It's going to be a fabulous year 2011

Wow! Thanks to everyone who signed up for my workshops at Art & Soul Hampton 2011 and An Artful Journey 2011. There are only 4 spaces left in my Artful Journey class! And the Hampton workshops made a good showing for the first day of sign ups too. It's good feedback to see what grabs people right away. It's the paste paper and surface design on paper that folks go for first. It's what grabs me too with it's endless possibilities.

I remember the first time I made paste paper. It was at California College of Arts and Crafts in maybe 1990 at a week long workshop with Nance O'Banion assisted by Chris Rolick. Nance asked me what I wanted help with and I said, just don't let me keep doing the same thing over and over. So there I am blissed out working with metallic colors on black paper and doing the same thing over and over until she caught me and made me do something else. (I still have some of them, I made that much.) Nance is also the one who showed me "blowouts", the patterned handmade paper I make. Of course that week was what turned out to be an introduction to many of the techniques that I have gone on to explore and develop for the past couple of decades.

Every so often I wind up having a cup of tea in Berkeley at Nance's to see what she is up to. It's always something wonderful. One time my friend Bonnie and I contracted with Nance to have a private workshop in her home studio for several days. We work very differently, Bonnie and I. Where anything goes with me, Bonnie is precise and neat and has a very, very, very, refined aesthetic. So there we were, each doing our thing and not collaborating at all. I am envious of these cool gold papers Bonnie is making so they show me how to do it but it's painstaking and I don't have the patience so I won't play. Besides, I probably knew eventually I would get Bonnie to give me some. (She did.) In those days we had a thing where we would make paper and at the end of the day give some of our favorites to the other. So Nance is gently guiding, assisting, midwifing us both and I am thinking how different our work and in fact how different Bonnie and I are.

On the last day Nance had us display our work as if it were a show in a gallery. It was amazing. Our work was all of a piece. It all went together and it was beautiful. We were having a conversation through our art.

That is happiness and love.

You just don't know, do you, what's going to happen. You take a workshop and you may just change your life.

An Artful Journey February 2011

It's registration time for An Artful Journey 2011. If you are thinking of an in-depth workshop in a fabulous setting this might be the venue for you. Of course I am curious to see if my offerings are as tempting to others as they are to me. Some of the other workshops would interest me if I were not working. Check out the website, it might be just the thing to brighten your winter next year. http://www.anartfuljourney.com/retreats/feb2011/index.html

There is a lot going on in my life, it feels as layered and colorful as the paste paper I make.

But out of chaos some things come together, kind of like a book. So I have been getting the teaching jobs lined up for next year, designing new workshops, and working on my house. I will be moving in at the end of the month. YAY for team Albie, who are working like crazy people.

Oh, and the guest book I complained about in the previous blog entry that I made for my niece's wedding was a hit, as was the event itself. We had so much fun for three glorious days. The families really played together and got to know each other. My niece, her parents and her friends did an amazing job creating the most romantic wedding I have ever attended. Life is full, rich and fun. Oh, and it's work and that is fun too.