2013: More catching up!

In April 2013 I took a workshop with the amazing Sue Benner .  The workshop was all about abstraction and we were asked to bring some examples of artwork from another artist we admired.  Sue showed us images of artwork done by past artists who had used artworks they admired as inspiration for further abstraction studies.  The artist I chose for my inspiration was Lynne Perrella.  This was my first workshop with the Front Range Contemporary Quilters and I was hugely intimidated by my fellow students and Sue herself.  In spite of that I had a wonderful time and learned more than I could have hoped to in a few short days.  At the end of the workshop I had two very incomplete pieces of art, but seeing as I would be jetting off to Connecticut three weeks later I was not able to continue working on these pieces when I got home. The workshop in CT with Lynne Perrella and Michelle Ward was one of the best things I have ever done and also left me with unfinished artwork.  I spent the summer working on those pieces and then along came the workshop with Katie Pasquini Masopust and more incomplete art.  Well, I'm happy to say that I have now finished all the artwork I started in these various workshops.  At the end of the Sue Benner workshop my first piece looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

The photo does not do it justice as you cannot really see the lovely sheen of the silks and the sparkly organzas.  My best friend made the little polymer clay faces for me and I just love them!  Wow, putting these photos together is an interesting instruction in photography!  Hmmm.......  

The second piece that I began at that workshop looked like this when I got home:

Sorry for the blurry and off color photo.  Knowing it was nowhere near finished, I did not put much effort into taking a good shot.  I was pretty excited by this piece as it was quite a departure from my usual stuff and I liked where it was going.  After practicing on other things to explore monoprinting and quilting options, I ended up with this:

One of the most important things I learned from the three workshops was that I tend to be much too literal.  I am now exploring ways to take things further and to expand on my original concepts.  Invaluable!  Each of the pieces I began in a workshop last year has led to other pieces of art and more ideas.  I learned new techniques and made friends and I can't wait to do it again in 2014.

Sue Benner Workshop

Well hey there, I'm back!  My life got rather busy for a while but I'm here now to explain some of what was going on.  First of all, I got promoted to a new position at work.  Yea me!  However, I still have to do my old job at the same time until they get someone hired to replace me.  So I'm a bit overwhelmed at work.  I am lucky, in that I don't have to bring my work home with me, but at the end of a workday or a workweek, I'm pretty pooped.

On top of that I have been taking art workshops.  I'm here to tell you that it is totally worth spending the money!  The first workshop I took was in April, with the fabulous art quilter

Sue Benner.  She has been my art quilting hero for a long time and I was so thrilled to get a chance to take a class with her.  The class was put on by the Front Range Contemporary Quilters, of which I am a member.  This workshop was about abstract art.  Sue was incredibly knowledgeable about fine art in general and showed us a lot of great stuff about the development of abstract art.  We focused on the ways in which artists of the past and present have used other artists work as inspiration for their own art.  It was fascinating to see how the other workshop participants approached this idea.  I soon realized that I was taking a much to literal approach to using an image of something as inspiration for an abstract piece of my own.  The results of our first exercise stunk so bad that I won't even show it.  I learned so much from looking at other peoples work.  In the end I started making progress on the piece above but soon realized that I wanted to work with sheers and that Wonder Under fusible just wasn't going to give me the results I was looking for with sheer fabrics.  I decided to put this aside to work on at home, where I have some Misty Fuse.  Here is a detail shot of the part I worked on for a while:

Since I didn't want to continue with the piece above right then and there I started another one (below).  I'm really happy with where this is going.  I plan to make two or three along the same lines so I can try out some different techniques on it, including monoprinting.  I may even print this to both paper and fabric so I can play with it some more.

The rectangles with the black lines are actually paint covered paper towel with black fabric lines fused to it.  I so love to combine paper and fabric!  I took a monumental amount of stuff to this workshop.  Getting ready for it took me two weeks!  When I got home I put away a few things but mostly I just piled the stuff up in a corner and got on with preparing for the next workshop.  I'll talk about that in a separate blog post.

This was my first workshop with the Front Range Contemporary Quilters group.  One of the things I enjoyed most was meeting the other participants.  Everyone was so friendly and helpful.  Some of these women are very experienced and accomplished artists.  We had lovely conversations while working and while sitting together for meals.  A couple of other women on my side of the room were also relatively new to the group and we all got along really well.  We decided to try forming a critique group that will meet once a month.  I've been longing for connection to other people working in textiles and mixed media so I am so happy to have met these people.  Now I feel like I am part of the group and going to monthly FRCQ meetings will be twice as fun.

In parting I have to apologize for the crappy photos.  Since these are "before" photos I didn't worry about setting up optimal photo conditions.  If I wait to have perfect pictures I will never get another blog post done!  When I finish these projects I will work a little harder at photographing them.  LOL!