least four ways of applying fabric paint and discuss the advantages and problems with each of these methods.

I prefer using my paint with a lot of water, because it flows on so nicely, and because I like the blending the paints do while they're wet. You can follow yellow with any color, but moving to orange next is a nice way to be able to keep using the same paint water and not clean out your brush between colors.

Pauline tries my methods and chooses working more with colors as they come out of the bottles, not watered down. This allows you to put wet paints next to each other without bleeding. Also the colors will pretty much stay the same value of light to dark that you see at the start. Watered down paints dry a few shades lighter.

My piece is REALLY wet, and I move it to a dry place on the big table, so it'll dry faster on the dry dropcloth. You can't hang these wet paintings on the clothesline to dry, because all the paint will just run off, onto the floor.

Pauline's Superstition theme piece takes place in the Garden of Eden, with lots of superstitions surrounding Adam and Eve.

While our paints dry, we go over to Jimmy's studio and he gives Pauline a little tour of his leather making. You can see what he does in making fine art cases for fly fishing equipment at James Acord's Leather.

Jimmy's showing Pauline some small artworks he made, which aren't functional. Every image he makes is all hand carved into the wet, softened tanned leather, before he ever paints it. So the texture is all there, carefully applied with his swivel knife and little tools he's custom made to fit his needs.

You turn your painting face down to heat set it. In this case, my painting was drying too slowly (due to lots of humidity), so I first put the painting between layers of cotton cloth to iron it, to dry it out. Then I removed the top layer and continued ironing with my hot, dry iron, to heat set it. I've got the exhaust fan running, opposite me.

After heat setting the paint, I drew over my Rub-a-Dub lines with a Painters paint marker (acrylic paint) and added more details and a few large words. This Magic Penny piece is ready to start airpen writing on next. I've changed the title from Magic Penny to Flippin' for Libby, I think.

Pauline's got all the colors into her piece now and is ready to start going over her lines, too.

Libby and Pauline have a good snuggle, and the first full day of Turtle Art Camp is overwith.

On Friday, after our library time, it was introducing airpen lessons time: getting to know what it's for, what the parts do, and how to use and then clean and fill it. Here Pauline's trying it out on scrap fabric, before moving over to write on her Superstition piece.

And pretty soon, she's jumped over to her painting, to start using the airpen to write on it. Note the rare and beautiful Ruth Reynolds mug of Riva, that we're using to hold the airpen. Ruth gave me two of those years ago, when Jimmy and I stayed at her house in Joliet, IL, when we taught for her quilt group. Ruth Reynolds is an amazing artist and big hearted force of nature! Thank you again, Ruth!

Here I had most of my airpen writing on my Superstition piece, too.

We've got two airpens running off of a power strip, so we can easily turn them off with the switch on it. There are no on-off switches on the air pumps for airpens themselves, since they are really fish tank air pumps.

We spent most of Friday in the studio, except when we were on our Libby walks, but had to take time to admire the Wisteria, whcih was almost in full bloom at this point. This super-wet spring was great for all the flowering trees!

So that's Friday, a long day of writing and writing and writing, with some research thrown in, for Pauline, who looked up all kinds of superstitions to record about on her piece.

Saturday was our downtown tour and airbrush lesson day. After eating a tasty breakfast at The Parlor, our favorite diner, we mozied over to Uptown Downtown, Early Weigandt's antique store. I bought this pillowcase for Pauline, who sez her doggie will just carry it off. :)

Check out the lovely hand embroidery on this pillowcase. The cotton is much whiter than it looks here, too. Early works hard to bring back the crispy white cleanness and elegance of antique linens, using a secret formula for washing them. Sets of two really nice ones make lovely wedding presents, too.

Next we went to the really nice yarn store, Calla Lily, where Pauline met the owner Donna, and we touched and swooned over many, many beautiful yarns. Pauline's an avid sock knitter (gave me a beautiful pair she made just for me!) and I used to knit a lot, in the old days. This store and Uptown Downtown are two of my favorites in town, along with Wooster Natural Foods, where we went next, before going home to do airbrush.

Back to work! Our theme for Saturday's work was Allergies, so I decided to make my airbrush painting be about Jimmy, who's allergic to Libby's hair (much less of a problem since I started trimming her coat) and Libby, who's allergic to all grains and anything greasy or spicy.

I drew in my sketchbook a piece about how Jimmy sometimes still holds Libby on his lap in his big green Archie Bunker chair, when we come up to the livingroom around 11 PM, to watch part of a movie or the news and/or some late night stuff like CNN, the Colbert Report, or Letterman. Of course, SNL. We have a glass of wine, and eventually we give in to hedonism and have a little snack, too. The cats gather around, and by that time, Libby's on the floor, waiting for little snacks of her kibble.

I didn't look at my sketch at all, when I drew this, since my sketch had Jimmy and Libby facing the other way, and I wanted to show them from my view on the couch. I have a good memory of what they look like, after so many months of them modeling for me. :) After painting Jimmy and Libby, I added Otis and Ome to the arm of the chair, and thought about what else would go in, while I got Pauline started on her painting.

Here's Pauline's Allergy theme sketch.

And here's Pauline, taking her first brave airbrush strokes on her fabric piece. We're using a double action Aztek airbrush and Createx airbrush paint.

Working away, focusing on how to regulate the air and paint ratio, already Pauline's linework is looking good!

I added myself to Jimmy and Libby and the cats, and have put in one wine glass so far. I'll soon add Jimmy's studio cat Marigold and the other glass of wine.

I added Eva, because while staring at the picture, I suddenly heard her ask me how come she wasn't being included! She has her peanut and nut allergies, after all, AND she LOVES the cats and especially Libby, whom she considers herself to be part owner of! So here she is!

i had studied these drawings Eva had made of herself a couple of weeks ago, in my sketchbook, and honestly, my drawing of her is so much less interesting and so much less Eva! I have a lot to learn from my granddaughter!

Now we're into painting in the colors, after heat setting our black line airbrush work. Actually now it's Sunday morning, too. Time flies! We've begun with yellow and are moving through the warm colors. Airbrushing in color areas is so much easier than making controlled lines. And working on cloth is so much more forgiving than working on any hard surface. Paintings for quilts, and for that matter, quilts instead of stretched canvases, are SOOOO much more user friendly all round!

Here's the extent of my warm color painting, before we clean out the airbrush again and move on to the cool colors.

Pauline gets pretty fancy here, with her varied shades of green grasses! Lots of very careful work goes on, to paint around all these small objects of allergy causes!

Pauline started adding blue and got a little blob, but it soon became a lovely field of blue dots in the sky. Hurray for being flexible!

So that was a long day, Sunday, and we were both pretty worn out after hours of living in our respirators, but it was all worth it. Now the only time we need to wear our masks again is when we heat set. And our health is still good, having escaped the crappy stuff that we'd be breathing from the paint, if we hadn't worn our masks.

Then we were back to airpen work, with Pauline handling it like a pro now, focusing her thoughts on the notes she'd made about various allergies.

Then we went back to our first paintings, of the Superstitions, and got them ready to quilt. Here I've got straight pins holding the backing fabric / border fabric (that's folded to the front and tucked under the painting) to the painting, which I'll be sewing down first. I've also got bent safety pins holding the painting, Nature-fil bamboo and cotton batting, and backing (a rare and lovely Lunn Fabrics hand dye) together.

Here's Pauline's allergy piece pinned together, too. I forgot to get any pix of us sewing, but she chose my little Pfaff 1473, and I used my Janome 6600, and we quilted those pieces til bedtime on Sunday night. We got those smaller pieces all quilted and Monday morning we got the perle cotton hand sewing done around their outside edges. Pauline even got a casing sewn onto hers, while I did airpen writing on my big Jimmy and Libby piece.

Pauline got a second wind on airpen writing and I got into making really large words on some of the forms in my paintting, so they'd stand out against their backgrounds and each other. I think this is the wave of my future! i really like how Libby stayed light and separated from the rest of the piece, with her big-lettering words. Monday was mostly airpen work, I guess, along with the astrology lesson, which Pauline picked up on really fast. I do each student's birth chart, if they want me to, and then I teach them how a chart works, what the different parts of it mean, etc, and have them find a few of their planets, and tell me what degree of what sign, in what house they are.

Here are all the pieces we made this week in camp. The fat-quarter sized pieces at the bottom are pretty much done. The larger ones are still just paintings.

Now it's Tuesday morning, end of our May 18 - 24, 2011 Turtle Art Camp. Libby had to pose with Pauline and me, since Pauline had worked so very hard to help us learn to walk easily with each other. What a great gift that was of her!

My larger allergy-theme piece is all written on and ready to quilt, when I get the time. It's called "Twilight Time: 4 of Pyrex Cups in the Kitchen Tarot." It's still just a painting right now.

Pauline's larger piece, also the allergy-theme piece, will get more airpen writing on it. She has an airpen at home, and now she knows what to do with it.

Oops, this is blurry. But at least you can SENSE that it's all quilted now!

Pauline used my techniques for quilting, but her grids are much more even and angular, on purpose. Mine are uneven and a little wonky, also on purpose. We agree that with my crazy grids methods, each artist can express herself well.

This morning, before Pauline left, I pulled out some of my old sketchbooks from college and grad school. Here's the 1982 complete lunar eclipse happening at Allerton Apartments in Kent, with my friends Alex, Deborah, and Skaidrite, and her Erin. We went out way late at night, camped out with snacks and incense, and watched the magic happen.

Here's another drawing from my big hardbound sketchbooks, this time of Skaidrite again and our other Allerton neighbor, Chris. This drawing is done with Prismacolors colored pencils, and the eclipse piece above was in pen and Prang watercolors. I consider the sketchbooks from that time to be my most important work in grad school, and when I look at those drawings and writings, I tell myself I need to be making more finished drawings again. But I'm too busy making paintings that I write on and sew on now!

Here's a drawing from back then, of a neighbor in Wooster, Marlisa, and my daughter Gretchen - with her cat Vikki.

Jimmy's been working on a rod case while Pauline was here, so before she left, we checked in on his progress. Gettin' there! This one goes to England pretty soon. All of Jimmy's pieces are custom orders, made to someone's request for fly fishing cases. Usually they have his hand carved and painted images on them, but this one is plain, a rod case that will hold both a rod and an attached reel. Check out James Acord's Leather.

Now we're outside in the pretty morning air, walking Pauline to her rental car.

Gotta pose one time in front of the garage door mural.

So Libby gives her new teacher a goodbye kiss, and off we go!

Next Turtle Art Camp will be July 6 - 12, then July 26 - Aug 1 (the returning students' class), then Aug 31 - Sept 6, and finally Oct 5 - 11. All camps this year are 10% off, for $900 for the week, including art supplies, room, and partial board. Plenty of openings left, so please email or call me about signing up! We'd love to have you here!

I hope you enjoyed this long, rambling blog entry. Not sure when I'll be writing again. I'm off to Quilt National on Friday with my dear friend Quatty tArt (Gayle Pritchard). Maybe I'll have a chance to put a few pix up after that, or put them on my Facebook page.

Thanks a lot. Have a good one! Lucky

May 4 - 10, 2011 Turtle Art Camp

2011-05-18T21:53:00.003-04:00

My Turtle Art Camp for May 4 - 10 had only one student, but Louise Harrington, of Cork City, Ireland, brought her husband and son along, so we still had a full house and lots of action that week! Here are Louise and Libby, down in the Girl Room, my studio, on our first full day of class.

We picked the theme "Birth and Death" for our first day's painting, so here's my drawing for my piece. My friend Janie had died on April 30, and Osama Bin Laden had died the next day. She was the sweetheard darling of everyone who knew her, and Bin Laden ... he had mixed reviews in the world! I showed the big differences in how they ended up after dying, as well as contemplating the what-if of them being reincarnated as twins, coming from such contrasting last lives. I threw in the bride at the Royal Wedding, which was the day before Janie died.

Here's the start of my painting for this piece, before I started adding writing to it. These paintings are roughly fat quarter size pieces of Robert Kaufman Kona cotton, PFD (prepared for dyeing.) So they're about 18" x 24." I only care about us all working in about the same size pieces, so that we have some chance of getting our paintings done about the same time.

Louise worked hard on her piece about her 3 year old son Oisin, as he sails through his life, with her quilts as his sails.

At camp, most nights we all go out to supper together at non-chain restaurants. Here are Louise's husband Arran and their son Oisin, enjoying Eva's Etch-a-Sketch, while we waited for food at The Green Leaf, our local family restaurant, the one that still has a drive-in part outside.

My good friend Kathleen Kenneweg had been here since April 26, and came back one more night during the camp. Here she's studying my People Magazine, the rare one I bought, so I could get all kinds of cool info about the big royal wedding, for my artwork. She's posing as a famous James Bond character, glamour puss that she is (like ME!) :)

Louise went straight from her first one-on-one airpen lesson to working on her actual painting. She's a brave one! And she did quite well. It's good to see that painting as an experiment anyhow, so you're willing to take risks with it. In fact, it's good to see all of your art as experiments! My Jamie and Osama piece in the front here has much of its airpen writing on it here, though I added more later.

Here are Louise and Oisin in downtown Wooster on Saturday morning, enjoying our lovely rainy Spring. Tut-tut, it looks like rain! It's time for our grand downtown tour, after having breakfast at The Parlor, our favorite diner.

At Uptown Downtown, Louise and I found this stunning set of 12 quilt blocks and ended up splitting them for our non-deadlined project. Here's Mary Jo, who works in Early's store.

We laid out our quilt blocks to admire them, on top of another quilt, on a bed in another student room, and just swooned. Each block is made from feed sack cloth, machine appliqued onto this super tomato orange-red background. We each now own six blocks. I think mine will become a duvet cover for Eva's bed here, and that I'll have Eva help me choose the sashing fabrics. Then we can dust off our Hello Kitty sewing machine and see if we can make any headway on that duvet cover this Summer.

Saturday afternoon, it's time to get that airbrush going! We use an Aztek double action airbrush, and it's the most user-friendly airbrush you can imagine. You will notice the fashionable 3M 6000 respirator that Louise is sporting.

Here's my line drawing on cloth for the Royal Wedding piece, which will be the Kitchen Tarot card the Knight of Wooden Spoons (Wands.) We're using the same Kona cotton for the cloth and black Createx airbrush paint for the airbrushed lines. This painting is about 34"h x 32"w, and I liked it a lot, but from the start, I've seen it as a study for a much larger piece that I hope to begin soon. It won't have the exact same images, but the same subject, characters (and more) and will have room for a lot more writing than I can get into this little one.

Here are Louise and me, BOTH wearing the same fashion statement respirators, posing proudly with the starts of our airbrush paintings.

To heat set the paints, you use a hot, dry clothes iron, and you iron the painting face-down, so the iron doesn't get paint on it and doesn't dirty up your painting. We've got a big exhaust fan built into the wall, in front of the ironing board, and use it both for heat setting and for airbrush painting. These are also the two activities we wear a respirator for. It's got cartridges on it for both particles (airbrush paint that's airborne) and fumes (the gases given off during heat setting, even though you often can't even smell these gases.) When you heat set airbrush or other fabric paints, you're making them permanent, and there are compounds given off during the chemical changes involved. Wearing said ugly respirator can keep some nasty heavy metals out of your lungs, and therefore out of your bloodstream and entire body.

Royal Wedding with yellows and oranges, as Louise and I pass each color back and forth at the wall. The nicest thing about this is that we each have plenty of time to contemplate our next moves, while watching the other one work on her piece with the current airbrush paint color.

Oisin Towers - Kaleidoscope Singer, in progress, with just the yellow and then orange paints airbrushed on.

Here's Libby in the studio (NOT in the airbrush room), hanging out with us, soft mouthing her favorite toy, Pinky the Flamingo.

Here's my airbrushed piece, before I quilted and added airpen writing to it.

Louise puts some final touches on the writing on the banners on her piece, also before airpen writing and quilting.

Oisin is fascinated by the painting his mom is making of him. And the kaleidoscope in the painting is one we have in our living room, so he's enjoying that, too. See that painting on the wall between Arran and Oisin? My daughter Gretchen made it of me back in 1980. She looked at me while she was painting it with acrylics on paper. It's my favorite painting in the world, and I need to get it framed. It's starting to deteriorate, and I can't stand to lose it!

That evening Jimmy and Libby showed our Irish guests how he and Libby play Broom Hockey. It's a great sport!

Because these pieces are too big to work on all from standing by the table, and too small to work on by just working along the table's edges, we ended up climbing up on the big table and doing some yogic Cat Pose. I decided to use a large border, so I could write a lot more of the wedding story around the edges. You cut the batting to exactly the size you want the border to be, and you bring the backing fabric out past the batting enough so that it can come over the batting and tuck under the painting's raw edges. My batting is bamboo and cotton Nature-fil, and my backing fabric is some now-vintage Lunn Fabric hand dyed crackle, made here in Ohio by Michael Mrowka and Debra Lunn's own hands.

Now we're both folding our backing fabrics over and tucking them in. We use straight pins along that painting / border edge, and when that's all done, we use bent safety pins to baste the sandwich body together. The corners are butted, not mitered. All of this sandwiching process is my own invention, and it's worked for me for many, many years now.

You have to be sure you've got all the layers really flattened out, before you start pinning. So you slow down and feel both top and underneath, a LOT, to make sure you're not pinning in puckers and pleats. Once it's all smooth, and you've reached as far as you can to put in your safety pins about 4" apart, you can start rolling up the piece, so you can keep on pinning. I start at the bottom edge, usually, with the safety pins, and work my way up.

That night, before Oisin went to bed, the family hung out with our pets, Ome and Libby. Otis and Marigold aren't in this picture.

this was the last night of the class, and we all stayed up til 3:00 AM, to get our pieces quilted. Louise is ripping along on the Janome 6600. She had worked really hard, to get all of her airpen writing onto the painting itself, before she quilted her piece. It's got song lyrics of tunes she and Oisin like to sing together, written all over it.

Meanwhile, the guys were working on leather belts over in Jimmy's studio. I think it got a little drunk out that one night ... but a LOT of creativity was going on over there! I think Jimmy has some pix of Arran working with his Indian puppet, too, but he hasn't put them into the computer yet. So just wait for that! It was pretty amazing!

Here are the two small pieces that Louise and I had quilted in my Crazy Grid way, before we quilted our bigger pieces.

I took a walk around the house in the morning, on the day Louise and her boys were going home. This was the last sunny day for a while. They had lucked out and managed more sun than rain all through their week here!

It was the last morning here, with the last of Jimmy's tasty, strong coffee, for our Irish friends.

Our dear friend Bill Jones (aka David Hazelwood) stopped in to pick up Jimmy, and the two of them took off to buy leather at Weaver's, down at Mt Hope, enjoying a ride through the Amish countryside.

Here are Louise, Libby, and me, in front of our quilted pieces from the week.

Here's Louise's big piece, as finished as she got it here. It's about 36"h x 34"w, probably.

I actually finished my "Royal Wedding: Knight of Wooden Spoons in the Kitchen Tarot" before the next Turtle Art Camp started, so here is what it looks like, finished. I still may make a very large second painting/quilt of this card, but for now, this is what I have. It's 35.5"h x 33.5"w.

Here's a detail shot. I wrote about the bizarre but beautiful fruitcake wedding cake, in my kidney pie cake. I did all the airpen writing on this one AFTER my camp with Louise was overwith, as well as sewing around the edge and putting a casing on the back. Still have to do the label on back.

Thanks to Louise, there IS a wooden spoon on this piece, and it's the Welsh Love Spoon that I "tattooed" onto Victoria Beckham's chest, after Louise told me about Welsh love spoons. Wooden Spoons are my Kitchen Tarot suit for Wands, by the way.

So I've decided to make the current Turtle Art Camp a separate blog entry, since this one got so long. (surprise!) So the next thing I'll be doing is starting that entry ... maybe tonight. But this camp is May 18 - 24, so it'll be another entry that evolves over days. Stay tuned - Lucky

Time flys!

2011-05-14T19:36:00.005-04:00

This is a blog about not having written here since January! Yikes! And I know I should keep it short, so I'll feel like writing here again soon! So here's mainly a short peek at what happened in the last four months, but first, a note about the last big piece I made: Kat Soup. :)

"Kat Soup: 10 of Pyrex Cups in the Kitchen Tarot" is my favorite piece right now. :) It's 86"h x 87"w, making sketches starting on Dec 19, 2010, and painting, writing on, and quilting the piece itself between January 21 and February 25, 2011. (Yes, I did nothing but work on this large piece during that time, and that's how it got made so fast. I was pretty obsessed!) It's about my family, but the writing on it is about us and world events, including the revolutions that had begun in Tunisia, and spread to Egypt and beyond, while I was writing my stories. I painted the Great Pyramids on this piece five days before the Egyptian revolt began. Eva is reaching up to the ice-cream-cone shaped space station, which she and her folks had seen last Summer, as it orbited over their house. At least Eva drew it as an ice cream cone.
You can read my full statement and see lots of large detail shots of "Kat Soup" in my site's 2011 gallery.

In March I worked on a series of 18" x 24" paintings on stretched canvas, called "Spring in Wooster." Above are "Rita's Aveda Spa" and "The Coccia House." (See the actual places' websites: (Rita's) Spa Collections and the Coccia House.) I also made paintings about the Full Moon / Spring Equinox in Wooster and about the Hero House.

Then I made a series of eight small paintings on cloth called "Healing Songs for the Earth," which you'll find in my Facebook photos page, as albums. (Click on any of the little images to go into bigger pix mode.) I've quilted two of the Healing Songs pieces since then, including #7 above.

First thing I did in Cincinnati was to have a little potluck supper at my Garfield Suites apartment. Jimmy and my guests were Janice Kagermeier, Cathy Neri of Quilting Books Unlimited, and YaYa Marsha. They all went home after we enjoyed our pizza and box wine, and Jimmy went back to Wooster in the morning, when I started teaching.

This is my sketchbook drawing in class the first day - of that fabulous potluck at my place the night before. Each day of any class I teach, I open with ten minutes of drawing and writing time I call "Library Time," because you have to be quiet. It really gets you centered into your own self again!

In early April, Jimmy drove me down to Cincinnati, to teach a 3-day class, give a lecture about my work, and have a solo show of 25 pieces at the Spring International Quilt Festival, in its first year at Cincy, having been moved there from Chicago. I was in Cincy from April 6 to the 11th. Above you can see a little section of my solo show, which they titled "America Collects Quilts: The Works of Susan Shie." I like that! Everything I make is for sale, by the way, all you big and small ollectors reading this! I make art in ALL sizes! :)

I saw a lot of people I know down in Cincinnati, and really loved seeing Jane Burch Cochran and Shelley Brenner Baird, two of my favorite artists! Saw David Walker with Jane, too, but he got away! Shelley had works in the SAQA exhibitions at the Festival, and she also gave a lecture about her work.

My girlfriends Juno (Jancy) McClellan-Ryan, Sherry Boram, and Jeanette Thompson came to the Festival and stayed down the hall from me in the Garfield. They were there Friday to Sunday, and even helped me pack up my class stuff! They were originally all students of mine, and we got closer when we were all in our Obama show at Montgomery College in early 2009. Now we're all in the art group Fiber Artists of Hope (formerly the Obama Quilters.) Here we're starving and ordering supper at the Garfield's very nice restaurant. Did I tell you how much I love the Garfield Suites? It's a one-of-a-kind hotel and the staff is so nice and the suites are HUGE! Full kitchens! They gave us free rides to and from the convention center, too! What a great time that was! You can see these girlfriends on Facebook.

Here are my wonderful students! Shauna Swantek, Mary Bajcz, Meena Schaldenbrand, and Zsuzsanna Schmelzbach (who came from Switzerland, and kept entertaining us with really amazing stories.) We had a blast, working away up on that quiet second floor, while the ballrooms below us were roaring with the crowds who were looking at all those exhibits and booths.

Here's Becky Hancock, owner of St Theresa's Textile Trove in Cincinnati. I got to go see her new store in the Pendleton Arts Center, thanks to Janet Johnson, who drove me and Juno there. Man, Becky! You still have the best fabric and embellishments store in the world! Janet, Juno, and I had a big time Sunday morning, looting the store and enjoying the really moving exhibition there, a moving tribute to a young woman named Esme.

Here's Jimmy, when he came back down to Cincy on April 10th, to help me gather up all my class and show stuff to take back home the next day. And beside Jimmy is Murray Heasman, of Purrfect Puzzles, from Cork, Ireland. Murray came to the Cincinnati quilt festival to scout for more art quilters to contract for his jigsaw puzzles of American art quilters. I was already connected to him, but hadn't realized he was coming to this Festival thing. He had supper with us Obama girls one night and sat with us a little at my show, when I wasn't teaching. I hope to see him next March when I take my class group to Cork City, for my gig "Ireland: Take a Walk on the Wild Side!"

Big thanks to all the fine staff of Quilts Inc, who produce the International Quilt Festivals, and especially to the volunteers who put up and took down my show! To my left is my new girlfriend Janet Johnson, who was volunteering at the festival, along with her husband Don, and who helped me out a LOT! In this picture, they'd just taken down and repacked all the quilts it took me days to pack up at home! Amazing!!

Jimmy and I had the joy of going over to my dear friend Suzanne Fisher's house for supper with her and her husband Sergio the last night we were in town. Suzanne and I met in 1987, because we were both selected to have a six-months' residency in NYC at P.S.#1. She went first, and I went a half year later, and we became penpals over it and have been friends ever since. You can enjoy her incredible and really classy artwork on her site.

In mid April, after I got home from Cincinnati, I made a series of 6 paintings on canvas, called "Studio Muses." They're each 10"h x 8"w, made with acrylic paint and ink.

Then my cousin Candice commissioned me to make her a series of 6 paintings, called "Feisty Shie Women." Above is my painting of Candice and below is her mother, my Aunt Pauline. The six women are shown in JAX Beach, Florida, where Candy and her husband David just bought a condo to enjoy winters in. Each painting has two local restaurants that Candy loves in it, along with that woman's cats. These are 12"h x 10"w on stretched canvas, made with acrylic paint and ink.

Here are all six of the "Feisty Shie Women" paintings: Candice, Pauline, Cathy, Tamara, Cassandra and Annabelle, and me.

Speaking of feisty Shie women: I was finishing those paintings up when my Gretchen brought her Eva down to our place for a four day visit, to get her used to staying here for a longer period, since she'll be here more this Summer, with school being out. Above Gretchen and Eva skype with Eva's daddy Mike for the very first time, that first night, after Gretchen brought Eva down to our place.

Jimmy's mom, Mama Wanda came over and hung out with us one night while Eva was here, busily drawing away in my sketchbook.

Eva and Libby hung out, while Kathleen and I weeded the Moon Garden. (Kathleen got here from Washington state, the same day Eva came.) Note the fancy haircut I gave Libby back on April 20, the first day of Spring. She looks so much lighter! AND it takes about one tenth of the time now, to brush her hair. It took 2 hours to cut off all that wool by hand though! I was pretty scared! :)

Eva started drawing her current favorite band, the Monkees, in my sketchbook, and just kept on drawing for many pages. Libbys and gardens and more Monkees! On and ON!

After seeing Eva's drawings, Kathleen got on You Tube and played a bunch of Monkees videos for her to enjoy. Then, because Eva studies ballet, she found her some great dance videos. They were rockin'!

Each morning Jimmy and Eva gave Otis his paper rub, after Libby faithfully brought in the paper. Eva still adores Otis and his sister Ome (Eva's cat Cricket's siblings), even though Libby has definitely stolen Eva's heart!

Eva, Libby, and I took nice walks twice or three times a day, sometimes with Kathleen, sometimes with Jimmy, sometimes just us. Man, look at how tall Eva is now! You know, she's gonna get way taller than Gretchen and me! Eva's only six and a half now!

Mike came down to take his Eva home, and he and Jimmy got to talking about the big drag of some albums never having been converted to CDs. Here they're swooning over one such rare Neil Young album, "Time Fades Away," which Mike's going to see if his brother Frank will make CDs for them from.

Time for Eva to go home. You can see how these two got really close that week. Eva and her twin Meeva.

Before they went home, Eva and Mike watched the end of the movie "East of Eden" with me. Now Eva was sitting in her car seat, making drawings on postit notes, possibly of the cast of StarTrek, whom she also loves right now, besides the Monkees. We're all sadly saying goodbye.

In rhe next week or so I'll show you my May 4 - 10 TAC - Turtle Art Camp, which had an Irish theme!

Meanwhile, tomorrow's the Cleveland Marathon, which Mike's running in. Go Michael! And Go Daisy! I hope this RAIN gets itself all rained out, so all of you have a lovely day for the big race!

Thanks for reading this once again long blog post! Can't seem to make those shorties!

Love, Lucky

Jimmy: a painted biography by me

2011-01-18T17:13:00.025-05:00

I've never made a major piece just about Jimmy before, and this one isn't huge, but I think of it as major. It's 73"h x 37"w, and I named it simply "Jimmy," after having a working title called "Poppy's Puppies" for a long time. It's really more about Jimmy and much less about our dogs. :)

I finished this piece two days ago, on January 16th, after beginning it way back on July 10th, when I had two students here for a weeklong Turtle Art Camp. I needed to do an airbrush demo for the class, so decided on making a painting of Jimmy, close to life size. Painting it pretty fast, I spent the rest of my free time in camp writing on it. But the camp ended, and I needed to get back to finishing my Quilt National entry (which I can't show online til after the opening on Memorial Day weekend.)

I picked up this unfinished Jimmy piece and went back to writing on it about two weeks ago, and now it's finally done! Before I show you details of the finished piece, here are three pix from my blog about the Turtle Art Camp in July, showing this piece being started, along with the captions I put with them then:

Back to work in the studio on Saturday afternoon: I started an airbrush demo about Jimmy. The theme the day before was Shoes, and I'd missed starting a piece on it, because I was teaching airpen. All I could think about was a print I'd made of Jimmy with his French hammer and a boot upside down on a shoe last, doing some shoe repair, back when I was going to college, and we were much younger. I decided to make a sort-of lifesize piece and not go back and peek at the woodcut I'd made at The College of Wooster, and just wing it. And I added all three of the black lab girl dogs Jimmy and I had over a 30 year period: Lucy, Elvira, and Hattie. (Lucy came with her name, Jimmy named Elvira, and I named Hattie, our last doggie, who's been gone now nearly 3 years.)

Oh, and the theme for painting on Saturday was Tomatoes, so I stuck a tomato into my shoe piece, and that tomato is ME. (One of my nicknames is Lucky Tomato Pincushion. Ask Elizabeth Owen.) The "rules" here include being able to lump two themes together, besides not even doing the theme the group makes up. All sorts of cheating are allowed here. MY rules!

Here's my lifesize Jimmy ... and my lifesize Jimmy. :) Now I have to go back and read what I've written here, so I don't repeat myself, when I do the rest of the airepn writing on it.

End of quotes from Turtle Art Camp July, 2010 blog entry.

OK, back to pix of the finished piece:

I'm putting up some closeups, so you can try to read it, if you like. The big writing across the top of this piece says "Jimmy Acord, I love you." That and all the other thick lines are done with my Aztek double action airbrush, and airbrush paint, which is kept pretty thick for doing the drawing and big lettering parts.

I ended up giving Jimmy the 3rd eye (brow chakra eye, invented by the Hindus) and 4th eye (throat chakra eye, invented by me...), even though he's not much into that stuff. Still, I think he's pretty intuitive, so that's that. I gave him the big, fluffy, crazy hair he had when he was young, when we were young together. Now he ties his hair back, into the ponytail he always said he wanted, but couldn't get his hair to grow long enough for. Sometimes I miss his big hair, but I'm sure he also misses my really long hair. We got older!

I did all the small, diary writing with my airpen from Silkpaint, as usual, with black Jacquard Textile Colors fabric paint. I wrote stories as I thought of them, and marked down little notes to tell what stories I'd written about, so I'd have a record of what went into this piece. As I was doing a lot of the writing this month, I included stories from world news, such as the shooting rampage in Tucson, on January 8, where 19 people were shot, 6 of them dying. The main target was Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who is now recovering from a gunshot that went through the left side of her brain. Possibly the gunman was influenced by violent political rhetoric we've all been hearing a lot more in the last few years. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are trying to watch what they say, and I hope they keep that heightened sense of conscience and public influence. To me, the viscousness of politicians and talk show hosts has become more like hate crimes than political speaking.

"When we were young" means in the 70s and early 80s, I guess. He was so skinny for a long time! And when I met him in 1976, when he was only 22, Jimmy was wearing western style shirts and this gigantic belt buckle that had a real marijuana leaf embedded in some kind of resin, in the middle of the buckle. I think there was abalone around it. Very hippie fancy! I was absolutely intrigued by this down-to-earth, but rebellious young man. AND he was really nice to me! :)

I put all three of the black lab girl dogs we ever had, all together into this painting, even though we'd have one, then it would die, and then we'd get another one, for a total of 30 years' worth of black labby girls.

Lucy was our first lab. We got her in 1978, when we were living in the second Needle'd Eye commune, and Sara Garl was living there and sold her pup to Jimmy. Lucy was the first dog I'd ever been around that would really listen to us. I was amazed! Lucy faked guilt really well, and was so smart, she'd jump off of our waterbed, when she heard us coming home. She'd be yawning on the couch, while the telltale waterbed was still sloshing, from her leaping off of it! :)

Our next lab girl was Elvira, not named after the movie queen, but after Jimmy's grandmother: Elvira Almeda Acord. Grandma Acord said she was happy about having a dog named after her! Thank goodness she wasn't mad! ;) Elvira was great with our cats, as Lucy had been, and she loved catching frisbees, etc.

Next came Hattie Spooler, who arrived while my father was still living with us. I told him we were naming the puppy Hattie, and he asked "You mean, like Hattie Spooler?" I remembered that name from some of Dad's stories about his mother. This was one of her cousins, so I'm some kind of cousin to the first Hattie Spooler, too. Hattie was the first dog I was very involved in raising from 8 weeks old. She was like a baby to us, and it seemed like we couldn't let her out of our sight for the first year of her life, or there'd be trouble. She was very gentle and good, but loved to chew everything. There's a picture of her wearing an Amish straw hat, that she'd eaten the top out of, and yes, she's feining shame quite well.

Hattie and I walked everywhere together from the start. I wished she was a guide dog, so I could take her into stores with me! But she wasn't, and I don't see badly enough to warrant a guide dog, really. She wasn't as big on snoring as Elvira had been, but Hattie snored a little, and she had a sleeping buddy: Evil Tulip. Tulip would come into our bedroom like clockwork, lie down in front of Hattie, and start licking Hattie's face. Hattie would growl. Then Tulip's grooming would escalate into her biting Hattie's nose. Hattie would growl louder, but never snap. We'd tell Hattie to get the cat, but we knew she wouldn't. And every night, the next thing was that it would be all quiet again, and the two of them, Hattie and Tulip, would sleep all curled up together til morning.

So those are our three labs. I've never put them all into one piece before, so now I've flattened time, and their memories are all trotting around Jimmy as he works in his leather shop. I really wouldn't want three dogs at once, but it's nice to imagine, only imagine!

Around the sides and bottom of the border of this piece, I wrote the words to a song written about us by Ron Jarvis. It's called "Susi and Jimmy," and it's on an album named "Let's Make Art," by Macaw, a northern Ohio band. I had asked Jimmy to look my writing over and tell me if he could think of anything else he'd like for me to write about, since I'd now have the newly added border to write on, too. I think Ronnie wrote that song for us for our wedding. It's very sweet.

Barnfire Leather was the name of Jimmy's leather shop for many years, til we moved out here to Armstrong Drive. He had his leather shop in about five different places over time, starting at the first Needle's Eye commune in Woooster, in the basement, next to my Barnfire Pottery. Jimmy would only do custom orders, and he'd figure out how to make you anything you walked in the door to request. Everything got made, from leather sandals with adjustable straps, starting with him tracing your feet - to leather cowboy hats, motorcycle saddle bags, and all kinds of garments. I helped him a lot early on, by making custom fitted garments, and later, when I went back to school, I had to teach him how to sew, as he wouldn't give up making the custom made coats, vests, etc.

In 1997 Jimmy began focusing his leather making entirely on fly fishing equipment cases, and that's the year we started both of our websites, including James Acord's Leather. You can go there and see examples of the custom orders he's done for people, for cases for fly rods, tied flies, reels, flasks, equipment bags, etc. He only does custom orders, just like way back when he started, but now he only moves away from fly fishing cases to make cases for bird hunters. His artwork is both carved into the leather and painted after the carving. And all of his cases are his own pattern designs, made entirely by him from start to finish. There are no two alike. His work has become well known in the fly fishing world, as collectible, heirloom cases, which are totally unique pieces that you can enjoy, whether you use them in a stream or Just look at them.

Jimmy did shoe repair for a while, back in the 80s, and the image of him here is of him holding his French shoe hammer, and working on a boot, which is turned upside down on a shoe last. I'd made a woodcut print in college of him doing this, and I'd called it "Billet Doux," which means Love Letter in French. I didn't take time to root around in my stuff, to find the print, to study it for this piece. I just did it from memory, taking a side step into this one's look, which is different, yet the same. Same skinny guy with big hair and a hammer.

Since I started this piece last July, it was left with about 2/3s of the writing to go, and the tomato was empty. (We had themes in this July Turtle Art Camp, and I'd gotten behind on the theme paintings. I made this one count for Shoes and for Tomatoes. But I'd left the tomato blank and folded up the painting til January!

When I started the painting in July, it had been almost 3 years since we'd lost our last lab, Hattie, to old age. We hadn't replaced her. But NOW we have Libby Spooler! And it only seemed right to find some way to put her in with the three lab girls and Jimmy. So she became our little tomato dog! We just got her dog license the other day, and now we've ordered a ID dog tag for her, which will include the message that Libby's allergic to all grains, and give her vet's name, along with all of our own contact information. It's pink. And tonight Jimmy's been modifying Libby's old harness, that she's outgrown, stretching it with new pink nylon webbing.

In 1978 Bill Jones came into our lives. Jimmy and I had spied on Bill Jones' Leather Shops in Cleveland for a year, checking out how the leather inlaid buttonholes and pockets were made in jackets, seeing what they were getting for sandals, etc. We were out back of the Needle's Eye, working in our leather shop on a snowy winter day, and there were several guys hanging out, like they always did around Jimmy. The door opened, and a guy said "Hi, I'm Bill Jones. I saw your smoke from your wood fire, when I was shopping down the street at the Food Co-op, and they said this was a leather shop. So I came to see what you're doing."

The other people didn't know who Bill Jones was, but Jimmy and I about peed! We tried to be cool, but we were in shock. This guy owned four big leather shops!! We talked all afternoon, and that became the start of a great friendship. One time Jonesie taught Jimmy how to set a boot's insole on fire, to quickly get rid of the old cork - a great parlor trick, too! Now the two of them often go down to Weaver Leather in Amish Country together, on little buying trips. Jonesie, aka David Hazelwood, only makes handbags now - fabulous, earthy bags that are quite famous. Jimmy mainly does fly fishing cases, still all custom ordered. And they always have to stop at Boyd and Wurthmann's in Berlin to get a light lunch, followed by some pie.

There are stories on this piece about Jimmy's birth in Fairfield, Illinois on November 26, 1953, his childhood, his family's move in 1964 to Ohio, to follow the oil field jobs to Wooster. How we met in Wooster in September, 1976, finally got married on June 30, 1990, and some of our adventures all through the years are touched on here. There's so much more I could write about my Jimmy. Stepfather to my Gretchen. Grandfather to Eva. Honey of my life. My Jimmy Bear.

Here are some early pictures of Jimmy. Enjoy!

This is Jimmy with his burgandy MG Midget, when he first moved in with us at the Needle's Eye, our little hippie commune on North St in Wooster, in January, 1977.

Gretchen was six here, in the Summer of 1977. Watching a movie on TV at friends'.

This is Jimmy sewing on leather in the winter of 1978. He's always done a lot of hand sewing, but for garments, we bought this Rex commercial machine that works great on leather. I used it a lot back then, too, and Jimmy still uses it today, but not for his fly fishing cases, which are all hand sewn. He has lots of other machines, many for shoe work, which he still owns. There's a great old Singer patching machine, that uses a treadle, which we just finally got repaired again, for patching jeans, etc. Here it is:

This 1914 Singer patcher sewing machine is something everyone falls in love with in Jimmy's shop. Jimmy does hand sewing on his fly fishing cases, but when he needs to repair leather stuff that's hard to get into, this is what to use. (He doesn't do repair work for hire anymore. Forget it.) I used to use it to repair jeans knee ripouts, when I was The Jeans Doctor, back at our commune. It can sew in a 360 degree angle, so you can sew in every direction, in a tight spot, without having to keep turning the thing you're sewing. Just turn the sewing head! And it has a lovely treadle, like the Singer I learned to sew on at home!

Our bedroom was so pretty back at the Needle's Eye. We always had lots of Indian tapestries and other patterned surfaces, like this old rug.

Lucy became our dog in the summer of 1978, when she was around 6 months old. Jimmy's bringing her into the leather shop behind the second Needle's Eye, on N. Grant St.

This is us at Rick and Karen's wedding in July, 1980.

Gretchen took this picture of us in November, 1981, when she and I had moved to Kent for me to go to graduate school and Jimmy stayed in Wooster and came up once a week to Kent. He'd just gotten our Ford Mustang repainted. That's a different belt buckle from the one I was telling you about. This is the one Jimmy made in Gert Weaver's silversmithing class at the College of Wooster. He still wears it. It has a big turquoise stone in the middle of it. And on his left wrist, he's wearing the silver and turquoise bracelet that Gretchen and I had bought for him in 1977. He still wears that bracelet every day. It looks good on my Jimmy.

Jimmy brought me this photo to add here. It's us at our engagement party in May, 1988, on my mother's birthday. I was living in NYC, doing a six months artist's residency, thanks to the Ohio Arts Council, and we decided it was time to make our relationship more formal. Then they all wanted to know when the wedding would be. At that time, we'd been together for 12 years, so we said it would be by 12 more years, 2000. But we got married just two years later instead.

We got married on June 30, 1990, in the gazebo at Christmas Run Park in Wooster, after living together for 14 years. In this picture, we've just gotten married, and you can see Gretchen, our Maid of Honor, and Ron Frazier, our Best Man, right behind us. The 24 bridesmaids in rainbow capes had formed a rainbow circle around the gazebo during the marriage service, and our families sat inside with us.

Gretchen came home from her first year of college that summer and helped me make the bright colored cotton capes. I could make you a whole blog entry about our wedding - maybe I will this year for our anniversary! Family came from all over, along with good friends. It started at 10 AM with a smudging ceremony with my Oasis women's group and ended after dark, when the jam session of music ended. In the middle we pinned lots of gifted quilt blocks to four sheets, opened presents, and had a carryin picnic. What a wonderful day it was, thanks to so many great people!

Here are a couple of pieces of Jimmy's leather work for you to check out:

This is a custom reel case he made for a customer in August, 2007. It's fully lined with shearling, so the reel fits snugly. All the imagery is carved in by hand, not stamped. Jimmy dyes the leather and paints his images, after carving.

Here's Jimmy carving a scene on a piece of leather he couldn't leave flat to carve. He's not looking through his magnifier, but it's on his head. Jimmy uses carving tools that he's modified, some being former dental tools. He wets the leather before carving, and needs for it to be just the right level of softness, so the marks will stay in the leather. It takes a long time to create these realistic compositions. Oh, and then he has to put the pieces all together.

this is the top of a flycase Jimmy made for a woman to give to her husband this last Christmas. The image is based on a photo she provided, and Jimmy hand interpreted with carving and paint. Remember, he's starting out with oak tanned leather hides - big flat expanses of leather, like how we start with yardage of fabric to make clothing or quilts. I love to watch Jimmy's creations going through all of his processes!

Here's Jimmy holding our granddaughter Eva on November 4, 2004, when she was just two weeks old. Eva's now six years old and calls Jimmy Poppy.

And here's Jimmy last night, playing with Libby, who's five months old now and still growing. :)

So that's my Jimmy. :)

Art Quilt Tahoe Conference 2010

2010-11-07T17:44:00.136-05:00

This blog entry is actually a conglomerate of entries made between Sunday, Nov 7 and Sunday, Nov 14, 2010, adding up to one chronicle with many stories and pictures from Art Quilt Tahoe 2010. Enjoy!

Sunday, Nov 7: I haven't taught at Art Quilt Tahoe since 2008, so I missed their first year here at Zephyr Point, on the shoreline of Lake Tahoe, about 4 miles into Nevada, if you're coming from the southwest. I came yesterday, vis Las Vegas and Reno airports, on a very nice, mild day, and it was still sunny and nice when Judy and Velda picked me up, when I got off the South Tahoe Express shuttle at Lakeside, one of the resort hotels. Above is my first photo here, of the view off the back deck of Judy and Walter's cabin, where I spent my first night here.

Judy's writing a blog about this week on the AQT site right now, too.

This is the deck of Judy and Walter's Cabin #1. Jimmy, you would love it here!

Here's the front of the cabin, and you can sort of see the big front porch, with a huge pine tree growing up through the decking. Ah, so beautiful!!!!

The Zephyr Point center has some big buildings, where our classes and bedrooms will be, plus a lot of cabins set all around this wooded and hilly point. It's a Presbyterian conference center.

Mandy is Patty and Wes Hawkins' dog, and I love her. I stayed with Patty and Wes last October in Estes Park, CO, just before I taught for Front Range Quilters, up in the Rockies in the Salvation Army Camp. Patty's another teacher here at AQT, and she and Wes drove here, so they could bring Mandy along. They're staying down the road, in another cabin complex, since dogs aren't allowed here.

It's been a tough weather day, starting during the night, but here's one end of the rainbow we spotted across the lake this morning. Never mind that most of the rainbow is hidden by big clouds. It's a promise of great things to come here at AQT this week! It's only Sunday!

I've been able to start this blog, because we've had to wait to get into our classrooms and bedrooms today, but we get to go in soon, in about a half hour! Meanwhile, many of us have been pouncing on people, as they arrive with their supplies and suitcases, to help them unload cars into our waiting area. We've just worked hard to help each other, and are so glad so many people are getting through the snowy passes safely and getting here!

Monday morning, Nov 8: We got a little snow and ice overnight again, but the sky's clearing now! The last group of students and teachers arrived yesterday at suppertime, and we were all in, with the bedrooms and studios' nesting happening happily in the afternoon and evening.

Here are Wes and Patty Hawkins, last night after Patty gave her teacher/artist's lecture after dinner. Patty talked about her Japan Prize trip and showed us pix of the trip and the piece she's made about it (which got into Quilt National '11!)

This is my bedroom in the lovely, pretty new Tallac Center, here at Zephyr Point. I have a huge picture window looking out on Lake Tahoe, a nice computer area, my own snazzy bathroom, and it's all four doors down the hall from my classroom. Sweet!

Look at this view out my window: A little dusting of snow on the ground, but bright blue sky above us! We're ready to make some art now!!!! Later you'll be able to recognize the wooden structure here, the Portal of Prayer, which you can see from my window.

Tuesday morning, Nov 9: Yesterday my students started the day on our first class day, Monday. We got more Ott Lites later in the day - we have five of them now - and we're finally well lit for the rest of the week! Meanwhile, check out our funky tree trunk lamps! Our room is sort of a den or nook, but we're learning to enjoy it. It even has its own 2 bathrooms, one of which is now our fancy ironing and heat setting room!

Here's Carol, starting to draw her piece with a permanent Rub-a-Dub marker on fabric, the first thing my students learn to enjoy doing, as they take a big leap of faith and bravery! No erasing or changing the marks you make on this fabric. You need to think like a little child and love your artmaking as it comes out!

Our theme yesterday (Monday) was a combo, due to a tie in the group's vote: Snow dragons. Here's Katie, starting to paint on her drawing. We're using Jacquard Textile Colors fabric paints and boar bristle brushes to paint, after making drawings directly on fabric with fabric markers. (In my classes, the students and I create a long list of theme ideas, and then each day we vote one in. You can choose to do the theme, or not, or to bend it to your needs. The themes tie us together and help each of us keep from getting stuck.)

We held up my "Kitchen Tarot Cafe" piece in progress, after I showed the class most of my sketches for this piece. Right now it's about 1/4th full of my diary writing with airpen, which I'll start teaching the class how to do today.

Erin's snow dragon piece is ready to be written on. Check out her cool cloud!

Pat's piece, Roses in the Snow, is about Lake Tahoe and the light snow we had yesterday morning, is also ready. She had told me she could NOT draw. :)

Els van Baarle sits waiting to give her teacher's lecture last evening after supper. Els is from Holland and teaches dyeing fabrics for artworks. Her class had lots of things out on a clothesline yesterday morning already! A very busy, hardworking group!

Art Quilt Tahoe is off to a great start! Last night we had a shopping bazaar of participants' work, and then a movie: Pride and Prejudice. Some of my students went back and worked in the classroom, and Katie Fowler and I filled and prepared three airpens! Ready to go again! Off now for a morning walk! Bye. More later!

Wednesday, Nov 10, early AM:

My students had their one-on-one airpen lessons with me yesterday, Tuesday. Here's Janice getting going with it. She bought an airpen years ago, but got frustrated and set it aside. I'm so glad she decided to try again and take my class!

I spent about 15 to 20 minutes alone with each student, showing them how to hold and operate the airpen, a tool that combines writing with using paint, instead of ink, so that the lines are archival pigment marks. A small compressor pushes the paint out, so you don't have to squeeze the tool, so you save your hands.

The tricks to learn are how to control the paint thickness, fill and clean the airpen, and regulate the paint flow. I've developed my methods since 2002, and work hard to get my students feeling easy and competent with the airpen.

Pat made a second Lake Tahoe landscape on Tuesday. Our theme was Flowers, and she decided to make some water lilies, a la Monet, but on Lake Tahoe. Everyone worked on really neat pieces with the Flowers theme. Today I'll demonstrate my quilting techniques, which are so different from normal or even art quilt processes. And then the students can either keep painting or quilt one of their paintings from class. Tomorrow's theme is Peace.

Yesterday we teachers took off for supper on our own, at a Thai restaurant in South Lake Tahoe. From left are: me, Els van Baarle, Sue Benner, Katie Pasquini Masopust, Patty Hawkins, Velda Newman, and Libby Lehman. We missed the evening's adventure at Art Quilt Tahoe: going over to our vendor, Fabrics Unlimited's real store, 4 miles south of Zephyr Point. I heard it was a really nice happening and am sorry we missed it.

I came back and worked in my classroom studio with most of the students, into the late evening.

Thursday, Nov 11, late PM: We've cleaned up our studio and are sitting around talking. Here are yesterday's pix. Enjoy!

Above: Wednesday, after I demonstrated choosing a backing fabric at the onsite fabric store, to go with my painting, cutting out the batting and placing the painting on it and then on the backing fabric, and folding the backing up and around the painting to create the border, Janice, Katie, and Erin helped put safety pins into my demo piece, before I showed my students how I quilt my work in my "crazy grid" way.

This is my friend Kate (Kathie), who works for Judy and Walter, filling every role they don't do themselves, in creating Art Quilt Tahoe.

All of us from my class, except for Carol, went down to the Zephyr Point gift shop yesterday, to enjoy the lake a little more close up again. From left: me, Janice, Erin, Katie, and Pat. The shop is called Bear Necessities, due to the wild bear population at the center.

Also Wednesday afternoon, we visited all the other classrooms of Art Quilt Tahoe, so we could see each of the other students working on their projects. It was great to take that time out and enjoy the fresh air, walking all over the campus together.

Judy and Walter Bernard worked so very hard, with such sincere joy, giving us all a super great experience here at Lake Tahoe this year, as usual. This was our 12th AQT conference!

Last evening Fabienne and Julianna volunteered to show quilts for the after-dinner speaker, Christine Barnes, who'll teach at next year's AQT. These two really sweet women from Alaska also opened their cabin to the whole conference group, inviting us to drop by any evening for a social hour.

Last night (Wednesday) there was the first ever AQT PDQ Challenge contest. Each class had to elect one student to create a 12" fabric block from a bag of supplies given to each contestant. Our "team" was called Lucky's Ladies, and Katie was our artist, and Erin was her assistant. Katie had just over an hour to make her piece ...

Katie's piece "Under the Bus" won the contest! She won over 6 other hardworking contestants from the other classes, receiving a big gift certificate to the onsite vendor store, Fabrics Unlimited. Good egg that she is, Katie shared her prize with Erin. We are so proud of the home team!

Sunday, Nov 14: I've been home now long enough to get these pix up from the last day of AQT (Thursday):

This is the Portal of Prayer, which my student Janice found the first morning at AQT. She went there every morning, and many of the rest of us were also very moved by its being there, on the shore of Lake Tahoe at Zephyr Point.

This is the inscription at the Portal of Prayer, which was dedicated in 1959 to Rev. Otis LeRoy Linn. We have a cat named Otis Earl Hawkins (named after a local grocery store chain hero), so I can dig it!

This is the view from the Portal of Prayer, the last moning of AQT 10, when my student Erin took me there, before breakfast.

This is Erin there, wearing her funky hat that looks like it'd be yet another new variety of lichen, along with the several she was pointing out to me, growing at the Portal of Prayer, on the rocks.

Here's me at the Portal of Prayer, that Thursday morning, the last day of classes at Art Quilt Tahoe.

Sherry, who owns Fabrics Unlimited with her husband Jerry, sells some fabric paints to my students, just before class begins on the last day of AQT. Their shop is only a few miles from Zehpyr Point, and Sherry and Jerry saved us, by lending us 4 Ott Lites for our class, which was way too dim to work in, at first. They also sold my Kitchen Tarot decks during AQT, and those sold out! Yea!!!!!

Late on Thursday afternoon, we had our final show and tell, tho we'd had at least one every day in class, so we could all know what each other was thinking, planning, and doing, all week.

Janice had been working overtime on her class works. Here's her piece about her dog Otto, when he gets around to arriving at the Pearly Gates.

Here's Otto, as far as Janice got on him in class. He's a black lab, but I told her I'd never made any of my own black labs (Lucy, Elvira, and Hattie) black, because you can't read the writing on them then. So Otto became a yellow lab, just to illustrate this piece well.

Janice chose the runner-up theme on Tuesday, siblings, rather than flowers. Here are her two sisters, and her brother's floating head. I love the dresses and hats!

Janice got her Monday piece, on the Dragons in the Snow theme, done enough to quilt it on Thursday. I love the dragon's breath as curliqued words!

Pat explains her pieces to the rest of the class, during the last show and tell. We were all deeply moved by her outpouring of creativity in this class.

She ended up making three pieces, all about Lake Tahoe, as she would see it, either for real or in her mind.

Here's her first Lake Tahoe painting, on the theme of Snow Dragons, but she did the Roses in the Snow, as seen outside of her dorm room window. Pat had told us at the start of the class, that she can't draw or paint. :)

This is Pat's second piece, on the theme of flowers, as Water Lilies on Lake Tahoe, ala Monet and Susan Shie. :)

This is Pat's peace theme piece about the Portal of Prayer at Zehpyr Point. All three of her paintings are the same size, fat quarters, and will have the same backing fabric of dark, mossy green from Sherry and Jerry's store at AQT.

Katie Fowler, who won the PDQ Challenge for our Lucky's Ladies team, told us she really learned how to let her creativity FLOW during that short working period. Therefore, her new name is FLOW, and here she is, showing us her four days' worth of work, besides the Under the Bus PDQ piece. Check out her very wide Peace Train above the other paintings. It was all in line drawing at that time (pre-painting), for her third day Peace theme work.

this is what Flow ended up with, as her quilted painting, as her Snow Dragon, the painting she'd begun on the first day.

Next Carol showed us her works from the week. She'd been in a car wreck on her way to AQT, in the snowstorm on her 65th birthday, but she landed on her feet and worked hard and with a positive attitude all week!

Here's Carol's first piece from the week, including the story of the wreck, which ended up totaling her Honda, the Quiltmobile. She and her friend, both AQT students, were both bruised, but they were able to attend their classes.

The flower theme of the second day brought out Carol's thoughts about flowers she's grown in her garden, in a really sunny, vibrant painting that defied the cold and wintry weather we were having at the start of the week at Tahoe!

Erin points to the little crab on her mermaid piece, and you can see her painting about Gonesh, as a purple elephant, beside that.

This is my favorite of Erin's many pictures from class, tho they were all really good! It's about how she and her husband Dave and their dog Mack go off to camp, without making any plans of where they'll go. You can see the options lying ahead of them, including the Road to Tonapah. Isn't Tonapah in that song Weeds, Whites, and Wine?

I took this picture of my little class, full of wonderful students, at the Portal of Peace: Katie (Flow), Erin, Carol, Pat, and Janice.

And then Flow took this one of me with the rest of the students.

This is a painting which started out as a cleaning rag for airpen works, got some feisty history going where the big black blobs of paint are, and ended up getting some art added by some of us, as we decided to auction it off.

Janice bought it for $20, and the money went to the AQT scholarship program. I wish we would have all signed it and dated it. I hope Janice will use her own airpen to put in all of our names and note the time of this piece's making. It's about 12" square, a rare example of wild American funk art of the early 21st century, in the High Sierras!

Thursday at 5 PM, we went to a little party at Cabin #4. Here's teacher Sue Benner (left) with hostess Julianna (sans co-hostess Fabienne) and Flow, enjoying a chat in the kitchen.

Other students and teachers relaxed in the cabin's livingroom. On the couch are the two students I sat with on the plane from Reno to Midway the next day: Nancy and Candy.

This is my painting from the class, which I've done most of the writing on, and then used to do my quilting demo. I have to finish some of the painted images' writing and the border stories. It's called "Lava Lamps over Lake Tahoe," and has a snowdrift in the foreground, under which is buried a dragon, since I didn't like the theme of dragons. There's Saturday and Sunday nights' dusting of snow on the shore and mountaintops. And on the lake and shore are my Lights of the World: the hippie's friend, lava lamps. One of them is even walking on the water. :)

In the sky I drew some buddhas, which soon turned into me, Libby, Jimmy, Eva, Gretchen, and Mike (my family) and all of our cats, all floating in the sky over Lake Tahoe.

Walter took this picture of my students and me on the last day of AQT. Front row: me and Flow. Back row: Erin, Janice, Carol, and Pat.

This was my favorite Art Quilt Tahoe of the four I've taught at, and I think a lot of it was due to being at the wonderful Zephyr Point Conference Center on the shores of Lake Tahoe, instead of up at a ski resort in Squaw Valley, which was also beautiful, but this trumps that by far! Oh, and I had some especially sweet students, tho I missed some of my other favorites, and they know who they are!!!!

Thank you, Judy and Walter and everyone! Love, Lucky

10-14-10 The rest of the airbrush painting on "Kitchen Tarot Café," mixed in with pix of Libby's first week here. :)

2010-10-14T21:50:00.001-04:00

(At the end of this blog entry, you'll see the paintings I made about our new puppy, Libby Spooler. This is a detail of the one I'm keeping.)

There was a real break from the time I airbrush-drew "The Kitchen Tarot Café / 4 of Wooden Spoons in the Kitchen Tarot" on its 86"h x 76"w (or so) fabric, to when I finally got around to coloring it in, also with the airbrush. My birthday celebrations, including a weekend with the YaYas in Cleveland and a trip to Winchester, VA, to see my cousin Candice, as well as the search for, preparation for, and going to get our new puppy, all got in the way of my studio work, but I've finally finished the base painting for this piece. So here are some pix of the colors going on, mixed in with some pix of us getting Libby Spooler, and of her first week here at our home. We got our little Double Doodle (labradoodle and golden doodle mix) a week ago tomorrow.

So, first, about this puppy search! Here Jimmy's holding a puppy at Yesteryear Acres, when we went there on Sept 27 to look at the Double Doodle pups at age 6 weeks. But this isn't our puppy. It's Orange Collar Girl, but we ended up with her almost look-alike sister, Turquoise Collar Girl. So hold that thought. Let's talk about the painting ...

The first thing I airbrushed yellow was the bucket of wooden spoons. I love that image, as it reminds me of the Little Owl pub Rita Scannell and I went to, after taking down my solo show at the Festival of Quilts in August.

I usually start painting in my colors with yellow, because everything else will go over it and change it. It's the weakest pigment, no matter what paints you're using.

Here's the whole piece with yellow on it, waiting for the next color.

Back to the puppy caper: On last Friday, October 8, we got to go down to Yesteryear Acres and bring home our new puppy, Elisabeth Rose Evangeline Spooler - Libby Spooler. Her name Libby is a dedication to our friend Libby Bruch, who was an angel of a kind and passionate woman, who lived near Wooster and founded Quailcrest Farm. We'd like OUR Libby to be as wonderful as was Libby Bruch.

In the photo above, Renee Sigman, the breeder, is handing Libby to me officially, so it's the doggie handover.

As soon as we got Libby, we drove her to our friend Mary Helen's studio in downtown Newark, on the way home from the breeder's place, and introduced wonderful Mary Helen to sweet little Libby. Mary Helen is great woman and a great artist, whose joyful essence blesses anyone fortunate enough to be near her. So we thought Libby deserved some of that good energy to get her going on her way!

Back at the painting: After yellow, the next color I used was orange. I guess you can see from this, that I'm thinking of having more cool colors, as not much has been colored with yellow and orange, and I don't use much red. You can see Libby Spooler down at the bottom of the painting. I drew this piece way before we got Libby, but I had seen her pix on the internet, so I know sort of what she would look like. And I knew I wanted that little doggie in my piece, as I'd be writing about her on it eventually.

Jimmy came into the painting room and took a couple of pix of me putting in the red.

This painting drapes out onto the floor, and that makes it very hard to airbrush. You can't really turn an airbrush down, so that you can aim at a flat surface with it. But I tried to outsmart it, by just tipping down the airbrush body and keeping the paint jar level.

With the red painted in, I again took a hiatus, because we at this point had Libby at home, and everything was turned upside down, as we began to get used to each other - an 8 week old doodly dog and Jimmy and me!

Here's Libby Spooler, taking her very first nap at our house, on the front porch of her doll house (her cage.) Afghans made by my Aunt Pauline, Candy's mother, are keeping Libby warm and fluffed. Candy wanted us to have these for Libby, or I wouldn't even think of using family treasures like that!

Libby at 8 weeks, on Sunday, October 10, sitting on the desk chair of my computer, while I sit next to her on a kitchen chair. Letting her have the fluffy chair is my way of keeping track of her.

Here, for scale, you can see how big Libby is, compared to one our cats, Otis Earl Hawkins. By the way, he still doesn't like her. But he will, because Otis is very much a nice guy. And his sister Ome (Cleome) keeps trying to lick Libby, like she wants to mother her. But Libby keeps playfully chasing after Ome, so the deal falls apart, so far.

So just yesterday I got my act together, put Libby into her doll house, and had another big painting session on "Kitchen Tarot Café." Painted in the green ...

Then I put in my blues, both dark and light, but both pthalo blue, like my green was pthalo green. Something exciting about that work that needs a couple more good vowels, but whose colors are mighty fine!

So that's where the painting is right now. It's light enough to suit me, since all the airpen writing with black fabric paint will dull the piece down some. If I decide later that I want more fancy painting in it, I can put it back up on the airbrush room wall and add more colors or some big words. Maybe big words here and there, to punch out from all the tiny airpen writing I'll be doing at least for the next month. I've got the piece heatset, so am ready to load my airpen and start diary and current events writing. That part isn't a bit exciting to watch, except for the actual process of airpen work. So the next time you see it, "The Kitchen Tarot Café" will be quilted. Give me 2 months, max, I hope. :)

Libby likes to lay on my clothes. And since she doesn't shed, I let her. Couldn't do that with Hattie Spooler, our black lab dog, the last of the three black lab girls we had. You just looked at Hattie, and she shedded all over the place! But then, we didn't have to groom her, like we're doing with Libby, fussing over her hair, keeping it untangled and clean. We now have both grooming scissors AND a really fancy doggie clippers. We're not going to poodle cut her, but want to keep the hair out of her eyes, etc. We are very new at this kind of dog coat care, and are reading up a lot on all kinds of other puppy info, too.

Me holding Libby in Jimmy's leather shop one night this week. We now have two cages for her, since friends lent us theirs. One's now in Jimmy's shop, and the first one is here in the former diningroom, now computer room and photo shoot place. Libby sleeps in her diningroom cage, her doll house, at night, and wakes us up at 5:30 every morning, like clockwork.

Here's Jimmy holding Libby this week, sitting in his Archie Bunker chair, watching a movie together with me. I think it's "Hachi: A Dog's Tale" with Richard Gere, 2009, recommended by my pals Lee and Kate Freed-Simpson.

Libby's had lots of adventures in her first week here. She and I walk every morning early, though I carry her, put her down to walk, carry her again, put her down to walk again, etc. She's met lots of our neighbors and their dogs, all of whom she likes. We walk in the morning with Maggie Mae, Jerry's bichon frise, Jerry, and me, and in the afternoons, she walks with Jimmy and me. We're using alternately a regular collar and a Gentle Leader collar, and Libby's getting pretty good at walking, though I think I wear her out, so she often just stops. That's when I pick her up and carry her.

Libby's been to my artist group WAGE meeting (just to the start of it) and now to my yoga class (for which I smuggled her in, in my sweater, and Jimmy took her home, before class actually started.)

Having the runs has been Libby's main problem, though our vet Dr Joe examined her and sez she's fine, just adjusting to all the changes. She was too sleepy and underweight, so we're giving her an extra meal each day. And last night I discovered the home remedy online, of giving puppies with diarrhea some canned pumpkin with their food. Not pie filling, but straight pumpkin. This is helping a lot, so Libby is now an official Pumpkin Eater!

Our cats Otis and Ome don't trust Libby yet, but their four day hunger strike is officially overwith now. I think we're all getting used to each other pretty fast, all things considered. I'm holding Libby a lot, since she's supposed to reach 90% of her adult weight in 6 months! She's 5 pounds now, and the story is that she'll reach 50 pounds. So that's ten times what she weighs now! I think I can watch her grow, when she's holding very still!

This is "Libby Blessings #1," one of three paintings I made on wooden kitchen cupboard doors and finished in time for a Habitat for Humanity auction this Saturday. This is the one I gave to Habitat. It's 13"h x 21"w.

This is "Libby Blessings #2," 12"h x 22"w. This is the one I'm keeping, I think.

"Libby Blessings #3" is 17"h x 22"w. All three of these paintings are made with acrylic paint, hand brushed on over gesso, with paint markers and ink, then sealed.

OK, I guess this blog entry is done now. Libby's sleeping next to me on the desk chair, and I'm going to put her in her cage, coop, doll house, whatever it is, so I can take a shower and get ready for us all to watch the last half of "Hachi." Tomorrow I'll start airpen writing on my "Kitchen Tarot Café" piece.

Take it easy! Thanks for reading and looking at my pix.

Love, Lucky

9-29-10 Start of airbrush painting of "Kitchen Tarot Café" ... and some puppies!

2010-09-29T14:15:00.001-04:00

I've been slowed down in my studio work: both by my birthday celebrations for turning 60 yesterday, and by catching Dog Fever! First I'll show you some pix of me airbrushing the starting painted drawing for my piece "The Kitchen Tarot Cefé: 4 of Wooden Spoons," aka "4 of Spoons." I started this painting on Sept 23rd, and I think there's too much going on, with the birthday stuff, to get back to coloring in the painting til next week! Yikes! Good thing I only have one 60th birthday! I'll do a blog of all the partying, once it's all done, by mid next week. Jeepers, sorry!

I did a few more drawings on paper, before I started painting though, so here they are. In this one, I went back to thinking about Denny playing a violin, for elegance!

Then in this one, I shaded the drawing with my bic pen. I added our cats and Denny's, and got Denny back to helping me hold up the tray of the KT suits. I like having him writing about the KT on the table, with some cards laid out.

I'm including my 2nd drawing again here, because in looking over all the drawings, I liked a lot of what was going on here. But you'll see that I really only kept the lamp from this sketch. :) It's hard to decide, and sometimes I wonder whether I might be better off just drawing the first thing that comes into my head, like I used to do with my big pieces.

Here you see that I've got my big fabric panel sewn together, to be something like 86"h x 79"w, and that it goes out onto the floor, which is bad for ease of painting. But I don't want it to be shorter, so I'll have to hike up the bottom part, each time I work with a different color of paint in my airbrush.

This is the big colored sketch you can see on the floor above, and I really liked referring to it, while I was freehand drawing my black lines onto the big cloth piece.

Here's the start, tho I didn't shoot the very start. I think I began with the table top this time. You have to settle on something to draw first, and that image's size will set the scale for the whole piece. It's a little scary sometimes, but I wasn't so scared this time that I had to go get me a tad of wine! :)

Jimmy was sick that day, so I took most of my pix myself, so this is the only picture I have of me painting the drawing for this piece. Usually Jimmy stops on the way to his own studio, grabs my camera, and shoots a few pix for me, of me working on each stage of the airbrush days painting.

Here's the drawing, after I hiked up the bottom to draw in the images down there. This involves pinning the whole bottom part up higher on the piece, making a big tuck out of it.

I squeezed in the fringy lamp, a couple of the café windows, the palm trees, and the big café curtain at the top, but I ran out of room for some things.

I didn't draw faces on the spoons yet, but I got all the suits images into the tray, which coulda been bigger, but then I wouldn't have had room for the floating windows.

See, it's the 4 of Spoons! :)

You can see I need more time with our future puppy, so I can draw her better! she's kind of a pinhead here!

But on Monday, the 27th, we went down to Yesteryear Acres, below Newark, Ohio, and spent time with Renee and Darwin, the owners, and played with 4 girls from the six week old litter of 8 Double Doodle puppies.
Their mother Lola is a golden doodle: half golden retriever and half poodle. Their father Tigger is a labradoodle: half labrador retriever and half poodle. So the puppies are half poodle, one-fourth lab and one-fourth golden retriever. They should be very smart, friendly, and shed very little.

There are 3 people who'd made deposits on girls from this litter before we did, so we had to choose 4 girls, one of which we'll get to take home on October 8th. So now that's only 9 more days away! We've got a new cage and a gentle lead collar and a big beef hank bone, all set for our Baby Girl! We'll find all of Hattie's dog toys and wash them up. We haven't had a dog for three years now!

Enjoy watching the little video I made of the 4 girl puppies yesterday! Thanks a lot, Renee and Darwin, for raising such wonderful dogs!

I think now I like little Green Collar Girl the best! She has some blue yarn hanging down in front, so it's confusing, but she's the little one, who says goodbye at the end here! OK, I will be very happy with any of them.

Here's my Jimmy holding little Green Collar Girl.

You can see all the puppies in this litter at Yesteryear Acres here. Be sure to scroll all the way down the page, since Renee keeps adding pix of the pups as they grow older. At six weeks, they have lovely little portraits. :)

I'll let you know, when we know, which one we'll be waiting for!

Love, Lucky

Drawings for my next piece: "Kitchen Tarot Café: 4 of Wooden Spoons in the Kitchen Tarot."

2010-09-21T11:39:00.000-04:00

I started sketching for this next Minor Cards piece, the 4 of Wooden Spoons (Wands, in normal tarot parlance), for my Kitchen Tarot deck, right after GEM went with us to the Wayne County Fair on Sept 11th. This 4 of Spoons will be my 7th minor card quilt, out of 56. Cookin' right along, huh?!!

So here are all the drawings I've done to help me figure out what to put into the piece. So walk with me down my garden path, where I choose which way to go next, based on what I've just drawn each time. Most of these are in my sketchbook, which has 9 x 12" pages, so the double wides are 18 x 12". The colored drawing at the end is much larger, 20 x 26."

I made most of these drawings with black Rub-a-Dub markers and blue Bic pens.

In this first drawing, made three days after we went to the Wayne County Fair with GEM (Gretchen, Eva, and Mike) and my niece Aimee and her daughter Calise, I focused on the girls on the Merry-Go-Round, but merged that idea with them both riding the real, live ponies, which they also did.

In the 4 of Wands card in most tarot decks, the idea is of a very good place to be, being protected, happy, and satisfied. Very good news, getting this card, even when it's upside down. It's also considered to be the Venus in Aries energy, so loving, good things going on, in an assertive way. Some decks show a structure (the 4s are all about structure, stability) that's being built with the poles/wands.

So in this sketch, I was going with the idea of the girls at the Fair, and the four big wooden spoons are holding up the tent or Merry-go-Round, so they're creating structure. But it was just too cute for me. It's really hard to make little kids be your main characters in artworks, without having the whole thing turn too sweet. And you know I'll be writing about all kinds of stuff here, so I don't want that sweetness to be the main event. Sorry, girls. You have to remain in a drawing, not a quilt.

Next I got to thinking about how Denny Fairchild, my co-author for the Kitchen Tarot, made a Facebook page called the Kitchen Tarot Café, and started to think muse over how it'd be to have this card, the 4 of Wooden Spoons, be about the cafe, with us as the cook and waiter.

Here you can see the drawing above better. After making the rest of the drawings, I can tell you that I still like this table and fringed lamp really well, and may end up using them in my big painting. So hold that thought! Now the four spoons are on the set table.

In these sketches, I jumped outside, exploring how it'd be to show the outside of our conceptual café, instead of it's imagined interior. The spoons are here and there ...

Still outside, but I'm exploring giving Denny big pockets in big pants. I was looking at using the pockets to show how he's got gobs of stored up knowledge of the Tarot and Astrology, since he studied them from about age 7, when he went to live with his professional astrology grandmother, who taught him very well.

I also brought in Jimmy and some cats of ours and Denny's one cat Kami. (No dogs in the drawings yet, but you'll see one later, as I have Dog Fever bad now!) I put the café as a tiny building on the serving tray. Hmmmm. Gave Denny a big old bottle of Merlot to serve. The four spoons are looking almost like measuring spoons here. I like that, as I've done measuring spoons in a lot of my kitchen artworks!

I started drawing our feet as really tiny here. I like that.

Then we went back inside of the café, giving me a tray of tArts and Denny a violin, so he can be a musical waiter! The spoons are floating around in the drawing on the left, then I put them into a big bucket, which is how I saw them in a pub in England in August.

At the Little Owl Pub, they have painted wooden spoons, with numbers written on them, in a big bucket at the bar, where you order. They give you a spoon to carry back to your table, so they know where to bring the order of that number. I loved that pub!

I guess I gave up on this very small drawing before I even got around to drawing in the spoons. I like how Denny's body is wiggling around in tune with his fiddle playing. May hold onto that posture for the painting.

OK, so then I tried putting the spoons up on a serving tray, but they look like goblets. So that was a flop. I stuck four more on the table, to make up for the flop!

Back to the spiraling table setting with the spoons, not as good as in the second drawing though. Put fancy feet on the table and added a rug. Moon in the window. Like that, and the portrait on the wall of St Quilta the Comforter, who probably owns the café.

Now: this is my great big drawing on 20 x 26" paper, that I colored in with markers and crayons. I like it, but want to probably do another drawing that's this size. I don't like the palm trees, that look more like weird little third arms sticking out of our shoulders. ick. I like the spoons on the table in the Little Owl Pub bucket and I like the tray with the four suits of the Kitchen Tarot on it. I like Denny writing on the table and me being ready to paint. I like the dog on the floor, since I'm in the grips of dog fever (dog-buying fever, that is.) And I like making St Q be a full blown buddha girl, sitting on the floor, instead of just being a portrait on the wall. I like the tablecloth and the café curtain at the drawing's top, and the windows with curtains, etc. But I don't like Denny's hair (looks like a helmet!) and those palm trees, etc.

I started personalizing the symbolic images in this drawing more, partly because the drawing page is so much bigger.

I also added some of my Peace Roses in this drawing. I love to twine them around in my work, to show how Peace needs to grow in our lives, all through our day's activities, big and small. See that doggie? As I write, I've discovered a wonderful breeder of Labradoodles and Golden Doodles, Yesteryear Acres, just south of Newark, Ohio, less than 2 hours from our place. OH MAN! Labby personality with very little shedding!!!! Could be our dream come true, now that we've got dog fever for the first time since Hattie died, three years ago.

Above is Belle and one of her puppies in a litter they have now at Yesteryear Acres. 7 boys and 7 girls!!!! :) Her pups are F1b, which means they're one fourth golden retriever and three fourths poodle. VERY little shedding. They'll grow to about 50 pounds, which is smaller than our black lab girlies were. More middle sized. I am so smitten!

But I digress! Today I'll make one more big drawing, then sew together a big piece of white cloth, so I can start airbrushing maybe tomorrow on "Kitchen Tarot Café: 4 of Wooden Spoons."

If you're thinking about taking a class from me, check out my Valley Ridge Art Studio drawing class near Muscoda, Wisconsin. October 26 - 28, 2010. This is a 3-day class in life drawing, drawing realistically from things you're looking at, mainly people (in their clothes). Taught more formally than my usual classes, but not AS formally as a lot of drawing classes. If you make art, you really should know how to draw, and it IS learnable! Valley Ridge is out in a beautiful and scenic rural part of the southwest tip of Wisconsin. It's an amazingly cozy but elegant place to work at!

And my 4-day class at Art Quilt Tahoe: Zephyr Point, Lake Tahoe, NE will be Nov 7 - 13, 2010. I love AQT, and this time we'll be right on the lake itself! My class will be my usual thing, teaching you to open up and make unguarded art, using markers, brush and fabric paint, optional airpen, and machine quilting.

Back to the drawing caper for the 4 of Spoons!

See ya, Lucky

9-18-10 Online pre-bidding for my work for the Heifer International auction.

2010-09-18T11:36:00.002-04:00

I hope you'll consider bidding on and buying my painted diary art quilt, made especially for the Heifer International auction. Since 1944 Heifer has brought very successful sustainable food programs to people all over the world, in the form of ... heifers, and other livestock. Heifer and I have agreed to take pre-auction online bids on it, because I know a lot more people here know about my work than the number of people who'll be at the actual auction that day.

Above is a detail of my art quilt "Heifer - UK (Cheeky Pigeon)," which I made starting on August 17, and finished September 9, 2010.

So scroll down, look at the pictures and read my stories about the piece, and at the end of this entry, I'll tell you how you can make an online bid on this piece between now and Nov 5, the day before the auction.

This is a full view of "Heifer - UK (Cheeky Pigeon)," a 20"h x 28"w. Retail price $2,250. Opening bid will be half of that.

This is a whole cloth painted art quilt on white kona cotton fabric. Beginning drawing made with paint markers, then colors painted with hand brush and fabric paint, then airpen writing made with fabric paint. Machine crazy grid quilted with Aurifil Mako cotton thread, using Nature-fil bamboo / cotton batting. One row of hand sewing inside edge of border, using perle cotton. One Green Temple Buddha Boy bead. (This is the first piece in which I used the amazingly beautiful Aurifil thread to do the quilting, and I love it!!! It looks AND sews better than ANYTHING I've ever used before.)

All the images below are my detail shots of "Heifer - UK (Cheeky Pigeon.)"

Story: My purpose was to make a piece about Heifer International, to donate to its November, 2010 fundraising auction. But I was so amazed by my experiences on my first-ever trip to England, that when it was time to draw and later, to write, I had to balance Heifer with Big Ben! (Never mind that I was nowhere near London!)

My class in England had nine students from four countries, and as a group we created a list of theme ideas for the three days’ worth of paintings to be made in the class. We voted in the theme “Shoes” for the first day. So now my piece would be about Heifer, England, and Shoes. Quite a challenge!

Heifer is the Church of the Brethren’s world service project to help people in many countries become self reliant for food and other sustenance needs. Heifer uses the money it collects to buy heifers and other farm animals, which it gives to needy people who’ve been trained to take care of their new livestock, and then to share their animal's female babies with other families in their village. See heifer.org, if you’d like to know a lot more about Heifer. Or buy this piece, so you can read at least a little bit of their story, at your leisure!

On that first day of class, I made a few little drawings for the piece, in my sketchbook, but the thing that popped out most in my mind was to make the shoe thing be a Shoe Fly Pie. It was when I started drawing that I thought of the four-and-twenty blackbirds that were coming out of that pie … and how the housekeeping lady who came to my UK hotel room to help set up my wifi, told me to close the window, so the CHEEKY PIGEONS wouldn’t come in! She must have used that phrase about five times, and my picture-conscious imagination was … well, it was flying!

NOW, while drawing the piece about shoes, I had to, I just HAD to make the fly part of the Shoe Fly Pie be a Cheeky Pigeon. Give him a top hat, so he looks English. Does that work for you? Wait! He now looks like that bird toy thing my Grandma Shie had, that dipped its beak into a glass of water and kept swinging up and down and dipping. And it wore a top hat! ☺

I included myself as Twiggy, since my friend Rita Chewning had cut my hair short, to look like Twiggy’s, before my trip. And I got her to put a streak of blue dye into my short hair, so with short white hair, I wouldn’t be mistaken for a normal old lady. ☺ And I included a big platform shoe (for the pie to be a Shoe Fly Pie!) and a big palm tree, to be one of my Peace Palms, since the Church of the Brethren and Heifer are all about promoting world peace, as am I.

I drew in Big Ben, of course, as he represents not only England, but also the Roger Miller song “Engaland Swings like a Pendulum Do,” which kept playing in my head all through my 10-day trip to England. It doesn’t look like Big Ben, I’m sure, because I’ve never seen Big Ben, but I covered myself there by writing his name on him, which is my usual way of guaranteeing that people see something as what I want it to be seen as.

Wait! Gotta put that Heifer in there for the auction, right up at the top, so even tho it’s kinda small, it hits you right away!

When I got around to doing my actual storytelling with my airpen and black fabric paint, I looked up some good Heifer International history and at least paraphrased it, when the class and my solo show were overwith, and I was back home in Ohio. I also told stories about the trip I’d just had to England, so The UK and Heifer stories are all in there together.

My favorite Heifer story is that when I was doing research about the history of the project, I ran across a few diary entries from Church of the Brethren farmers who volunteered to take the first cattle across the Atlantic to other countries in 1944. One of those first guys was Wayne Hostetler, who was my parents’ age and belonged to our church, East Chippewa Church of the Brethren at Smithville, Ohio. The weird part was that I never heard Heifer stories all the time I was growing up in the church.

I asked my best friend from church and high school, Mavern King, and she told me that her own father, Vernon King, was also one of the volunteer "cowboys," along with Wayne Hostetler. So with this little piece about Heifer, I’m connecting with my own church’s history. I haven’t attended church there since high school, but Mavern says that the Heifer Project has been an important part of the service work our church does, for a long time now. So they revived it. Good!

The story of the Cheeky Pigeon is written all over the pink bird (it really IS a pigeon), and the stories of my trip to England are mixed in with the Heifer history stories. There wasn't a lot of room to write on this 20”h x 28”w piece, but I’ll be writing more about Heifer on my next very large piece, which I think will be called “The Kitchen Tarot Café: 4 of Wooden Spoons.” It will be the seventh minor card (of 56) in my Kitchen Tarot deck, for which the 22 major cards are already published.

But before I start that next, large piece, I need to set up an online bidding thing for THIS piece, here and on my facebook page, so we can hopefully end up getting the piece’s retail price of $2,250. for it, to contribute to Heifer’s wonderful work of ending world hunger.

If you are interested in placing a pre-auction online bid, please send an email to include both me (susanshie@gmail.com) and Vicki Burge Clarke, the auction organizer (vicki.clarke@heifer.org). I'm sure we'll both write back to you, to acknowledge your bid. You can choose to have your name listed online with your bid, or to anonymous.

The opening bid on this $2,250. valued piece must be at least $1,125, which is half of the full price. I'll post when a bid is made, so that others can know whether they want to join or continue the bidding. Please make bids in at least $50. amounts. I'll post the bids here on this blog entry as comments, and also on my Facebook page. Online bidding will close on November 5, the day before the live auction in Chicago. The top bidder may give Heifer information about how much higher they're willing to bid against live auction bidders on Nov. 6.

The winning bidder will send the money directly to Heifer International, according to Heifer's requests, and they will send the artwork to the buyer.

All of the money from the sale of this piece of mine, "Heifer - UK" will go to Heifer International. Making the piece is my contribution to Heifer.

The Heifer Auction and Craft Fair will be held Saturday, November 6, 2010

9 a.m. — 4 p.m.

Auction begins at 11 a.m.

Glenview Community Church

1000 Elm Street, Glenview, Illinois (Corner of Glenview Road and Elm Street)

Watch a really inspiring video about the history of the Heifer Project.http://www.heifer.org

Three classes of mine coming up soon!

2010-09-03T22:26:00.004-04:00

Now that the big adventure in England is over, I'm looking to the Fall, to classes I'll be teaching in October and November.

My 3-day class at the Budding Art Ideas Workshops at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, will be Oct 5 - 8, and you can get a $50. discount by registering by 30 days in advance. This is the first year of this exciting art workshops program, held in U of M classrooms. I'm very excited and hope you'll come! Note that this class is a half day on the first day, followed by two full days, and then a last half day, Tuesday into Friday.

Here's a piece much like what you can hope to finish during my class at Budding Art Ideas Workshops. Actually, I finished it two weeks ago in England, at my Festival of Quilts 3 day masterclass. You'll actually be able to finish one of your 18 x 22" paintings into a quilt in your class, so that's bigger than this one.

My piece above, "Garden Hug #1," about Michelle Obama and Queen Elizabeth meeting in England and hugging (also magically in the White House vegetable garden), is 13.25"h x 16.25"w, is quilted mostly by machine, and is for sale now for $900. plus shipping. Let me know if you want to buy it.

It's the last of four "Garden Hug" pieces I made last June in a tiny series, with the first quilted one going to the SAQA online reverse auction last year. You can check out my piece "Heal the Gulf #1," in this year's SAQA auction, with my piece being in the last group of works being auctioned, starting October 4. (The first group will start bidding on Sept 20, the second group on Sept 27.)

This is at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens at the University of Michigan, where our classroom will be for the Budding Art Ideas workshop.

This is the kind of works you can learn to make in my class at Budding Ideas Art Workshops: whole cloth painting with brush and airpen, both using fabric paint.

My 3-day Life Drawing class at Valley Ridge Art Studio, outside of Muscoda, Wisconsin will be October 26 - 28, 2010. This drawing class is my first time to teach drawing since when I was a graduate student at Kent State, teaching Drawing I and II to undergrads. I think every artist should know how to draw realistically, and this is definitely a learnable skill, like any other. You can do it! Valley Ridfge is such a beautiful place, and oh, what a wonderful director! Out in the beautiful middle of nowhere! Peaceful to the max! Please come!!!

My students last year at Valley Ridge, Pat and Sue, using airpens (which are NOT part of this year's drawing class.) Give me a couple of days, and I'll make a new, realistic drawing to put here, to show you what you'll be doing in my class at Valley Ridge THIS year. :)

OK, now it's Sept 4, in the evening, and I've just finished this drawing of my friend Rita and her daughter Jess, who just had her new baby, Ash David, on August 28th. I was over to see them the other day and took a bunch of pix. I used one of my photos and altered it a lot, drawing it freehand with pencil on paper. This is what we'll be doing in the class, but working more often from life than from photos. I try to only use my own photos, when I draw from them, and I don't trace.

If you're taking my class at Budding Art Ideas, bring a few of your own photos of people or things you want to draw, but don't bring others' photos! For realism I do use erasers, which I never do when I do my freehand funky and looser style of drawing. But man, for getting someone to look like themselves, in a photo kind of way, you have to have that good old kneaded eraser in your hand, keeping it warm and ready to work!

The Valley Ridge studio is well equipt!

This is MY dog Blondie, who lives and is boarded for me at Valley Ridge!

This is the river at the bottom of the Valley Ridge property, a safari well worth the effort to get to, to enjoy this scene! This is pretty rugged to get to, but you can take long walks on the quiet and hilly country roads at Valley Ridge, and last year we walked every morning and sometimes in the evening, too. So relaxing and good for you!

The secret of Valley Ridge Art Studio is that there's this Monkey Muse, who's in love with Topo Gigio, the little Italian mouse that used to be on the Ed Sullivan Show. Kathy (the owner / director of the school) often consults both the monkey and the mouse, and becomes infused with artistic genius, having absorbed their ancient wisdom! This particular sock monkey is more psychic than an Eight Ball!

If you like, go read my August 2009 blog entry about my last year's class at Valley Ridge Art Studio.

My four day class at Art Quilt Tahoe, at Zephyr Point, Lake Tahoe, Nevada will be held Nov 7 - 13, 2010. It's at a really cool and earth Presbyterian retreat center, which AQT started using last year, and which I've only heard super good things about. I love AQT, and this time we'll be right on the lake itself! Imagine what a good time it'll be, to be with this crowd, high in the mountains, along a gorgeous lake, making art!

Here are some of my favorite students at Art Quilt Tahoe, the last time I taught there, in 2008, when we had to wait for the one time all week when we could be at the lake. NOW the whole thing's at Lake Tahoe's shores!!!

Expect to finish quilting one of your paintings in my Art Quilt Tahoe class, much like this piece, which is sort of a fat quarter size (18" x 22" plus the little border.) You'll be using fabric paint with brushes, airpen, and optionally markers, for those who end up disliking the airpen. (You either like it a lot or you don't!) This piece was done all with fabric paint this year.

Carlene and Judy of Hand Dyed of Sebastopol are two of my favorite vendors at the incredible vendor mall at Art Quilt Tahoe. You can find almost everything you need for your class supplies there, except for some of the weird stuff I ask you to bring. Sorry! Still, just look at that hand dyed loot!!!!

That last time I taught at AQT was right after Obama won the Presidential election. Many of us were just plain supercharged, and I was so happy to stand with my piece in the AQT faculty show.

Fearless leaders / owners of Art Quilt Tahoe: Walter and Judy Bernard.

Please also consider taking a class from me at my home in Wooster, Ohio. I'll be posting the Turtle Art Camps schedule for my 2011 camps by Oct 1.

Turtle Art Camp July 7 - 13, 2010 (catch up on blog!)

2010-09-03T14:16:00.002-04:00

We had a super nice TAC (Turtle Art Camp) here at our place in Wooster, Ohio in July, but when it was overwith, I went into crazy mode, finishing my entry for Quilt National, "Stars on the Water (the oil spill): The 5 of Paring Knives in the Kitchen Tarot," which I can't show you yet, due to Quilt National's entry rule on no peeking! Then I had to photo that piece and do the online entry for QN. Then I was all busy getting ready to go to England to teach and have my show at the Festival of Quilts. Now that I've written here about that, I can back up and tell you all about the cool camp in July!

First I'm jumping ahead to introduce you to Wilma Kenny (left) and Jennifer Bennett (right), in a photo Jimmy took of us at the end of camp, when we had all the work we'd made all week up on the wall to photo and admire. These women are from Sydenham and Hartington, Ontario, Canada, and they drove down together to Wooster for the class.

When camp started, we did our daily Library Time, and here Wilma's showing us her writing and drawing from that first session. We use children's markers, so we can relax into a state of enjoying drawing and writing, knowing we can't erase, and getting into the beauty of the colors.

After we made a list of theme possibilities, we tried to settle on the theme for the first day, but since we each chose one of the themes from our list, we decided to try to combine them: Evolution, Haiku, and Stars. Hmmmmmmmmm. Jen got right into her painting, after I did my own painting demo, to show how fabric paints behave.

For Library Time the next morning, I wrote and drew about Jen and Wilma doing tai chi in the front yard early that morning, and letting me jump in and try to follow along. They've been doing it for many, many years, and are excellent at it. Not me. Back to yoga! But I really loved trying tai chi!

Once both women had their one-on-one airpen lessons, they were off and running, bravely leaping right into work on their paintings from the day before. Here's Wilma, writing on her piece about her grandmother, for our three-theme Thursday theme!

This is the start of my painting for the Evolution, Haiku, Stars theme. Quite a challenge! I made up the haiku "A star is born BANG. It grows and shines on and on. Then Red Giant dies." If you really study the painting, you can see the haiku is illustrated. good luck.

Time flies when you're having fun, and with everyone working hard on their paintings and writing with airpen, before we knew it, it was time to go into town on Saturday morning, to have breakfast at The Parlor and look around the stores and the farmer's market! Above: tasty breakfast has just arrived!

Here are our girls, walking to the farmer's market, passing the LeRoys (my name for those scary statues on the courthouse's doors There's another set of them around the corner, too. They scare small children and dogs ... a lot!)

Wilma's buying something tasty from this Amish woman, who's got the most beautiful rainbow umbrella I've ever seen! Apparently there are no rules governing the colors of Amish umbrellas. That's good!

Here's what my Jimmy painting looked like, when I had all the colors airbrushed into it, and it was ready to take down and heatset, before starting to write on it with airpen. I think its title is "Jimmy Acord, I Love You." Sez so at the top anyhow.

Oh, and the theme for painting on Saturday was Tomatoes, so I stuck a tomato into my shoe piece, and that tomato is ME. (One of my nicknames is Lucky Tomato Pincushion. Ask Elizabeth Owen.) The "rules" here include being able to lump two themes together, besides not even doing the theme the group makes up. All sorts of cheating are allowed here. MY rules!

Then it was Saturday night, and we all went over to Orrville and ate at Señor Poncho's, since El Canelo closed in January. We sat outside and had a good time!

Then Jen and Wilma were ready to start their airbrush paintings, and since they work really well together, as such good friends, I set them up to take turns painting with the same color, side by side. Look at Jennifer go!!!! She's working on Sunday's theme of Sisters.

Wilma was making a seed-packet design piece for our Saturday Tomatoes theme, but including a very nice looking tomato worm in the picture. :)

And when we needed a break, we invaded Jimmy's leather studio and watched him work on painting on one of his hand-carved images on a fly case he'd created.

Here's Jimmy taking a break with us, and telling the girls about his work and his love of fly fishing.

Miss Marigold, who now lives in Jimmy's studio, liked Wilma and Jennifer just fine.

Back in my studio, Jennifer sets to work to quilt one of her paintings, after I've demonstrated my pretty odd way of doing it. She's using my Pfaff, which Jimmy and I got for ourselves with wedding money in 1990. I still love this Pfaff 1473 very much! It's just not wide enough in the throat to work easily on my great big pieces.

That's why I bought this big Janome 6600 a couple of years ago. Here Wilma's sewing on one of her paintings, making it into a quilt my way.

Now it was the last afternoon of the camp, and the girls were putting up all the work we'd made all week, making a harmonious arrangement from everything.

Here's what we'd made in five solid days of Turtle Art Camp. We really put those airpens to work, I think more than any group I've worked with before. these two were really into it! I was, too!

Wilma's big tomato piece. Airbrushed, no airpen yet.

My Jimmy with about half of his very abbreviated life story airpen written on it. I hope to finish this piece soon!

Here's Jennifer's airbrushed piece about herself and her two sisters. She'd already put a LOT of airpen writing on this piece, considering how big it is!

This is my piece for our first theme, the combo of the themes Evolution, Haiku, and Stars., quilted and all done except for writing and stitching by hand around the border. The haiku is on the left side of my quilt here.

This is Jennifer's painting for that same three-theme theme thing of Evolution, Haiku, and Stars. (After that one, we decided to stick with one-theme themes!)

And this is Jen's Shoes piece, all written on! "Shoes" was our Friday theme, which both the girls did pieces about, but I didn't.

Wilma got her writing all done on her Shoes painting, about her son Peter choosing shoes with a fancy tread, because he was into what the footprints would look like.

Wilma's completed piece about her Grandmother's story, as her solution to that complex theme thing on Thursday - Evolution, Haiku, Stars. The haiku is in the bottom right corner.

Here's my lifesize Jimmy ... and my lifesize Jimmy. :) Now I have to go back and read what I've written here, so I don't repeat myself, when I do the rest of the airepn writing on it.

Wilma enjoyed doing her email on my laptop next to Otis Earl Hawkins, who just loves to do the rounds of all bedrooms with open doors at night!

Well now! I was looking for a picture to stick into this blog entry, to show my cat Ome, since I'd already put Marigold and Otis in here. This picture is just from a few days ago, when I collapsed in the afternoon (just a snooze, not a REAL collapse!) and Jimmy took this picture. Ome gets up on my stomach usually, but if I'm too konked out to hear her meowing for me to roll over, sometimes she climbs up on my back and lays down.

So now we've got all three cats, and that's the end of my story about the fine Turtle Art Camp with Jennifer and Wilma in July. You can see a schedule of all my classes on the front page of Turtle Moon Studios, including my camps and a separate listing of all the classes I'll be teaching "out."

Thanks for reading this! Lucky

Festival of Quilts, Birmingham, UK, Aug, 2010. Last report: What it was!

2010-08-28T10:28:00.011-04:00

This is going to be a really, really long blog entry about my Festival of Quilts adventures, because, in spite of all my noble intentions, I never got around to writing another post the whole time I was in England, once my teaching started there!

I had made a first UK report blog, a shorter one, on August 16th, late PM, but since then it's just too crazy busy, but a real blast! Hard work, great fun! How it ought to be! I flew home on Tuesday, Aug 24, and today is Saturday, August 28th. So there you are! I think my energy's back, and the good news is that I DID edit my tons of pictures all along, and have now transferred them from my laptop to my desktop and re-edited the ones I wanted for this blog post. So here we go!

This is where I taught my "Time Capsule Story Quilts" class, and I think this billboard for Mint Cuisine is always above this meeting room. Check out my cool blue doors with those funky handles! Two and three day Masterclasses were being taught from Aug 17-19 by teachers like Sandra Meech, Rayna Gillman, Lisa Walton, and me.

Here's the big deal I was waiting for! On Tuesday morning, Aug 17, I finally got to meet Andrew Salmon, the director of Twisted Thread and Creative Exhibitions, whom I'd been emailing and phoning with for almost two years, without ever seeing what he looked like. He appeared Tuesday morning and asked if I needed anything to help set up my classroom. I said I needed two ironing boards, but of course, someone else could get them. But then he showed up like this, toting two ironing boards, with a big smile on his face. That's Andrew, always trying to do whatever it takes to make things work well and fast. Imagine a VERY suave English voice, low and gentlemanly, full of courteous expressions of kindness and making everything all better. Very, very, very tall! He was even way better in person than in all our conversations before we met. I give him a 10! :) Sweet as Kidney Pie. OH, wait. I suppose that's not very sweet! Very English, but no, not sweet. Let's try again! Sweet as Honey Pie!
You can read tons and see tons of pix and videos of the Festival of Quilts 2010 on their Facebook page, including the video of an interview with me about my show. :)

My class began that Tuesday morning, Aug 17, and would go through the 19th, with nine students from England, the Channel Islands, Sweden, and Norway. After we all settled in and had introductions, we had the usual "library time" in my classes, when everyone is quiet and draws and writes in their sketchbooks for 10 minutes. Then we made a list of themes for the three days, lots of theme ideas, and chose SHOES for the first day's theme. Above is my drawing on cloth with a Rub-a-Dub marker, of Shoe Fly Pie with a Cheeky Pigeon (but it can also be that bird toy that wears a hat and dips its beak in a glass of water and keeps dipping and swinging up and down) and Big Ben, and me, and a pie (for the 4 and 20 blackbirds...) and a heifer, because I'll end up finishing this piece into a small quilt to donate to the Heifer International benefit auction for this Nov 6th. The piece is a fat quarter of white cotton to start with, so that's about 18"h x 22"w or so, since I don't measure, usually. It may be slightly larger when quilted, after I write all over it, probably with some history of Heifer International, my England trip, or whatever else is going on during the time I'm writing on the piece for the auction.

Here are Ros Crouch and Susan Rowley, working on their shoe ideas. Ros has the start of a Crocs piece! (And I was told the English hate Crocs! :) )

After lunch on that first day, I began to demo how I paint with my Jacquard Textile Colors fabric paints. Janet Raine and Synnove Vanar are beside me here.

For the first two days of my class, my gallery looked like this, as it awaited the magic of Liz Cooper's installation team, who were very busy hanging many other shows during that time.

The two boxes of 21 of my art quilts I'd packed at home and sent ahead of me waited quietly in my gallery, while the hundreds of stands for shows and vendors at Festival went up around them.

Julian stopped by to see how I was doing with my class and walked me through the Festival halls, so I could find my stand (before there was much to serve as landmarks on the way to find it.) Here he's showing me a big pile of dirt that would magically disappear before the expo opened to the public the next day!

It was a good idea to take time to study this map on the way between the hotel and the NEC, so you didn't get lost. Vast and industrial are good adjectives for this complex! Don't wanna get lost, now do you????! The very large Hilton is the black building to the left of the hand, and the National Exposition Center is the sprawling red vastness, of which this picture only shows parts. Be very impressed and intimidated by its sprawl!

This path between the Hilton and the NEC was a real delight of Nature, especially when we were spending so much of our time inside of massive buildings. I love nature paths anywhere, and this one just was long enough to give you a really refreshing surge of Earthness, before you got spit out into cityness again!

I was starting to really enjoy the British culture, and on Aug 17, got the thrill of going to a Tesco grocery store in Solihull, the nearest town to the Festival, with Rayna and Marlene, when we were on our way to an indian restaurant there. The magazine rack is full of such different things than at home in the US! And Solihull! Well, it's where they made Triumph motorcycles and still make Land Rovers. Oh, and Cadbury Chocolates. Just check Solihull on Wikipedia, and you'll be happily impressed!

Oh, and look at the very different boxes of wine they have in England, sold in Tesco! So different from the ones in my store at home. I bought the Australian Red Wine, middle row, far left. Tasted close enough to Merlot to suit me, and got me through the rest of my time in the UK, with box wine to spare, and I hope the cleaning ladies drank it! Helped me get to sleep!

On the morning of the second day of my class, Aug 18, I got lost while trying to find a better entryway into the huge NEC. I was going to class over an hour early, to set up my airpens, but ended up losing 45 minutes to being lost, just walking around the perimeter of this massive conglomerate of buildings!

The view above is of nearing the end of walking on a huge skywalk, whose moving sidewalks and escalators were turned off, in order to get unlost. It must have been close to a mile of walking in that gray continuum of nothingness, after a nice stranger pointed me in the right direction to get to Hall #7, where I needed to be for FoQ!

Here's my Shoe Fly Pie in progress on our second day of class, Wednesday, August 18th, when I was also giving my students their one-on-one lessons in how to use the airpen, so they could write on their work, after painting it.

This is my very first "Engaland Swings" drawing, made with a Rub-a-Dub black marker and a blue ink Bic pen, along with a little crayon, on a 5.5"h x 8.5"w piece of card-weight paper. It's a drawing made after my class painting of the Shoe Fly Pie with Cheeky Pigeon. Sarah bought it right away, so I was encouraged to continue my study of English culture! :) All during my time in the UK then, I kept on making Engaland Swings drawings, some of which will soon be for sale, and I'll let you know when I have good scans of them up. They'll each be $150. plus shipping.

Here's Sarah starting to work with the airpen, which I've shown her the parts of, how to hold, and how to cover the little air hole, in order to control the paint flow. I'm still figuring out new "helpful hints" for how to operate, clean, and fill the airpen, after starting to work with it in 2002. If you want to learn to use this tool with fabric paint, so you can apply thin lines of rich paint to your fabric, it's a good idea to study with me, because I've invented a lot of wheels with it! You can see the little fish tank air pump in the foreground. That's what pushes out the paint, so you don't have to wreck your hands in squeezing paint out. Very useful!

My student Alicia Merrett was off and running with her painting of a shopper and clerk in a shoe store. Alicia was teaching several shorter classes during the Festival, after our class.

Catarina Bitkover made vignettes of her favorite, comfy shoes.

Ros and Susan were busy, painting away!

Student Kate Crossley was doing an Alice in Wonderland thing, when the rabbit hole turned into a giant eye, possibly influenced by all the eyes Kate had just seen in my show-and-tell pieces.

Mary Horton and Janet Raine came up from Jersey in the Channel Islands, to take my class and do the Festival. They had a four hour ferry ride, plus land travel to get here!

Sarah Fincken made a painting about her daughter's love of shoes.

Synnove created a very good self portrait in her shoe piece.

Here's my "Shoe Fly Pie with Cheeky Pigeon," before I started any writing on it.

I'd pop into the Organizer's Office for Twisted Thread / Creative Exhibitions off and on each day, and this time I caught Anna Baptiste, the Festival's coordinator of all the classes, such the several Masterclass in the Art Academy. Anna always had a smile and a quick solution for any issues that came up. Like Andrew, I'd been really curious about meeting her, and her gentle, kind ways and happy face were even better than I'd hoped! She's wonderful!

When Liz and her crew got my show up, before my class ended on its second day, I was so thrilled. This piece "The Potluck / World," hungs on one of my gallery's outside walls. It's the one Hay House used a detail of for the cover of the Kitchen Tarot deck's box and book. Thanks to Jan Westwood for his dedication of time and skill, in designing my show for FoQ. When my show was up on Aug 18 and I saw it for the first time, I jumped up and down, since I've never seen a show of this many of my new style of large pieces hung together before. This could be addictive!!!!!!!
Watch FoQ's video interview of me and my show, which they named "This American Life," on FoQ's Facebook page. (It wasn't MY idea to give that name to my show, but I am very flattered, even though the NPR radio show of the same name, hosted by Ira Glass, may not appreciate it. Still, that's in the US and THIS is England! Jolly good!!!!)

These photos are my first of the show, once it was up, but before they put up the signage, and before my display table was set up.

My students walked through it with me, on our way out of the expo center for the day, and I enjoyed seeing their first reactions to my work in person.

This shot shows Susan looking at work, while behind her are my three "Obamaland" pieces from 2009-2010, and on the left, my "Garden of Haiti" piece of 2010.

One piece, my "Obama REI" about the 2008 presidential election, remained on the table to hang on one wall of the center walls. You can see large images and long statements about all of the quilts here, if you go into the Gallery index page on my site and then into the 2005 to 2010 gallery pages there.

Here's a close-up detail of my piece "Wilma (Peace Voodoo)," which was hanging on one of the outside walls of my show stand, along with four other pieces. They all got missed in the videos made of my show, because they weren't inside the space. Anyhow, you can see how the writing looks up close here, except that this is a 2005 piece, the earliest in the show, and the writing got smaller and smaller, until in 2010, I can't read it very well! I need to start writing a little larger again!

Kate Crossley, one of my students, then took us to look at the three pieces she has in the FoQ competition exhibition. This was Kate's first time EVER to enter her art into art quilt shows, and she was thrilled, as were the rest of us. This piece is all about her family, and she took the time to tell us about the many meanings in the stories on the piece.

And THIS is Kate's amazing 3-D quilt, an entire cabinet hand made by her with foam core and fabric and batting, including working drawers and lots of detailed dimensional objects. All hand made! It's called "Love Conquers All." Kate has a studio art degree from Oxford, by the way. Look for her!!!

The next morning, Thursday, August 19, was my last day of class and the first day the big Festival was open to the public. Hilary Gooding gave me a ride that day, but we had to park a long ways off and walk in, so here's the main entrance. This part of the NEC looks like something from a World's Fair, tho the rest of the outside of it looks like a huge science fiction city designed by the Yellow Submarine guy, Peter Maxx!

Inside the main entry is this big atrium with catwalks and tons of skylights, that sound wild when it rains!

Check out the fancy skylights here, above the Starbucks, across from the Festival entrance. Hmmm, I never did go check to see if Starbucks had wifi, which the Festival did not. Nowhere I went had wifi, so my iPhone remained a calculator and alarm clock for 10 days, as I worked to keep AT&T from being able to charge me one penny for overseas useage! (I skyped and used email on my laptop, to communicate with home.)

Here you are! You have arrived at the grand entryway! Remember that I was there for two days of watching it all go up, before this stuff got here. It all looked like it had always been there, but no! It was like a circus had come to town, and hundreds of people built this expo up from the cement and open ways, into carpet, walls, signs, lights, etc! But now, Thursday, August 19, the Festival of Quilts is officially open, and the hordes of mad quilters are beginning to swarm upon us! We want that, for sure, but it is a little scary, after all that quiet time! I read that the Festival had 34,000 visitors this year, breaking all their records!!!

Back inside my quiet classroom on that last day of class, Aug 19, I showed my students my "Astrology Tablecloth," which I made in 2003, when I was first writing on my painted art quilts with my airpen. The forms are airbrushed, then the writing comes into this instructional piece, which I sometimes lay out when I'm giving an astrology lesson at my Turtle Art Camps at my home studios in Wooster, Ohio. This is a giant sized table cover that's a primer for learning astrology. I was surprised at how huge that airpen writing of seven years ago looks to me now. No wonder the writing is taking me longer and longer now, because I'm writing smaller and smaller, as I get more comfortable with the airpen!

This last class day, everyone's working hard. Some are still painting, some are quilting, as I've already demonstrated how I do my funky quilting processes that are so different from everyone else's.

This is when I really am contented in a class: when the students are at ease enough with the airpens to sit down and use them on their paintings that they've been working so hard on. Catarina, Alicia, and Synnove were all calm and busy, putting beautiful painted-line writing on their artworks. Yea!!!!

In our final show-and-tell at the end of the class: Kate has made a piece about her beautiful city of Oxford, England, and she's so happy, she's wrapping up in the painting, that's now ready to be quilted my way. She plans to write on it with airpen later, after the quilting.

Here's Catarina's woman who's always making endless lists of chores, a painting now pinned together with batting and backing, ready to quilt. She plans to continue this List Woman series. The bathtub came out of our second day of class's theme: Bathtubs. (Our third day's theme was Cooking, but nobody really got around to a third painting! Everyone was busy finishing their first two paintings and quilting one.)

Since I was putting most of my time into teaching, I didn't get a chance to make a Bathtub painting. But during the evening of the second class night, I made this drawing, the second of my "Engaland Swings" series. It's Twiggy in the Bathtub with her Cat Peter Sellers. :) This isn't a very good image of it, but I'll let you know when I put up my scans of the drawings I'll have for sale soon. It'll look a lot better when scanned, instead of being photoed.

Here's all the work we made in the "Time Capsule Story Quilts" 3-day class at FoQ 2010. Mostly shoes and bathtubs of various interpretations, as varied as the artists who drew, painted, and quilted (some of them.) We took the ariel pix like this while standing on the table and got yelled at for it by some passing village idiot. :) But we all seemed to like being notorious, and we really bonded sweetly in our three days together! I miss my students!

Here's my "Engaland Swings #3: Twiggy and her Peace Purse," in which Big Ben has some lovely Peace graffiti drawn by Twiggy on him, and the Peace Kitty visits England, too. This one is for sale and will be in my scanned images soon. Stay tuned!

Now it was Friday, August 20, my first day to be in the Festival, since my class was now over. Christine Bell came to my first lecture, and then bought my "Root Chakra Buddha Girl" art quilt, which is one of the last pieces I have for sale that combine all that hand stitching and the "new" airpen work. She had bought a painting I did on canvas early this year, from the HeART for Haiti benefit at Wayne Center for the Arts in Wooster, Ohio, my hometown, to raise money for Haiti after the earthquake. Christine's purchase then helped feed a lot of people in Haiti for a long time! And it was a true honor and delight to meet her in England! Thank you so much, Christine!!!

Marlis Egger, a quilt artist from Switzerland, also came to my first lecture on the 20th. She and I had been writing back and forth on FB and regular email before the festival, and it was really nice to meet her in person. It was her birthday the day before, and she usually celebrates it at FoQ!

I think Marlis looks a lot like the women in my family, on my mother's side, and it makes sense, since Mom's Mennonite and Amish ancestors came from Switzerland. Those groups stayed pretty insular, choosing members of their own faith and ancestry to marry, for many generations.

Back to my Engaland Swings drawings, but this one is a commission I did for Marlene, after she and Rayna and I ate at that nice Indian place, The Lloyds, in Solihull. Marlene had told me that she wanted one of my drawings, but not with Twiggy in it. She wanted herself instead, which really made me happy! Check out the waiter, who REALLY said to us, "You are making me very confused!!!" Say that with a charming and musical Indian accent. :)

And this is another "Engaland Swings" drawing, about a L'Oreal ad I saw on the telly, the night I didn't go to the International Gala for FoQ, coz I was too worn out. I LOVED listening to the tv shows and ads, while I did my email, etc. But this ad stopped me in my tracks, and I knew I had to draw it! So funky and edgy, compared to US television. My girl in the ad is probably Anna Baptiste of FoQ, not the long haired brunette in the real ad. All of the "Engaland Swings" drawings are for sale for $150. each, except the two that sold. I'll post them all on my Facebook page for Turtle Moon Studios. There are four left right now.

This "Engaland Swings" piece is about their soap opera: Coronation Street, in which all these women are preggy and freaking out, for various reasons. Yes, I sort of watched it that same night, Friday night. I've decided that English society is more sophistocated and reasonable than ours, and if not for my kids, I might drag Jimmy over there to live. Nah, he'd never go. The food's no good and the fly fishing's too expensive, and QE2 owns all the trout and salmon! (Good way to protect them tho. Very practical, those Brits!)

This is Karen, who's buying this piece, "The Compost Pot / Death: Card #13 in the Kitchen Tarot." I had about half of the Kitchen Tarot quilted paintings in this solo show.

I'll be doing a new photoshoot of this piece with my new camera, before it goes to live in London.

I was standing outside of the Hilton when this wonderful little taxi pulled up, with its ads that include a shopping bag! A bunch of people scrambled out and a bunch of quilters staying at the hotel piled in, and off they went. I want that car!

Now it's the very last day of the Festival, and my dear friend, artist Rita Scannell had come over from Ireland and was staying two nights with me. She and I popped out into the expo a little and went to visit dear friends. Here's my fave new friend art quilter, Pauline Burbidge of the Scottish borderlands, who Rita told me was the first ever art quilter to use an industrial longarm sewing machine on her quilts. She blazed the trail that led to big companies making longarm sewing machines just to sell to quilters, but hers was something like a mattress-sewing longarm. Pauline is like a little Tinkerbell sprite, only way more brilliant mentally than Tink, who was just in love with Peter Pan! I met Pauline at Festival this year, and she has part of my heart. These are her newest works on the walls. You can watch her FoQ 2010 video now!

Heike Stoll-Weber and Marla Hattabaugh vended at Heide Stoll-Weber's stand of her insanely beautiful hand-dyed fabrics and quilts. Heike is holding one of my decks of Kitchen Tarot cards, in which I've made her a little simple Engaland Swings drawing, inside the box cover. Marla is a dear old friend from Arizona, whom I've known since the late 1980s, through Art Quilt Network. She hand quilts Nancy Crow's quilts. AND she makes her own brilliant art quilts, too!

Here's Heide Stoll-Weber (who looks a lot like my Grandma Shie, when she was young) and Phoebe, who was vending with Laura Wasilowski at Artfabrik, where I bought lots of Laura's hand dyed #5 perle cotton threads, for sewing around the borders of my art quilts. And Rita! I didn't get a picture of Laura, so let me see if I can go swipe one yet tongiht, off of her own site ...

OK, I didn't find a photo of Laura herself, but here's a pic she had on her blog of her stand at the Festival of Quilts. You can see all of her perle cotton I bought, in the middle of this picture! :)

After our class was over, Catarina and I were able to spend a little more time together. I wanted to just go home with her or have her come home with me! You know how it feels, when you meet somebody you just want to hang out with every week, as good friends!

When Rita came over, she arranged my display table in my gallery, so that the Kitchen Tarot decks, etc, became much more civilized. And my sweet student Kate stopped in and gave me this gummy alphabet candy, which Rita sprinkled out on the table, to add more delights!

Andrew had told me that there would be Quilt Angels to take care of my show stand when I was teaching all day, the first day of Festival, which was also the last day of my masterclass! And he said Quilt Angels would watch my stand when I had to go on a break or go to look at the rest of the shows and booths. So here are my two and only Quilt Angels: Sarah and Rob Edwards, who volunteered to take care of me! They did an amazing job of giving me breaks, finding me, when I forgot a meeting at my show with a French magazine editor, who was patiently waiting for me, and of watching my show that whole day when I was teaching! They are like godparents! Sarah is a quilter, and Rob is retired and very kindly going along with Sarah on this volunteer work I couldn't have done without! Thank you both so much, Sarah and Rob!!!!!

That Sunday, the last day of Festival, was Andrew Salmon's birthday!!! I found out mid afternoon from Jan King, his partner in directing the Festival, so I made a card on my "Engaland Swings" paper. Of course, it was Andrew bringing me the ironing boards!

Jan finally got Andrew over to my stand, which was a real feat, as everyone wants both of their time, as soon as they're spotted! Happy Birthday, Andrew! And thanks so much to both of you for everything magical that you did for all of us!!!!

Rita, Ros, and I decided we must pose with President Obama one more time in the show, before it got taken down! These two women helped me immensely in so many ways! Both are wonderful artists, by the way!!!!!

Hilary Gooding, in charge of the quilt exhibitions in general, was still smiling after trying to keep me out of trouble all week! Thank you Hilary, for your endless compassion! Another artist!!

At last I'm taller than Andrew! Life is good! This was right before time for Teardown, when the circus comes down in something like two hours, as opposed to the days it took to put up! We stood outside my gallery, in front of my favorite piece, "The Potluck / World: Card #21 in the Kitchen Tarot." Please send good vibes: a very sweet and interesting woman from Denmark, whom I didn't get a picture of, is thinking of buying this piece.

Then they announced that the Festival of Quilts was closing, and then it was quiet for a few minutes, and then the teardown crews got busy! My show came down in about five minutes, even though they had to undo wood screws that held all the quilt rods to the walls. They left the quilts folded all over the floor, and then Rita and I began packing them back into their boxes.

Then my first friend from Twisted Thread, Julian stopped by to talk, and that kept us delightfully away from the packing a little longer!

Rita and I packed quilts into specific-order bags with inventory sheets in each, then into specific order of bags into each box. I packed the leftover Kitchen Tarot decks in between the quilts, for getting them home NOT in my baggage! We worked for at least an hour doing that, and it woulda been more like three hours, I swear, if she hadn't been there.

This is the drawing I made on the inside of Rita's deck of KT cards. It has us as Avon ladies at the hotel, since there was a real convention of thousands of Avon ladies there, after the Festival people left. I had been drawing little pix much like this inside of all the decks I sold, and put Big Ben in all of them. I really have to google Big Ben and find out what he really looks like!

And THEN Rita brought around the rent-a-car she'd just gone off and got, and whisked me and my bags off to the hotel again. I think we were about two of the last to leave the hall!

Ah, a glass of Guinness for dear Rita at the Little Owl pub later that night!
Well done! That night Rita told me that she wanted me to go with her the next day, Monday, Aug 23, on a surprise trip to do a little sightseeing in England! This was great, as Solihull was as far as I'd been, and I'd only seen the grocery store and Indian restaurant there!

Off we went, and the surprise was: Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's hometown! We had a blast. Here's the Jestor or the Fool, who is also, by the way, the first card in the Tarot deck - the Colander in my deck!

Then I wanted to pose with this great, lifesized statue! When I put my arm on his shoulder, the statue's arm came up around me, and I honestly thought it was a moving statue. My bad eyes! Of course it was a real man behind all that silver paint! He was great! People tell me they do this all the time, and they don't have permits so they take off after standing at one place a while, so they don't get arrested. No, don't arrest sweet Statue Man!

Stratford was full of these tudor style houses, made of wood and plaster, with really close together beams, like mattress ticking! Oh and it rained on us. Very English! These 800 year old houses were all over the place, already 400 years old when Shakespeare showed up on the scene!

This is me in front of the house Shakespeare was born in! Never thought I would be there. Never even thought about it, but still, pretty wild!

Because of the rain, we ducked into this doorway, to find it was an amazing international buffet, that had great food and was very affordable. Great big clean bathrooms, too. Indian, Chinese, Middle-Eastern, American, Italian foods. Didn't see no kidney pie though. huh. We ate gleefully!

OK, all that Olde English stuff, and then a dollar store! Wish we'd gone in, but we were exiting, stage right, for the church where Shakespeare's buried INSIDE OF the church. Honest!

OK, as promised: Where Shakespeare is buried, right in the middle of the church, along with a bunch of other Lay Sextons, or whatever the guy told me that Shakespeare was. They hold regular services in this church and also allow tourists to come in and take pix. You have to pay to go into the sanctum sanctorium where Willy's grave is, so I took the picture from here. Close enough. Very beautiful church, I might add.

This was the afternoon view of Pendigo Lake, a view from my hotel room window that I hadn't seen before in the afternoon light, since I'd never been there in the afternoon til that last day. Rita said she'd walked around it before, in earlier visits to the Festival of Quilts. So that's one goal: to walk around it with Rita the next time I go over the pond!
In case you're curious about the weather, it was about 10 degrees warmer at home in Ohio all week, where we were having a heat wave. England was pretty nice, averaging about 70 degrees for a high each day, with rain here and there, but very bearable. I had a window that would open in my hotel room and kept it open all the time, as the AC didn't work, just the fan. Didn't get any cheeky pigeons in my window, happily. I was well warned about cheeky pigeons! I liked that term a lot and am using it in my art, as you saw here. :)

After staying up all night, except for two hours of sleep, it was Ta-Ta to Merry Olde bright and early Tuesday morning, August 24th. Here my plane is rising over Birmingham, or more likely over Solihull, around 7 AM UK time, 2 AM my Ohio time. I can't find the NEC's massive structures on the ground in this picture, but this view is really pretty anyway! Wonder what that big green field with one tree in it is all about??? I spent my flights home trying to sleep and working on my next drawing in my new Kitchen Tarot series: "The Salt and Pepper / Magician: Card #1." But there are enough pictures in this blog now, so you can see it later!

I got home on Tuesday, Aug 24, about 3:30 PM, Ohio time. Here's my sweetie pie Jimmy Bear, meeting me at the Cleveland airport! Yea!!!!

Festival of Quilts, Birmingham, UK, Aug, 2010. First report: getting there.

2010-08-16T19:34:00.002-04:00

I'm writing from my Mac laptop Sally in the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel, later than I should still be up, on Aug 16, after two days of getting here. Im going to make some typos in writing this blog, so don't bother sending me edit tips, please. :) This is how I can get it done and go to bed! Class starts bright and early, and I've had way too little sleep! I am excited! The Festival of Quilts 2010 is about ready to begin here, and it's my first time ever in England!

This is Jimmy, Marigold, and me in Jimmy's leather shop in the basement, when I was doing my final packing to take off for the airport.

I decided to pack the two GREEN CATS tote bags I had painted for Eleanor Levie's book on making cloth grocery bags. I'll get a link for that! ... later!

Jimmy backs away from the very familiar sight of my Obama and Our Family garage door mural. Goodbye, everybody!

Goodbye for 10 days to all our pretty flowers, including the Turtle Heads in the Moon Garden!

Jimmy and I both get all squishy when one of us is going to leave the other one behind for a few days. It's just what we do.

Here's a gigantic art guitar at Cleveland Hopkins Airport, by my departure gate. It celebrates the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame here ... and maybe the Cleveland Zoo?

And another art guiar! This one may be made of papier mache that's meant to resemble terra cotta clay. Very groovy. I was feelin' all Clevelandy! I DID live there parttime for a while in Lakewood, after all, being Eva's fancy nanny with a granny pad!

Now I'm in Newark's airport, eating at a sit-down Mexican restaurant with this very cool mural. My waiter was scary, but I dug this mural!

I am normally so afraid of flying over oceans, but this went well, and I'm here to tell you about it! As Eva used to say, when her daddy would pretend he couldn't find her, when she was about a year and a half old, "I right here!"

After the 7 hour flight overnight from Newark to Birmingham, in which I sat next to a young eco-engineer for GE, who's from Hungary and designs sodium cathoid (???) batteries that will revolutionize our battery usage, and in which I watched a cool movie "Backup Plan" with Jennifer Lopez, and couldn't sleep, I got to my hotel room in Birmingham and got onto the internet by noon. I want to thank the wonderful Middle Eastern man who helped me so much in getting a cab with all my luggage. Thanks for your kindness, Abdul! Sorry I hugged you!

Julian, who's worked with Twisted Thread, the group that makes the Festival of Quilts, has been with them for 7 years of their total 8, I think. He showed me this stand (read as booth in Yank Speak), and said this is my gallery, which will be installed tomorrow with my 21 quilts! The exhibition part of this blowout doesn't start til Thursday, so that overlaps by one day with my 3 day class.

I'll be in Stand #F12 all day Friday and Saturday (except when I give my lectures) and Sunday, selling my Kitchen Tarot decks AND the little cheeky fresh drawings I'm going to make as I sit there. Maybe you need an England Swings Like a Pendulum Do drawing with you in it????? Come on over! I'm packin' my Rub-a-Dub markers and blue bic pens!

Here's Marlene, Julian, and Rayna, all of us leaving the NEC after a long day of the beginning of the buildup of the Festival of Quilts. It sure is quiet in here ... SO FAR! They say it'll be crazy crowded soon enough. We set up our studios early tomorrow morning.

This is the main entrance of the NEC, which I think stands for the National Exhibition Center. See how peaceful it is so far??? ...

Waitin' for supper in the Hilton's bar, with Marlene Cohen and Elizabeth Barton, who's teaching, along with Rayna and me and a bunch of other teachers. Marlene is Rayna's assistant for her funky silkscreening class.

Ooouuu, I look kinda tired here. And I have admired and trusted Rayna Gillman for so long ....!

Aiicia Merritt (also a teacher here, and a student in my class) and Hilary Gooding, who's the brains of this whole operation and a star quilter and teacher, probably teaching, but I have to find out for sure, were getting a bit slap happy, and none of us were even having a drink.

After not eating all day, I rather pounced (as the English would say, maybe) on this Melted Swiss hamburger with portabello mushrooms. This supper is history!

Here's my bed, which I am about to get flat and sleep a long while in, and get up from in about 5 hours. The pillows here are outstanding, made of duck feathers. Thank you, dear duckies!

I hope to write again tomorrow night, but don't hold your breath! This Festival of Quilts is a wonderful thing, ready to blossom up tomorrow and amaze us all! I'll get pix of Andrew, Anna, Jan, Mic, and the others in the staff, so you can see this international Twisted Thread powerhouse that's the biggest fiber event in all of Europe each year. Did I mention that they did NOT censor my political pieces? I love them!!!!

Jimmy and I, and then Gretchen, Eva, and Mike (GEM) and I had our first real Skype talks tonight on our computers, for free! Yea! I love and miss you all! Glad your new Hello Kitty backpack came on Saturday, Eva, and that you've started packing it up for kindergarten!

Oh, it's bedtime! Taaaaa!

PS. I finally posted my massive, final blog entry about my Festival of Quilts adventures, well after I got home to Ohio, on August 28. Please read that opus, if you have the energy!

My guest post today on Subversive Stitchers: Women Armed with Needles

2010-06-12T22:10:00.000-04:00

Instead of making a blog entry here on my own blog about my newly completed quilted painting (art quilt), called "Philadelphia Freedom: Two of Paring Knives," I took Dawn Goldsmith up on writing a guest entry for her very wonderful blog Subversive Stitchers: Women Armed with Needles. Please go over and enjoy it.

Above is a picture of me starting to put colors into my painting for this piece, using my airbrush, after drawing the composition off the top of my head (since I couldn't figure it out in sketches, though they had helped me narrow my focus a lot.) I love that you can draw really fast on a large surface with an airbrush (mine's by Aztek) and then turn around and use the same tool to color in your painting. This happens in two short days, and then it's months of wriitng all over it with my airpen, reporting stories from my life, current events, and in this case, some powerful history lessons about slavery, the Kent State killings, and much more.

After you read my Subversive Stitchers blog entry, please go see my website's 2010 Gallery page about this same piece, "Philadelphia Freedom," whose main theme is the nine enslaved Africans kept illegally at the President's House in Philadelphia from 1790 to 1797, by President and Mrs Washington. It is also another Minor Card piece in my Kitchen Tarot project. You'll find a long statement in that gallery page on TurtleMoon.com.

Oh, and my blog entry on Subversive Stitchers ends with an Eva's Art update. But it's not THIS piece:

This is Eva's drawing for the tee shirts for Christmas Run Pool, which I got her to create for me on May 9. I knew if my sweet little five and a half year old granddaughter would make a design for the shirts, people would buy them for our Save the Pool fundraiser. You can see the shirts and read about them on the Facebook page Save Christmas Run Swimming Pool Wooster Ohio, in the photos section. If you're in Wooster, you can order the shirts at Spa Collections or Wooster Natural Foods.

By the way, our City Pool opened this last Sunday, June 6, and it'll be open for sure, both this summer and next, thanks to all who worked, and continue to work so hard to keep raising the needed funds! Bravo!

I'm making my entry for the SAQA online reverse auction, and will post it here when it's done. Then it'll be time to start my Quilt National entry, which I can't post anywhere, due to entry rules. It'll be about the Oil Spill and Healing the Oceans and Coastlines.

Blessings! Susan

Eva's first visit to Panny and Poppy's house alone, April 24 to 26, 2010

2010-05-01T17:29:00.002-04:00

Our granddaughter Eva came and spent three days and two nights with us last weekend, and it was such a wonderful time, especially considering that it was her first time ever to stay away from home without her parents! You're a brave little girl, Miss Eva! And she'd just had her half birthday on April 22, turning five and a half!

Eva brought her doll Elizabeth with her, and everything that Eva did, Elizabeth did, too. It's my theory, as her observant Panny, that Eva did so well staying alone with us, because she wasn't really "alone" with us: She had her little friend Elizabeth the whole time.

Later Gretchen told me that Eva had never paid much attention to Elizabeth since getting her a year and a half earlier, for her fourth birthday. But since going back home, Elizabeth is still enjoying being Eva's best friend! So you just never know!

After Eva's ballet class at the Beck Center in Lakewood (their hometown), Gretchen and Mike brought Eva down to our place in Wooster, and we all had a nice lunch, before her Mommy and Daddy went home.

Being a little Fruit Bat, Eva was preoccupied with the thought of enjoying eating an apple, and didn't get upset when her folks left. Whew!

Before we took a nap, I got Eva to take a walk with me, so she'd be good and tired. (It worked! We got a good nap afterwards. Yea!)

I showed Eva my wonderful crop of catnip growing by the door, and she picked some for Otis and Ome to eat.

Time to give the kitties their catnip treats!

Otis is always hopeful that he'll get some catnip, when I come back from a walk, and Eva didn't let him down!

You have to go find Ome usually, since she's not as gung-ho as Otis is, about gobbling up catnip. But she likes it enough, and was happy that Eva brought her some.

This is a big deal. It's the first time that we've used the car seat in OUR car, when Eva's here. For all this time, we used GEM's car, whenever all of us would go somewhere, when they were at our house. But noe we own our own seat, and lookie how well Eva fits into it! Our maiden voyage was to eat at the Green Leaf Restaurant, the place my parents loved so very much, and we love it, too!

We're at the Green Leaf now, and Eva's clearly having a good time!

We've got burgers and fries, and Eva's got Jell-O, enough to share with her doll Elizabeth, too!

Time to run around to the other side of the table and pose with Poppy!

After that, it was time to get ready to go home. We had work to do!

This was Eva's highly successful first time ever to break an egg, and for a very good purpose:

It was Panny and Eva's big Bake Chocolate Chip Cookies Time!

Mashing softened butter into beaten egg, for the first time. Eeeewwwww!

Ya have to get the cookies just the right size and pack the dough down just right!

then ya have to wash up the mess, while the cookies are baking!

Seeeeeeee?

OK, this is the good part!

And if that weren't enough, these crazy grandparents let a kid have a fudgecicle treat, AFTER COOKIES! Cheers, Poppy!

That fudgecicle treat got Otis all fired up, and he enjoyed a good game of catch the sparkly, rattly thing on a stick! The big event for the night was yet to come, as we all watched the first half of the movie "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." It was a late night, and Eva slept well!

The next morning was Sunday, and it was cold out again, so Eva and Elizabeth got all bundled up for an early morning walk. Here's Eva with the painted version of herself on our garage mural.

No, I didn't put Elizabeth into the mural. Next mural ... maybe!

Eva started a drawing about our trip to the Green Leaf restaurant.

Pretty soon it was time to help Poppy make pancakes. These two have had practice on their routine for this project, and they slid into their chore with glee!

Elizabeth was new to the Great Pancake Fry, but Eva knew her stuff!

Jimmy and Eva carefully count 30 seconds before each flip.

Before you know it, it's time to eat!

And then it was time to take a drawing that Eva had made at home, over to give to her friend Haley, who lives over by the school. We had walked to her house twice before on this weekend, but this time, we'd called and had a plan with Haley's mom, so it worked out!

Haley liked Eva's drawing and invited her to come play in her room. When I went to get Eva, to go home to our place, they were happily playing dolls. Eva and Haley are the same age, and both will go to kindergarten this Fall.

Coming back to our house from Haley's, Eva and I enjoyed seeing all the crabapple petals falling on the Moon Garden, turning the stones pink!

Then I had to go to a Co-op Council meeting, and it was Poppy's job to make sure that Eva took her nap. He promised to read her books and talk quietly, to not do anything to fire her up! And when I came home and tiptoed into Eva's room, I found them sound asleep, side by side.

But they were playing possum! Poppy was so surprised that it can be impossible to get Eva to fall asleep! Plus the pre-nap Chair Races could have possible gotten her fired up, you know!

Later they showed me what Chair Races are like.

Supper on Sunday night was hot dogs grilled by Poppy on his little camping grill. Yum! Of course they were accompanied by lots of fruit! Later on Sunday night we polished off the movie Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which we really enjoyed, and we all went to bed early. Eva and I were discussing that movie the next day, trying to figure everything out. She's really a good person to watch movies with, as she really pays attention all the way through!

Here's Eva's drawing of our Saturday night meal at the Green Leaf. From left: Poppy, Panny, Elizabeth, and Eva.

And this is Eva's drawing of "Eva's Ice Cream Shop." She's saying, "Step right up!" and she's just handed me a tasty mint ice cream cone!

I was trying to get her to collaborate with me on another book, like the one we made together at her house on Easter. But Eva musta been a little burnt out on that kind of thing. So I made a bunch of my own drawings with a black marker, hoping to lure her in, but it didn't work. Neither of us got our stuff colored in, and my drawings are still in a pile. Maybe I'll make a coloring book with them eventually. But I know I prefer our joint efforts, where both of our drawing styles interact, because we've both been trying to work on the same page at once! Maybe next time!

Monday morning went by like a whirlwind, We went downtown and walked around to see friends we knew in our favorite stores, like the Co-op and Early's Uptown Downtown, but soon it was time to take Eva home! We were all sad.

Eva collected more catnip for Otis and Ome, who have gotten pretty used to her flopping all over them by now. Too bad she can't bring their sister Cricket along from her house in Lakewood, but we know the three kittens wouldn't remember each other, after three and a half years of being apart! So Cricket remains Otis and Ome's long lost sister, who only joins them in our drawings!

Off we went to Lakewood, to Eva's happy parents, who had missed her very much. She had missed them, too, but while she was at our house, she never cried, the whole time.

We didn't have time to do so many of the activities on our list, including sewing on our Hello Kitty sewing machine and Eva helping Poppy with his leather work. Next time!!!

Eva is a very good traveler and house guest! Come back any time, sweet little Possum!

Now it's May 3rd, and I just found these two little drawings in my purse - Eva made them while we were waiting for our food at The Parlor on April 26, Monday. The one above is of Jimmy fishing, along with a happy little ground hog, which is an animal that Jimmy and Eva like to bring into their stories. I LOVE the expressions Eva puts on the faces she draws. What an amazing time of a person's life, when you see the world with such joy and curiosity!

On the other side of the little piece of paper is this drawing of Jimmy, me, and Eva. These drawings are on junkmail paper that I keep in my bag, only 4.25"h x 5.5"w, made with a nice little blue Bic pen. They are my most current treasures.

Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the killings at Kent State, and I care about it for many reasons, one of which is that children like Eva need to grow up in a safe world, where they can always speak their mind without being in danger. They need to grow up in Peace and Love.

Turtle Art Camp April 7 -13, 2010

2010-04-15T17:23:00.004-04:00

This last week, we had three students for TAC (Turtle Art Camp) here at our home in Wooster, Ohio: Bonnie Zieben and Kathy Zieben of Houston, Texas, and Marsha Boasso, from Augusta, Georgia. As with all of our Turtle Art Camps of the last 15 years, the students lived in our home, each with her own bedroom, and worked in the studios, learning my ways of working with fabric markers, fabric paint with brush and airpen, and airbrush with airbrush paint, all on cloth paintings for art quilting. They drew, wrote, colored, and sewed their creations in five full days of studio work, which are recorded here. Enjoy!

The students flew in on Wednesday, and that night we settled into the studio and began our work. After the four of us made a long list of theme ideas, the group chose "Glamour Dolls" as our theme for Thursday's paintings, which are fat quarter size (18" x 22") on white Kona PFD (prepared for dyeing) cotton. Here's Bonnie painting her Barbie piece on Thursday.

Marsha's getting going on her doll piece, that's about paper dolls and the clothes we used to design for them, in our girlhood. My piece is in the foreground, about Svetlana Medvedev and Michelle Obama being glamour dolls at the signing of the START Treaty on nuclear arms reduction, which was happening that day.

Kathy was busy painting on her wild glamour doll, who was meant to have a little of Cruella DeVille in her, with flowing free hair, and a gentle side in the mirror.

Jimmy unpacked the iLuv HD radio that arrived on Thursday, just in time to start our camp with streaming folk music, thanks to WKSU giving us this amazing radio as an incentive for donating to the radio station! WKSU now has 3 HD stations: their regular FM station, one just for classical music, and one just for folk music. Soon to come is a WKSU all-news station, too. Radio stations all over the country are developing HD stations, and their reception, being digital, is really excellent! The HD radios also receive regular FM and AM stations. (It takes some getting used to how to run the thing, but it's worth it!)

Thursday night we elected the theme Couples for our Friday work. The rule is that you don't have to do the theme, if you don't like it. Or you can combine themes, especially if you get behind (which I always do, since I'm also teaching a lot.)

Airpen lessons started on Friday, and here's Marsha, jumping right in, after a few test marks on blank fabric, now working on her painting. Yea!

Then it was Bonnie's turn to try her hand at airpen, working on her handwriting.

Kathy took to airpen like a duck to water and had a great time learning to control it.

On Saturday morning we took our Downtown Wooster field trip and ran into a woman walking her Cockatoo, outside of The Wooster Book Company. Wooster never ceases to amaze! (You'll soon see how meeting this Bird Lady had a big impact in breaking my "stuck" problem, for how to depict the next big piece I wanted to get busy on with airbrush! I KNOW she completely shifted my thinking for the Washingtons' slaves piece! Read on!) We had a great time downtown, eating at The Parlor and visiting lots of unique stores, including Uptown/Downtown, Local Roots, ArtFind Tile, Moorefield Pottery, Wooster Natural Foods, and Books in Stock. Then it was back to the studio, with everyone ready to learn airbrush, via my demo of a very large painting.

Bonnie's Couples piece was about the animals in Noah's Ark.

Marsha's was her two yard gnomes, looking in a window at a lovely piece of pie.

And about this time, I started my airbrush demo, using the largest piece of fabric I've ever used to demonstrate for a camp. This is the start of my piece for the President's House project of curator Michelle Flamer in Philadelphia. My 82"h x 72"w painting is of George and Martha Washington (meeting the Couples theme idea...) and the nine slaves they held illegally in the President's House in Philly, from 1790 through 1797. I drew them as birds flying out of a cage (Martha's hoop skirt), on to freedom, in my idea of what should have happened (their escape.) Two of the slaves did eventually successfully flee, but only after seven years of being slaves there in a free state!

I included a tenth bird, as President Obama, at the top of the painting, encouraging the slaves to find a way to freedom, or maybe trying to tell them about how in 2008 a black man would become president.

By Sunday, the day I finished making my painting, we had chosen the theme of Music for that day. And in our Library Time for the day, I got the name "Philadelphia Freedom" for my piece. I wasn't thinking about our theme, when that name popped into my head. I knew it was an Elton John song, but a few minutes later, I realized that meant that my painting also met the day's theme requirement! I wrote the name in with a paint marker, and I like how it's more subtle that way, than if it had as thick of lines as the drawing with airbrush has.

I wanted Martha's hoop skirt / bird cage to also resemble the Liberty Bell ringing - maybe ringing uncontrollably, as the slaves escape! Maybe I can write that concept on it, so you'll imagine a big bell clanging away, as the birds flap their wings and stretch out for freedom!

I'll put a whole sequence of pix of making this painting with airbrush either in a next blog or on my Facebook page, in an album there, soon.

And then it was time on Sunday, for each of the students to try the airbrush. God only knows what this creature Marsha drew is, though I suspect it's a goddess who can burst her enemies into flames ...

Kathy, duck to water, etc. :)

Bonnie, not a duck, but more like a determined woman who keeps after her goals, got pretty good with all the art processes that were so new to her. She was the student I always want to have: the one who thinks they can't do art, and then has a breakthrough and learns to trust her abilities and her ideas, and fledges the nest and flies! Bonnie made us all cry a few times, with her epiphanies!

Jimmy just loved these three students and enjoyed showing them his studio and current projects. Kathy, who was taking pix with her very excellent SLR camera all week, got some really good ones of him and his leatherwork, I know! Here the girls are listening to some leather talk in Jimmy's studio, which he insists is NOT a man cave.

I love to listen to Jimmy talk about his work, which is such a huge part of his life. I love that in 1996 he found fly fishing and was soon making cases for that sport, as the perfect combination of his leather work and his fishing hobby. I love that we both work at home and help each other in our art making. I love living this way, tho we could sure use a rich spouse! :)

Sunday I demonstrated the method I'd invented years and years ago, in my Lucky School of Quilting way, of how to sandwich a quilt in a very simplified process and then quilt it in another super easy Crazy Grid way. Here Kathy tries it out and learns to really like my "Barbie doll clothes" way of sewing art quilts.

While Kathy sews on my Janome 6600, Bonnie checks out all the different names of Barbie dolls, historically correct and also our own irreverent versions, to write on her Glamour Doll piece.

It was Sunday when Marsha's netbook stopped connecting to the wifi, while our friend Duane Hart was visiting. He fixed her computer and also took my laptop apart and fixed the bad connection on my keyboard. Mac laptops have about 50 screws to take out, to access the innerds, so we'd been putting it off. But Duane, our hero, fixed everything in record time, and we were all back in business.

Kathy had brought this year's Hoffman challenge fabric along with her, even though no student has to bring any supplies, which I have in the ready here. In this shot, she was taping the challenge fabric to her painting of the Music theme (for Saturday), and was getting ready to cut the fabric to fit the guitar. Pretty cool idea! Her piece was about how her husband's banjo saved the day for a famous concert to go on.

Kathy wanted to make her piece for the challenge on Quilt Art, too, for the Quinceañera, QA's 15th anniversary, with a due date for the images on April 15! My piece for it was made too large, in my last class at Hudson River Valley Art Workshops, but I was getting into the idea of trying again. Above is my drawing, based on research Marsha did, in which she found pix online of the dolls parents give their daughter for her Quinceañera.

I realized that Turtle Art Camp is also celebrating its 15th year now, if you don't count 2004, the first year. That year, I only did one day workshops, where people would bring a sack lunch and just stay that one day. In 2005 is when I began the format we have now, of a weeklong, live-in workshop. So I drew Judy Smith and me, with two Bloody Marys, celebrating our mutual Quinceañeras. I didn't get to paint this idea though, as we somehow switched to cupcakes for the Quinceañera theme.

Marsha, now a duck to water with airbrush, jumped up and drew a cupcake and the candles for Sweet 15 on her 15" x 15" piece of fabric. Kathy had made 15" squares for all of us, and we also had a fat quarter for a group piece. We all drew cupcakes on our own panels, and then each of us worked on each other's Quinceañera Cupcake painting with the airbrush. Everyone learns faster when it's a fun little project like this! And soon we were done with painting, and Kathy was thinking of how she'd quilt hers in time for the QA deadline three days later!

Kathy adds her Quinceañera doll to our larger group piece.

Then we all started adding to each other's pieces.

Putting in the colors with airbrush is a lot easier than writing and drawing with it. Everyone relaxed while we colored our cupcakes!

Here they all are, from left: Kathy's, Bonnie's, mine, and Marsha's cupcakes.

Marsha heatset the airbrush panels.

And here they are, on the fancy white photo wall upstairs. We put our names on pieces of paper, and Jimmy drew Marsha's name, so she won our group piece, of the Quinceañera dolls, which is on the bottom of the display above, below our individual cupcake pieces. (Well, individual, but we all worked on all of the five paintings.)

Back in the studio Marsha made her quilt sandwich of her Gnomes Pie (not her title, just my crazy name for it.) Ome had been helping, but walked away. Marsha's paper dolls piece is on the wall above.

Bonnie's sewing her quilt.

And Jimmy's barbecuing steaks for all of us!

Here we are, celebrating our final night together here at Turtle Art Camp. Steaks and baked potatoes, salad, and for late night dessert: ice cream! Yikes!

I've left out two themes: Sunday's was Inspired Mandalas, and Monday's was Fortunes: our fortune cookie papers from Wild Ginger, a local Chinese restaurant the night before. Since none of us actually got five paintings started, we all missed at least one theme, unless we combined themes to account for them all. I will write my fortune on my Philadelphia Freedom piece, in large enough lettering that you'll see it. My fortune was "They are never alone, who are accompanied by noble thought." (in bed.)

Late on Monday afternoon, the students had to combine most of the works we'd created all week, into a pleasing arrangement, so we could take pix of our work, and because the exercise was a provocative exercise in art aesthetics. (ie, its good to think about what works together and what doesn't, and why.) I left my big airbrushed painting out of the project, since it fills the whole wall. You'll see it on the same wall later here.

Here's the harmonious arrangement of our works, some of which are still paintings, some are quilted, but need more writing yet. A few are finished art quilts.

Here's Bonnie's Barbie piece, for the Glamour Dolls theme.

Here's Kathy's Glam Doll.

This is Marsha's Cherry Pie and Garden Gnomes, pinned and with quilting started.

This is my Glamour Dolls piece, about Michelle Obama and Svetlana Medvedev, at the START nuclear treaty. I used it to demo my Crazy Grid way of quilting, but I still need to write a lot more on it with the airpen. After that, I'll do a final heat set with a press cloth, with the painting side up. Before quilting, each heat set is done by ironing on the back of the painting. I'll write on the border, too, and then add a row of hand stitching with perle cotton along the border edge, which makes the piece lay really nice and flat on the wall.

Marsha got her Glamour Dolls piece, about paper dolls and their clothes, all quilted. I don't think she wants to add more writing with airpen.

This is Bonnie's Music theme piece, still in the drawing on fabric stage, before painting it.

The Couples theme Noah's Ark piece that Bonnie made is all finished.

This is Kathy's Couples theme piece, about her husband and her, and their kids, as the flowers.

Kathy's Music theme piece is also her Hoffman Challenge entry, so she's hard at work to meet her deadline for that.

We are Turtle Moon!

And WE are Turtle Moon! (Some smarty cracked a joke, apparently. One of many jokes cracked that week! :) )

I got Kathy to sign my "Journey of Hope" book and my "President Obama" book, both of which we're both in. This is her page in the newer book. Yea!

Here's my big painting for the President's House show, "Philadelphia Freedom." Now I'm working on the ton of airpen writing on it, before quilting. I hope to have it finished in a month or so.

Now, about this Quinceañera Challenge for the 15th anniversary of Quilt Art, our huge art quilters' email listserv that started in 1995: Above is the piece I made in my class at Hudson River Valley Art Workshops in late March. It's a real biopic about Judy Smith founding Quilt Art and describing some of the adventures on the list. BUT it breaks the only rule made up for the challenge: that the piece be exactly 15 x 15" in size! (I made it 18 x 22", the size my students make paintings in, so I'd be in sync with my class.)

Then Kathy Zieben said she wanted to make a Quinceañera piece while here at camp, and we ended up making our very fun collaboration airbrush paintings of cupcakes for the Quinceañera subject. Each of us will do what we want with our own paintings. Kathy's finishing hers for the challenge entry, due today. I wrote all over mine with airpen and quilted it last night, so that it would be a clean and crispy 15" x 15". No more, no less. In our camp airbrush exercise, I drew the cupcake. Kathy added the hands, to which I later added the eyes. Marsha added the black line texture on the cupcake's frosting, and later I colored it all pink with cranberries. Bonnie added the tiara on the left and the words "Niña a Mujer" on the right (girl to woman). I wrote Quinceañera, put in the peace symbols, and all the rest of the writing and all of the quilting. It's a collaboration, but my name is on it, since I did most of it.

I really loved doing that project, and am glad I had a chance to make a second run at doing this challenge. Quilt Art means a lot to me, and yesterday, when I realized that my Turtle Art Camps are also 15 years old this year, I really got into it! 1995 was the year I changed the camp format from a once-a-month salon day to a weeklong biosphere happening! So, Happy Quinceañera to both QA and TAC! Yea!

If you'd like to sign up for a Turtle Art Camp for this year, or just read about the camp logistics, please visit my site's page for it.

I've posted my airbrush painting sequence of "Philadelhpia Freedom" on my Turtle Moon Studios Facebook page. You can see a whole bunch of photos of me making the painting there.

See you later, mien alligators! Love, Lucky

Parteeee!!!

Easter at GEM's and an Easter Book by Eva and me

2010-04-04T19:22:00.004-04:00

We went up to Cleveland and had a fine Easter day at GEM's - our kids Gretchen, Eva, and Mike's place, in Lakewood today. Eva's always up for a big time on a good holiday!

First thing I'm going to show you now is the book that Eva and I made after we ate. I had brought her a bunch of new markers and some paper I'd sewn into a book form. It's regular 8.5 x 11" paper. So please enjoy the story we made up as we went, which Eva named "Kaitlyn's Maple Tree."

So that's our story, and we're sticking to it. And now, here's what happened today at GEM's, besides making our fabulous art book and story!

Here are Mike (in the kitchen), his mom Eileen, Frank, and Kristi, ready to have a yummy meal together.

Afterwards we had delicious lemon cupcakes, made by my girlies!

Mike serenaded us with a new song he's working on.

Time to play Pop That Bunny!!!!

Jimmy and Eva enjoyed the peanut-free facility Easter bunny we got from Merlin Candies in New Orleans!

I got to snuggle my little sweetie pie, too!

Hope you had a great Easter, too!

with love, Susan, Lucky, Panny