Notes from An Artful Journey

What a rich and full time it was at An Artful Journey again this year. It was an enthusiastic group in my workshop and they were focused, productive and talented. At the end of the first day I looked at the paste paper that was spread out drying and was taken by the quality of the design and color that was displayed. Oh yes, and by the quantity of it too. There were some people here who knew what they liked and wanted and how to get it!! And for others, it took some time to work the medium and make it theirs.

There were lots of choices with several mediums to explore and book forms to create so everyone got to sample what interested them and concentrate on what really did it for them. Here are some examples of playing with the dyes.

As the hours passed and the days moved on everyone’s work table reflected their style. Several of my tribe showed up; those who work in chaos. And then there were the folks who kept order in spite of the volume of papers they were accumulating. How do they do that?

With a little one-on-one time with me even the neatest, most organized person in the room can be induced to let go, let it fly, work fast, get messy, not understand, and then bring it all into focus and love it. Well, they might not like the part when they do not understand. But they get over that.

One of the things I loved about the classroom we had this time was the big white erasable board that I used for lists, diagrams and instructions.

Here’s a sheet of paste paper with the river rock pattern from the stencil from http://stencilgirlproducts.blogspot.com/

A whole lot of beautiful books were made.

An Artful Journey is such a wonderful experience in part because it is a relatively small event. There were 5 teachers instructing in various mediums. The conference center is surrounded by nature and Cindy O’Leary really takes very good care of us.

The next An Artful Journey takes place February 23^rd-27^th with DJ Pettitt, Katie Kendrick, Tory Brokenshire, Flora Bowley and Albie Smith offering 3 day workshops. I am limiting my class to 12 people so if you are interested sign up as soon as registration opens sometime in July. Check out Cindy’s blog for more photos of this year’s event http://artfuljourneyretreat.blogspot.com/

and Kelly Warren has some great info and photos too. http://happyshackdesigns.blogspot.com/

I want to thank Mikki Lesowitz and Carmen Tangherlini for sending me the great photos you see in this blog entry.

Tools and Materials

I am always on the lookout for new sources for tools and materials that are useful in my craft. Okay, I am always on the hunt for new stuff! At An Artful Journey some of the students had stencils I haven’t seen before.

They are from

http://stencilgirlproducts.blogspot.com/p/9x12-stencils.html

and come in two sizes. I especially liked the one of the gears and the river rocks.

When I was in the Bay Area last week after teaching at the retreat in Los Gatos, my friend Bonnie and I went shopping. Dangerous. Found more stencils we had to have. The ones by Delta called Stencil Magic Accents are thin and delicate but there are some beautiful patterns.

Lee Valley is being removed from my source list for Japanese screw punches. The ones they sell are pretty worthless. One of my students received hers with a rusty bit and a very stiff action which did not improve when we inserted a good bit. I had ordered 6 of them for myself and an art group and wound up sending them back to the company. The bits were not sharp and the up and down action of the punch was not smooth. This was one of those times when you get what you pay for. Junk.

The other news I have is good. Lois Barber sent me something I haven’t been able to locate in years. I mentioned in a workshop in Portland that I love my lightweight ruler that has a right angle and would like more but hadn’t seen one in many years of looking in various kinds of stores. She found them at Utrecht. They are called an L-Square and are made of aluminum. The one she sent me is 12” x 6”. Thank you, Lois, thank you. They come in two sizes but this is the one I use all the time.

Here is the link:

http://www.utrechtart.com/dsp_view_product.cfm?item=37443

If you have a favorite tool or source let me know so I can pass it on.

Bound Hearts

I've been playing with the book form I call

Bound Art which is a soft covered book sewn on tapes. A group of us carved a heart themed stamp and then shared them while we made paste paper. I haven't sewn that one together but the photos I am posting here are of the sample I used to inspire the other artists to do this project.

Using hand carved stamps brings a kind of earthiness to the work. At least the ones I carve do! They don't have to be perfect. There are several ways to get the image on the carving material, some allow more detail than others. Mostly my method is just to draw with a ballpoint pen on the rubber and carve away. Changes or design modifications (mostly to try to hide mistakes) are part of the fun.

On another note, there is a drawing for free registration for Art Is You. If you have registered already or register before midnight January 31st you will automatically be entered. http://www.art-is-you.com/mysitecaddy/site3/generalinformation-westcoast.htm

I hope I see some of you there.

Stella the gorgeous calico cat who shares my home, or is it who shares her home, with me is longing for springtime. It hasn't been a very cold winter here, but it has been dreary and grey. I am lucky because in a couple of weeks I head on down to Los Gatos, California to teach at An Artful Journey. I bet it will be sunny there. So here is Stella contenting herself by mousing around inside while she waits for the sunshine and warm weather to come forth to lure her outside.

Art is...You (and what that means to me)

Greetings and Happy New Year to you and yours!

Perhaps some of you have heard of the art retreat called Art is...You which is coming this fall to the west coast. To Petaluma, California to be exact. The website is live and the schedule is filled with instructors you know, including me, and some new ones so check it out.

http://www.art-is-you.com/mysitecaddy/site3/generalinformation-westcoast.htm

I am really excited to work with this new event. We instructors have been treated with the utmost respect and kindness by the producers Sallianne and Ellen.
I love the three workshops I'll be teaching which include two new ones and the third is a paste paper workshop with some twists added to keep you all on your toes reaching for the next good thing! The first new project is an evening and full day called
Beauty and the Book.

Then there is a one day class called Quickies.

Totally Amazing Decorative Papers is a one day workshop also.

I expect all my classes to be lots of fun with colorful wonders growing out of your time and hands. My hope is that you will join me and the other instructors to help welcome Art is...You to the west coast.
This will be the only major retreat for me after An Artful Journey in February 2011.http://www.anartfuljourney.com/ In June I will be teaching 3 days at The Artist's Nook in Loveland, Colorado. http://www.theartistsnook.net/

Good Things

Before I get to the new toys, make that tools, I have acquired recently I want to invite you to check out all the new paste paper listed on my Etsy site. When you read on you will see why I have been so prolific. It’s the tools!!
http://albiesmith.etsy.com
It amazes me how long I let myself do things the hard way. All these years I have been working with paper and drying it on every horizontal surface I could find, mostly the floor. All that bending and making sure the paint didn’t get where it shouldn’t. Finally I broke down and bought a paper drying rack. I don’t have space for the big one I wanted so my criteria was that I had to be able to move it around and the shelves had to be flat, not at a slant so if there was a lot of soupy paste on the paper it wouldn’t drip. I decided on a portable table rack thinking I could keep it in the garage and carry it into the studio when I needed it. But it’s a bit heavy for me and awkward to carry so I wound up buying a cute red utility cart from Harbor Freight for it to live on. (The cart is a whole other story.)

Anyway, the whole set-up stays in the studio and it has to because I use it all the time now. The shelves are about an inch apart so getting a wet piece of paper on the shelf is tricky. They are hinged so they lift which makes it easier, but there you are with a wet, limp piece of paper which might take two hands to maneuver. So how to lift the shelf too.

My smart friend, Barbara, came up with hooking a bungee cord on to hold the shelves up so that two hands are enough.



I bought my rack from http://www.dickblick.com/products/double-sided-tabletop-rack/
It was about $175 with the shipping and it is worth every dollar.

The other tool I bought this year is a tear bar. They call it a draftsman straight edge at Talasonline.com (this is a great place to get gorgeous book cloth too) http://apps.webcreate.com/ecom/catalog/product_specific.cfm?ClientID=15&ProductID=27890 I think www.danielsmith.com has them too.

I think mine is the 36” one. Don’t even ask me why I waited so long to get this wonderful piece of equipment. The beveled edge makes such a nice torn edge on my paper when I tear it down for the pages of a handmade book. I have been using a carpenter’s square for years and it is adequate. But the tear bar is the right tool for the job.
Okay, this last one isn’t a tool, it is paper and a recent addition to stuff I have to have. Mostly I sourced this so that there is a paper that is readily available to my students who want to make paste paper at home. It isn’t as heavy as what I usually use but it works fine. It doesn’t have as much wet strength as the Superfine #100 I use but if you don’t work it to the point that it weakens and tears I think you will be happy with it. And it is inexpensive. It is Utrecht drawing paper, #70, 12” x 18” and comes in a pack of 100 sheets for $10.99.
http://www.utrechtart.com/dsp_view_product.cfm?item=70694
Winter is on the way and it is a great time to get into your workroom and dive into all those art supplies you had to have but never used. Invite a friend over and share the bounty. Enjoy the freedom and play.

First Studio Workshop!

What a glorious morning. It’s raining a bit and the sky is grey but it is warm and color filled inside my snug little house. Stella is stretched out on the bed and I am working at my portable desk which is a bed tray from Pier One which I use as a laptop table. The reason for my enthusiasm this morning is that this weekend I taught my first three day workshop in my home and everyone loved it, including me. Three gals came from different parts of California and stayed in B & B’s in the area and spent their days in my studio totally immersed in whatever they wanted to do. Ooohh, now I wish I had taken some pictures at lunch time. We had GREAT food for lunch and snacks, most of it made especially for us by Nora who owns my favorite restaurant which is a few miles down the road.

Anyway, back to the workshop. Everyone had slightly different goals they wanted to focus on but one thing was in common and that was they all wanted to make lots of paste paper. So we started mixing the paste and the colors. The challenge I presented was that they tweak each color and not use it straight out of the tube. This led to some fabulous colors. Unfortunately we made so many choices and didn’t keep track of what we mixed with what so some colors were impossible to duplicate. No one but me seemed to be bothered by this. There was a fabulous grey, brown, with a purple tone that I made that everyone loved. When I tried to replicate it we wound up with about 5 different grey black mixes that were nowhere near as interesting. I will be making a lot of paste paper with shades of black in the next few days.


All three women are people I have worked with before and they wanted to do more surface design techniques and book binding. So we chose two books to start with; the one I call Sculpture or Book and the Episodic Journal.
What I enjoyed about working with only three people is that we could spend time concentrating on whatever particular thing they wanted to learn. The feeling of satisfaction is huge for me as an instructor when I see the progression in someone’s work. When they feel their time and resources were well spent and when they love their creations, well, it’s the best.
For years I have wanted to work with small groups and provide the kind of experience I have in my studio where there are lots of choices, plenty of time, and just about every art supply and color of paint you could possibly want at your fingertips.
My plan is to have several of these workshops throughout the coming year. In warm weather there will be handmade paper workshops out on the deck!

So let me know if you’re interested in coming to Jacksonville and playing in the color with me. It just takes three people to make a workshop. albiepapersmith@gmail.com

I will be posting my 2011 teaching schedule for the events I travel to soon. There will be some new venues along with some tried and true.

THE SKETCHBOOK PROJECT 2011

The first person to alert me to The Sketchbook Project was Diane Oswald, who I met in my workshops in Hampton, Virginia both years I taught there. Her blog entry on the work she did in my classes is worth checking out for sure.

http://mylittlecraftyworld.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-06-17T07:00:00-04:00&max-results=10

So anyway, I looked at the Sketchbook Project on line and was very interested. But at the time was so immersed in the remodeling project here at the house I couldn’t imagine taking on anything else. Well, The Sketchbook Project 2011 http://arthousecoop.com/ kept being suggested to me and I guess it was like the hundred monkey thing and I found myself emailing people and suggesting they do it and suddenly I had to also. Last time I checked there were over 16,000 people participating. So I signed up and even signed up a friend for her birthday present. My hidden agenda is that when the sketchbooks go on tour and appear in San Francisco my friends and I will have the perfect reason to spend some together there.

I have moved into the house. And on Friday we initiated the studio space doing paste paper. It was a magical day for me. Ignoring the many boxes that need unpacking, the piles of stuff I have accumulated that I have no space for in this little house I dove into the color and played for hours. It was one of those days that just flowed. No struggle.

There is still work to do on the house, especially on the exterior but it is quite livable. And Stella the incredible cat and I love it here. We have lots of trees and space outside, a beautiful new deck and much less traffic in this neck of the woods. At some point I will post some photos. Promise. But now I must concentrate on getting ready for teaching and vending at Art & Soul in Portland in October.