May Already

I can't seen to get on a regular schedule of posting on this blog. I went to California in mid-April and was gone for a week.  I took a class with my art pals Brian Kasstle and Thomas LaBadia-   The class was taught by an amazing woman- Orly Avineri. https://oneartistjournal.com/.  The class was three days: The Visual Journal as Sanctuary .  I have yet to photograph the work from that- we altered old passports- the one I found for the class I found on Ebay- a man's passport from Greece 1951.  We made these into our own personal stories.  Orly teaches all over the world- this was one of the few  classes she taught in her home.  These first photos are from that.

Thomas and Brian and I spent the rest of the week together- we went to the Broad Art Museum in LA and that was amazing.  We also had time to work in our journals together.  The following pictures are of journal spreads I created while there and the last one is a spread I did after I got back as a tribute to the wonderful time.

A new Book Collaboration

I am starting an accordion book collaboration with Julia Dean.
She is a wonderful artist living in Australia. I think these book collaborations are like a collaborative journal where we both work in the books. I have done many of these and find it to be challenging and exciting. For those new to this idea- I make 2 books- one will be for her to start and I start one- I mail it to her she finishes mine and starts hers then mails my finished one back to me along with her start- I finish it and mail it back to her so we each get a completed book with both of us having worked on them. My start on the inside is my response to all the hate and hateful legislation being passed in this country. The other side is about us each carrying our own idea of what home means inside us. I will show each side flat and standing up as it can.

Fear, Anger and Sadness

The fear is from the tone in this country- seeing how many actually are supporting the evil that spews from the devil spawn known as Trump. The anger is: The North Carolina legislature has called a special session for Wednesday to overturn Charlotte's recently passed nondiscrimination ordinance that provides much-needed protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) residents.  The hate that is growing in this country is very scary.  The sadness is my husband and I just returned from being with his sister to say goodbye.  She died on Sunday.  It's hard to process and deal with all these strong emotions all at the same time.

I did this journal spread over a year ago but it still  expresses my feelings.

These two spreads were done in the last week.

Now for the other class

The other online class I took ( or I should say am takings as I am not done) was Katie Kendrick's Grit and Grace The Heart of Co-Creative Painting.  This class was an amazing class-So much content and was a real stretch for me in a very good way.  The class was 4 weeks and each week started with a mark making exercise to warm up- the there were journaling exercises- she called them journal excavations.  Good name- as they were sometimes deep with meaning and emotion.  Then the painting exercises for the week. I will share some of my work for this class.

This was a mark making pieces for one week

This was a face painting exercises- she had us use different

substrates.  This was on a piece of cardboard.

These are painting of faces-a real big stretch for me but fun.

The rest of the photos are of journal spreads I did for the class.

Snowed under

Well we have received snow over the month since I posted last but this also refers to me almost snowed under from taking 3 online art classes.  I am really being stretched  in different ways.  The first few spreads are from the Pathways and Wanderings class- this is really a book of the seasons.  I still have yet to do the two spreads for fall.

This is my second winter spread- there is a mini book attached on the lower right with quotes.

Some of the exercises include doing table top arranged collages meant to just be photographed.

This is my first  Spring spread. The bird is a block print I carved.

This is my second Spring spread.  I scanned a drawing of mine and cut it apart to use in this spread. The leaves are printed from a leaf shape block I carved and printed on green paper.  And in the lower left is another mini-book I attached.

This is my first Summer spread.  It's about memories of fishing with my father and grandmother when I was very young.  The background is  done with CitriSolv on a National Geographic spread.  The fish I cut from some wrapping paper.  I included the Mer-Man as I use to daydream about being one when I was very young.

This is the second Summer spread.  I use to chase and catch butterflies to mount- freaks me out now that I did that- I was in elementary school.

Class Work

I am enjoying my online classes- this will keep me on my toes- lots of assignments and they are good ones.  Taking classes not only has me doing things I wouldn't do on my own.  The Grit and Grace class with Katie Kendrick started Monday.  http://joyouslybecoming.typepad.com/This one is really amazing and I love the approach.  The first photo is the first assignment mark making with charcoal and graphite and gesso.  This is 17" x 23".  That's big for me.

 The next is a journal spread for the same class- I am going to journal in a book- many do this but I never have- paint and collage right over the pages. So here's the book and the spread.

 The last photograph here is the first spread in the journal I made for the Pathways and Wanderings class.  The assignment was about winter- and with the wind chill at 35 below this morning- we know all about winter here.

New Year New Classes

Well the holidays have come and gone- that time of year isn't the best for me.  But starting  a new year is always something exciting to me.  Well over achiever Terry is taking 3 online classes- one will last the whole year and the other two are for the month of January.  One class is Pathways and Wanderings.  This is a new online class being taught by Roxanne Evans Stout.  http://rivergardenstudio.typepad.com/   It's an artist book class and more- we started by binding our books- it's a book model that I had not done before.  It's very easy and is  not an exact kind of binding- the pages are not all the same size and there are several different kinds of papers in my book.  I finished the cover for it today- the rest of the class will be working in these pages.