Artful Friday

Created August, 2011

Loving this artful Friday!  I am completely inspired and feeling the creative mojo ever since I returned from the CREATE retreat.  I thoroughly enjoyed my time away from home and immersing myself in art for five straight days!!  I learned many many many new techniques and was able to experiment with brand new mediums I’ve never tried before.  I was fortunate to meet all kinds of artists and appreciate each genre of their creations.  I am fascinated by seeing how people create and mingle and learn.  Maybe I should’ve been a psychologist….

Above is a piece I did in my very first class of the retreat–This Is Your Life collage–I started with a blank white canvas and a big ziploc bag full of bits and bobs and ephemera and random photos.  I certainly want to do another collage piece like this again now that I know how easy and fun it is.  No need to be intimidated by that expanse of blank canvas any longer.  My teacher was Kim Geiser and she is a very talented free spirit!  I love her and hope I get the chance to take more classes and hang out with her in the future.  Her enthusiasm was completely contagious!

I learned a lot more about water color backgrounds and using gesso for texture.  I also had my second experience with embossed metal and my first experience sewing through metal with a sewing machine!  I painted on fabric and used fusible webbing.  I worked with encaustic wax and made art!  I learned the art of sealing assemblages in resin.  I learned the art of creating assemblages!  I fell even more in love with artist and teacher Julie Fei-Fan Balzer!  I learned so many cool things from her about distress ink it kept me up at night thinking about it!  I realized I am much better at using distress ink to make water color looking backgrounds than I am at doing water color!

My suitcase was ninety percent full of art supplies and the rest was toiletries and minimal clothing.  I did make sure I had clean underwear every day but I was by no means a fashion icon.  It’s really hard to choose what supplies to take with you to a five-day retreat and encompassing seven classes during that time.  I thought I would use up a good portion of my big bag of ephemera but NO!  I came home with at least double what I took with me to the retreat.  It was wonderful to be surrounded with people who completely get my addiction to art supplies and techniques and crazy ideas!  Who also wonder “what if I mixed this with that” or “why not use this to make an impression”???  People who don’t even bat an eye at having 72 paintbrushes and 80 markers in each of three types and 50 ink pads, etc., AND who schlepped it all across the country in a suitcase!  Those are MY PEOPLE!!!

I definitely want to attend more workshops and retreats and creative sessions.  It was such good food for the soul!

More photos to come!

Thanks for looking.  Please leave comments–I love me some comments!