TEXT Projected, Jenny Holzer

San Diego, Projection, Jenny Holzer LAST NIGHT: I  watched on Netflix an interesting documentary about conceptual text artist Jenny Holzer “About Jenny Holzer; Protect me from what I want”. She works (ed) with “truisms,” short statements from various perspectives that she may or may not personally agree with, but that are concise restatements of what she thinks is “in the air” in our Western culture. More about Jenny here.

Here use of text, messages and meaning is striking and ephermeral, the material is often projected LIGHT; her space, the architecture or natural environment. I highly reccommend the documentary.

Holzer's work made me open to looking for a "truism" in the text collages I had made recently as part of demos for teaching a Joggles on-line course. It was about finding a message that already existed in the text work that I had done, a kind of unconscious writing come to consciousness.

Here's the raw material: (text collages printed on fabric, erser stamps, paper cloth text collages, etc.)

And here's the process toward Art Quilt Complete:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found: “Unseen messages never settle.” The cut letters are from fabric that was a direct print of a collage (now deconstructed into individual letters). a print of red “S”s from an eraser print and “NEVER SETTLE” from a paper cloth collage.


POETRY!

From my friend Jim LaVilla-Havelin

SLAM THE TOWN!!! National Poetry Month in San Antonio 2012 - March 10-May 13,2012

Wherever you are, on April 1 (and because April 1 is a Sunday, April 2, as well): Use this sheet  to type, hand-write, print – a poem you like (your own, someone else’s, famous, unknown). Make copies and get them out to everyone you know, and folks you don’t know, too.

Under windshield wipers, in work mailboxes, at restaurants, on chairs, on buses, to your email list. SLAM THE TOWN with poems, poems as gifts, poems as a way of letting everyone know how important poetry is in all of our lives.  (If you use a poem that is copyrighted, in a book, please note where the poem can be found, cite the source.)

Hold Everything Dear

as the brick of the afternoon stores the rose heat of the journey

as the rose buds a green room to breathe

and blossoms like the wind

as the thinning birches whisper their silver stories of the wind to the urgent

in the trucks

as the leaves of the hedge store the light

that the moment thought it had lost

as the nest of her wrist beats like the chest of a wren in the morning air

as the chorus of the earth find their eyes in the sky

and unwrap them to each other in the teeming dark

hold everything dear

the calligraphy of birds across the morning

the million hands of the axe, the soft hand of the earth

one step ahead of time

the broken teeth of tribes and their long place

steppe-scattered and together

clay’s small, surviving handle, the near ghost of a jug

carrying itself towards us through the soil

the pledge of offered arms, the single sheet that is our common walking

the map of the palm held

in a knot

but given as a torch

hold everything dear

the paths they make towards us and how far we open towards them

the justice of a grass than unravels palaces but shelters the songs of the searching

the vessel that names the waves, the jug of this life, as it fills with the days

as it sinks to become what it loves

memory that grows into a shape the tree always knew as a seed

the words

the bread

the child who reaches for the truths beyond the door

the yearning to begin again together

animals keen inside the parliament of the world

the people in the room the people in the street the people

hold everything dear

–Gareth Evans

I found the poem on this wonderful art blog by painter Deborah Barlow, http://slowmuse.wordpress.com/. She (and many others) have picked it up from painter, essayist, political activist, writer and Marxist John Berger's book of the same title. (The poem was written for Mr. Berger and before you slink away from the term Marxist, read his comments in Orion magazine here.)

I have not been able to exactly trace Mr. Evans, but he might also be a producer. Anyone who knows if there are more poems of his out there, let me know, as I would like to read them!

More Fun on Mixel

OK admission. I am addicted to Mixel now. It's totally taken up all my FB time (thank you). And the chitchat is minimal. Mostly you just make stuff sort of together. Now the warning. Anything you upload becomes public property. I am mostly just adding a few detail images and nonart snapshots to the process. But I love the cropping and layering soooomuch. And I am printing some of these on fabric, too.

I have figured out how to use the software to  make collages (fun-- crop with your finger or a sylus from any of your own photos or web images or images other Mixel users have contributed) without making images public or getting involved in the public arena of this software. You do have to have an account (no longer only possible with a FB account) but you do not have to post to "the world." After making a Mixel, just go to the upper left corner and take a photo -- saves to your ipad. Then DELETE the image. 

 

 

Working in a Series, Lisa Call

 

If you've been reading me regularly, you'll know my word for the year is COMMIT (even if I haven't written it out loud!) I try each day to commit to what is most important, at the top of the list, and I put making art on that list (and at the top) as often as possible. Now in mid-February, it is remarkable to note how quickly the calendars fill up, how loud the competing voices for attention become, and how the realities of money, time and space make themselves known. 

But, just as I get a bit discouraged a lagnaippe appears (you know lagnaippe, right -- the free, unexpected, pat-on-the-back bonus, extra-cookie-in-the- box kind of surprise). Lisa Call featured four of my current series on her blog post today, and paid me great compliments, too.

Head over and take a look; http: at Lisa's blog -- //blog.lisacall.com/2012/02/the-secret-to-committing-to-a-series/

Artists Inspired by Focus, Movement & Delight

1. 

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

 

 2. A poem shared by one of the Archetype Workshop's* registrants, Valerie, about the elemental forces she is working with for an exhibit entry:

A poem by Rumi: Answers from the Elements: from Coleman Barks book, The Big Red Book.

Writes  Valerie:"I love Rumi's work, and will enjoy finding a way to illustrate it in an 84 " by 14" format - that long vertical is challenging! Here's the stanza with the responses of the elements to the question, Where is God?"

The moon says, I am dust stirred up
when he passed by. The sun: My face is pale yellow
from just now seeing him. Water: I slide on my head and face
like a snake, from a spell he said. Fire: His lightning,
I want to be that restless. Wind: why so light?
I would burn if I had a choice. Earth, quiet 
and thoughtful? Inside me I have a garden
witn an underground spring.

 

3. And some thoughts from John Cage about work, (Did I already share the second...nevermind, it bears repeating).

These were found on the wonderful blog Intense City:

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile. RULE TWO: General duties of a student – pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students. RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher – pull everything out of your students. RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment. RULE FIVE: be self-disciplined – this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way. RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make. RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something.

“Something my father remembered the composer John Cage saying to him during the 1950’s often came to his mind: ”When you start working, everybody is in your studio – the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas – all are there. But as you continue, they start leaving one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you’re lucky, even you leave.” — Musa Meyer, “My Father, Philip Guston” (Image by Jon-Kyle)

 

 * That Archetype workshop (almost full) 

CALLING ALL ARCHETYPES 

MARCH 23-25

(optional Friday night potluck & work-in-progress critique)

 Spend some time thinking and working on using your inner crew for work and support. In this workshop we’ll explore archetypes, inner voices, gut reactions and their influence on your art and art-making with lots of improvisational exercises to loosen up your approach to art. Make a small artist's altar using fabric and mixed media techniques including mono-printing, collage and digital printing on fabric to remind you of a practical and sacred part of your life. (artist altar frame, $10 supply fee) Workshop fee $175, Lodging, free to $30 on site.



Save the date...

Coming to an internet near you:

Text on Textiles online 4 classes (5ths optional and free) at JOGGLES. 

And more specifically here. http://www.joggles.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=75_1235&products_id=23449

Start Date: Thursday March 15, 2012
Class: Text On Textiles
Instructor: Susie Monday
Cost: $45/4 lessons

This class is scheduled to begin on March 15, 2012.

NOTE: This class requires use of an all-in-one printer/copier or desktop copier with the ability to enlarge and reduce printed images. The techniques used make use of copies and prints from such a copier/printer. Optional techniques included also involve use of a computer and digital camera.

Have you ever wanted to incorporate a favorite word, poem or quote into an art quilt, garment, art doll or other textile project -- going beyond simply writing or embroidering the text? Or do letter forms and shapes appeal to your sense of design? This surface design/mixed media class will give you a set of process tools for making text and words an integral part of artfully designed fabrics that you can use in a wide variety of projects.

Starting with design exercises that encourage a unique expression of your creativity and interests, you’ll learn three specific techniques for transfers of text, words and writing to fabric using ink-jet printing, polymer medium and textile paints. 

FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS

 

As I look at my poster "Commit Time, Space, Focus, Money," it occurred to me that I could explore each of these words in a few posts -- and look for what others (a few others) have said about each of those words and concepts, what might prove helpful to me, and helpful to others.

And because I came across a wonderful post from Jane Dunnewold on her blog about focus, I'm going to start there. (It certainly resonates with "commit,"as well!)

We all (fiber, mixed media artists) know the seduction of materials and tools. Unlike the painter, who pretty much gets to choose between oil and acrylic and watercolor, we fiber/mixed media artists, like performance artists among others, see the world as our tool box, the hardware store, the art store, the grocery store, the Dollar Store, all opportunities for tools, colors, embellishments and attachments. Not to mention the myriad of techniques, new stuff and new approaches that arrive each month in the mail, and each morning on the web.

The solution for me: Choose. Stop trying ANYTHING NEW for a set space of time (Despite my intention to try something new each day, it won't be in the studio on a piece of fabric). I am easily seduced by the idea of trying a new resist, a new paint, a new approach and it often pays off with good work. But until that tool/medium/pigment/approach has at least a hundred hours behind it, it's probably not going to be GREAT work. I have enough in my tool box and on my shelves and in my bins right now for hundreds of pieces of art cloth and art quilts. Not to mention the two big bins of thermofax designs, sketches for work, ideas for stamps. SO choose.

Focus is also about coming into the studio with intent and, for me, with a one word or two word idea of what I will achieve in the next 4 hours; maybe it is just cleaning and sorting, or working on marketing, or it's getting the design of a new art quilt onto the design table. But when I don't make a focus, I tend to bounce around doing a bit of this and that and then hearing the siren call of laundry or putting on a slow cooker meal or digging around in the garden. Focus, focus, focus.

Today's Focus is completing a blog, first (done), then getting my calendar complete through March.  Two words: BLOG, CALENDAR. After that, I'll be headed out for four days of teaching Central American Youth (and their Texas hosts) though the CAYA program, with a couple of days spent at the wonderful, restorative and internet free zone of Selah, the Bamberger Ranch and Environmental Education Center.  Pictures coming, soon!

 

 

Onward Artist's Journey

The weekend's Artist Journey/Arthist Journal workshop was, again, a wonderful gathering.  We each made posters 9with many differnet sizes of prints to take away) of a slogan, motto or theme for the upcoming year. (Mine, above). With a spattering of writing exercises, some short meditation sittings, a bunch of great meals, and deep conversation about our acomplishments, challenges, work-in-progress and life in general, we left the workshop renewed and with direction and intention. What more can a teacher/facilitator ask?

 

 

The photos here are just a bit of our work. First, Pat's notice to herself:

JULIA'S MANIFESTO

My cool calendar, above (each made her own version).

Pat's artist trading card size verison of her SATISFACTION poster (as shown during production in a screen shot.) an

PS As a little subnote, anyone who wants more information about why I opposed the current legislation before Congress dealing with internet issues may want to watch this TED.com video explanation of the proposed legislation PIPA/SOPA:
http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea.html

It looks as though the bills are tabled for the time being.

Rat-a-tattoo

Tattly from Made by Hand on Vimeo.

 

Ah, art is in the air. On the arm.  Art is everywhere.

I'm working on some street art/graffiti art ideas for activities for (of all things) and Air Force Summer Art Camp for teens next summer. In my strollings through the ether, I came across Tattly. I want these. They will be a line item in next month's budget for sure. If I regret anything about my age (and pain tolerance) its that I will never get a real tattoo. 

These temporary ones are even better than the real thing -- all I'm waiting for is a way to do this with my OWN designs!

P.S. Dear friends, I do this blog mostly for me -- recording in semi-public form the life in the studio (and the things that inspire that life). And you'll find odd, non-quilty and on-the-fringe sorta artful, artsy posts here too, like this one. But I am wondering, could you recommend me to your friends on FB or with a Tweet or just in a select email to someone you know likes to read art blogs? I have had the same 100 subscribers more or less for three years, and, although marketing my classes and my art is not the main purpose of the blog, it is one reason I use to justify the time spent.

I'd love to increase my readership, so if you can help and pass along the url (http://susiemonday.squarespace.com)

You and your friends can subscribe through FeedBurner or with your own RSS link by using the buttons and fill-in spaces on the sidebar.

Then leave your name in the comments block (with a way to get back to you electronically), I'll enter your name in a drawing for a package of genuinely delightly hand-designed and printed fabric scrapplets for your own creative use in collages, quilts and mixed media -- and I'll throw in a temporary tattoo, too. (Drawing will be on Jan. 31.)

Are You Still Blank?

Your journal I mean? The blank book syndrome I call it. We artists often get these lovely gifts of blank books. They can stay that way without conscious effort. I am the last to guilt trip anyone into using a sketchbook or journal. I am erratic, to tell the honest truth. I am frenetic about sketchbooks at time and absolutly immune to their charms at others.

The key, as I noted in a previous post, is to have a reason. Whether its to make an artful record of one's crative life, or simply to have one spot in which to record, paste, glue, stick and stack all the bits and pieces that float in and out of consciousness (that's usually my approach), a blank book can be your friend.

Here are a few more ways to approach the use of an artist's sketchbook, blank journal or all-too-precious book of emptiness:

1. Glue in every scrap of loose paper you can find in your purse or backpack. Alter the papers (unless their content is crucial) with paint, crayons, colored pencils, cutting and wrinkling. See what you can make with nothing.

2. Save a book to designate for a trip journal. No trip on the horizon. Start planning the dream trip of your artistic creative life. It might even come true. Paste in internet printed documents, research ticket prices, look on AIrBNB bfor the best possible place to stay. Instead of watching another mindless TV show, start planning the dream reality trip of a lifetime. Who knows?

3. Take a magazine picture, cut it in half, glue it down on a blank page, draw and color the missing half your own way.

4. Cut colored paper shapes. Glue. Tear out the page, cut and glue again.

5. Cut and glue a NOTAN a day.

Other ideas? List them in comments. Thanks

PS. Still need help? consider coming to El Cielo this next weekend for Artist Journey, Artist Journal. Or one of the other workshops this spring....

ARTIST JOURNEY/ ARTIST JOURNAL JANUARY 20-22
(optional Fri. night potluck & critique session)

This annual workshop has become a tradition at El Cielo Studio. Spend the weekend in creative activi- ties that help you set the stage for a 2012 filled with productivity, imagination, focus and artistic goals. Using original and time- tested exercises gleaned from sources around the globe, we’ll banish procras- tination, make an annual love letter, work on a goals and artist date calendar for the year, and find ways to remind us of what really matters in our artistic lives. Meanwhile, you’ll work with mixed media and surface design techniques to start your artist’s journal.

FROM HEART TO ART; PERSONAL MARK- MAKING
FEBRUARY 10-12

(optional Friday night potluck & heart-centered gentle yoga session)
In this workshop, you’ll start with common and familiar symbols -- like the heart shape of Valentine’s Day for example -- and through a series of creative genera- tive exercises, you’ll make something new and differ- ent to incorporate into your design, composition and surface design. And then, in honor of the season, make some one-of-a-kind Valentines, too. Tools and tech- niques explored include paper lamination on fabric, hand-cut stamps, and gelatin plate monoprints.

CALLING ALL ARCHETYPES
MARCH 23-25
(optional Friday night potluck & work-in-progress critique)

Spend some time thinking and working on using your inner crew for work and support. In this workshop we’ll explore archetypes, inner voices, gut reactions and their influence on your art and art-making with lots of improvisational exercises to loosen up your approach to art. Make a small artist's altar using fabric and mixed media techniques including mono-printing, collage and digital printing on fabric to remind you of a practical and sacred part of your life. (artist altar frame, $10 supply fee) 

April 13-15, FROM COMPUTER TO CLOTH.
And at Southwest School of Art: FINDING YOUR ARTIST VOICE, Monday afternoons, Feb 6-March 26

 

Three Sure-fire Ways to Use Those Blank Books

IT'S NOT THE CHOICE, IT'S THE COMMITMENT.

Let's start with the easiest:

1. Find your watercolors (or colored pencils, or markers or...)

Open the book, not to the first page, but somewhere else.

Start coloring a "background" wash of color/s that you like. Don't stop until you have 10 pages colored. See where that takes you....

2. Do the Morning Pages commitment (from Julia Cameron's Artist Way) for a minimum of one month. As soon as your eyes are open, open the book. Write (and/or draw) three pages non stop (should take about 20 minutes, so set the alarm earlier if you need to). Write stream of consciousness, whine, complain, moan, smile, be thankful, list to-dos. Do not read the three pages over for at least a month. More about The Artist Way later.

(PS There is even a Yahoo Artist Way circle.)

 

3. Take a stack of old magaines, cards, calendars and other paper stuff to bed with you at night. Cut and/or tear out pictures you like, for any reason. Or use construction paper. Glue the images inside the blank book in interesting arrangements if you wish, or just old time scrapbook style like you might have done at age 10. Write about the pictures, if you want to. Keep this up for at least a month.

More ideas coming tomorrow.

 

Still Mulling, but Mixel Makes Me Giggle

I'm still mulling over my journaling  choices for the new year, and here it is Jan. 2 already.  I think I will sort it out soon, at least by the time I figure out to remember writing 2012 on my checks, datebooks, etc. (Since I don't write that many checks anymore (do you?) it may take me a while for that task to settle into a new date, though.)

Meanwhile, I did find a fun tool that is almost as interesting as cut-paper, old magazine collage making journaling -MIXEL, an iPad app that is a very simple, free-form cropping and layering collage tool with a social media twist --  Which is the downside actually, since any image you use in a collage, even cropped, becomes freely available as an entire image, and usable by any other Mixel user. 

I am not highly protective of my art images since I long ago realized that anyone who wants to steal an idea or image from work of mine could do so pretty easily. My attitude towards art that I make, whether the reaction is scorn (I don't like that work... who does she think she is making fused quilts?) or theft (they must like it, huh?), is similar to that of composer/lyricist Cole Porter -- "there's thousands of more where that one came from."

BUT, you do need to realize that if you sign on for Mixel, and use your photos, or pictures of art, or other computer generated or accessed images, those become "free" content for other users to rearrange, add to or otherwise appropriate.  And it's intentional, being an app that the inventors think of as a kind of round-robin, remixing visual conversation.

 

I'm enjoying it, uploading consciously, and having fun with the visual remixing I see. I hope to get better at the process, but the photos above and below are some of my first tries. So my first couple of days of journaling have been online and totally word-free. I am saving them in a EVERNOTE notebook, called JANUARY JOURNAL, so I guess this is a start!

The Blank Sketchbooks

A recent discussion on the Quiltart list about using and hoarding blank sketchbooks has led me to my new year's commitment- make journaling a part of my daily life again. I have shelves of journals, but I have let the habit drop the last two years, except when I was working on a specific project that took pen and paper.

My January workshop (artist journey/artist journal) is one with a journal habit focus -- and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit my own laxity. So, guess this is a good time to resume. One decision: now that I'm relying often on my iPad for day-to-day notes and resources, do I go to an electronic journal, like a special notebook on Evernote or Circus Notebooks, or even Bento? Or find another software (a task in itself!) Or use paper book and iPad both? Or make a back-to-paper decision, since it's just more of an object that has the sensory pleasures of tactile and linear time inherent and intact. I really love electronic media, and unlike many artists and non-artists alike, find that it has amazing and interesting and full of creative potential. I love taking photos to spark art work; like the instant alterations possible with photo and art apps; just love exploring the mixed media aspects of the screen. I still want to buy a stylus and try working enscreen with that kind of interface.

A commitment to daily private journaling would be different than the (not so regular) blogging I did this year. one doesn't like to whine in public, does one? But electronically, would it feel the same?

And back to the Quiltart discussion -- seems there are a lot of people out there who collect the beautiful books, blank sketchbooks with lovely papers, but rarely use them, at least not beyond a few days. I do have some suggestions, ones that work. And, those I'll be tackling myself to get back in the habit, before my workshop January 21.

First, answer a why: Why do you want to keep a sketchbook or artists's journal? What purpose can you imagine it serving? We are all too busy to do things without reason. Here are a few reasons to consider:
To deepen your work and path as an artist
To document your work process and creative process so that you can be more productive and more conscious of your process
To give you references and resources and inspirations for a particular project or series of work
To organize all those scraps and bits and pieces that you collect in a month, a season, a year
As a way to move past blocks, the inner critic, the unexamined things that keep you from your work as an artist ( for this, I recommend Artist Pages a la The Artists Way by Julia Cameron)
To record your work in process
To record creative action and work so that at the end of the year you know what and where you have been
As a work of art in itself -- artist journaling as an art form can combine or contain any of the other reasons and purposes, but the opposite is not necessarily true. I have never thought of my journals as works of art, and no one would think so to see them, but I do enjoy seeing the work of those who do journal that way.
As art and skill practice. For example, journals with a drawing a day, an art quilt journal with a small quilt each week, a sketch diary carried and used daily to improve drawing skills, etc.

So what's your purpose?

And are you committed to that purpose?

Here's what Seth Godin had to say about that today:
"
The reason productivity improvements don't work (as well as they could)

GTD, 18 minute plans, organized folders... none of them work as well as you'd like.

The reason is simple: you don't want to get more done.

You're afraid. Getting more done would mean exposing yourself to considerable risk, to crossing bridges, to putting things into the world. Which means failure.

The leap the lizard brain takes when confronting the opportunity is a simple formula: GTD=Failure.

Until you quiet the resistance and commit to actually shipping things that matter, all the productivity tips in the world aren't going to make a real difference. And, it turns out, once you do make the commitment, the productivity tips aren't that needed."

You don't need a new plan for next year. You need a commitment.

Tomorrow (or next day) i'll Iist some fun ways to engage in journaling, no matter your purpose,-- and, if you're in the area, there is still room in the workshop next month at El Cielo Studios.

Artist Journey/Artist Journal

What is it we want in our creative lives? Why bother with art? Working as an artist, whether as a full-time vocation, a parttime avocation or an occassional when-I-can-fit-it-in whimsy takes some measure of commitment. It's far easier in this era of consumerism, digital distraction and financial pressure to sit on the sofa or under the covers with one or more devices pouring words, images, sounds, stories and distraction into our brains. Easier, that is, than using our hands and minds to make words, images, stories and sounds of our own. I don't make judgements about the tools used or the media -- paper and pen, digital camera and keyboard, cloth and dye, paint and canvas, tabletop and kitchen stove -- any will do. 

But I do think we all need to keep our creative selves alive and thriving. That some part of us withers and dies without exercise. And that takes a plan. That's why its become a tradition around El Cielo Studio to offer a workshop each January to allow me (and those who come for the facilitated experience) time to reflect, plan and set goals. Make calendars. Imagine what's needed to make it easier to get to the studio. 

I confess, my January calendar-making reminder forms don't often make it through the entire year (but I know one workshop participant who has been a faithful adherent to the format she set last year), but I do know that even a few months of on-target, on-track creative work gets me off to the start I need for the year. GIves me momentum and reminds me to keep at it. Whatever it is.

In preparation for the January 20-21 workshop (see the last post for the full calendar), I thought I'd share one of the exercises that has proven helpful and insightful for the process.

Where I am right now - Make a circular pie chart of your life as you are living it now:

1. Start with a circle on a large piece of paper.

2. Divide the circle into equal wedges for WORK, PLAY, ADVENTURE, CREATIVITY, BODY, MIND SPIRIT. (OR any other set of categories you prefer. (Or make two different circles if that makes more sense to you)

3. Draw, write, collage fast images from magazines, add colors, lines, patterns to each wedge. 

4. Put a dot, star or sticker in each wedge describing how satisfied or how much time and attention you spend in that sector of your life -- the closer to the center, the less satisfied or less time/attention; the closer to the circle edge, the more satisfied, the more time and attention you spend. You might even want to do these as two different dots or stars, if time and attention is not aligned with satisfaction (oftenr the case). Then connect your dots with a bold line. What shape are your dot-driven circles? How wobbly is your life? 

5. On a separate paper, or on the areas of the paper outside the circle, list 5 things you could do in the  coming year to even out your wobbly circles. 

I don't think our lives are always in balance in the short term. I don't even think they should be -- sometimes work or family or adventure takes over. But in the long term, we want satisfaction in each of these areas. And it takes work -- mostly attention --  to keep the wheel round, the circle spinning.

 


 

Artist Retreats at El Cielo Studio

 

Coming to a workshop near me!

Finally I have determined my winter and spring workshops and looking forward to resuming these this January. I took a break during the fall -- partially for family duties, partially because I had some exciting contract work to do. But I'm looking forward to seeing a group of friends and artists here monthly and hope you'll be among them. If you want a downloadable copy of the flyer, click on the file on the sidebar (it will be up by the end of day!)

Here are the workshops in short:

"Nurture your creativity as you come away from a weekend with renewed energy, new  materials and techniques in surface design applicable to fiber, ceramics, jewelry, painting and mixed media work. Susie Monday leads artists’ retreats and workshops throughout the year at her studio near Pipe Creek, Texas, about an hour from downtown San Antonio. El Cielo Studio workshops are designed with the needs of the participants in mind;  free time is scheduled throughout the weekend for reading, reflection and personal work in the studio. You are welcome to bring projects in process for Susie’s critique and for peer feedback in an environment of trust and respect. You’ll share meals, poetry and stories, music and advice for living an artist’s life. Enjoy the 25-mile vistas from the deck and strolls down the country roads. The fee for each workshop retreat is $175 for a 2-day event with discounts for early enrollment. Comfortable accommodations are available from $15 -  $30 per workshop. Most workshops offer a Friday night potluck option. Limited enrollment. Most supplies included. 

To register, call 210-643-2128 or email susiemonday@gmail.com

Susie has taught creative process and art techniques to adults and children for more than 30 years. Her art is in numerous private and public collections around the world.

ARTIST JOURNEY/ARTIST JOURNAL

JANUARY 20-22

(optional Fri. night potluck & critique session)

This annual workshop has become a tradition at El Cielo Studio. Spend the weekend in creative activities that help you set the stage for a 2010 filled with productivity, imagination, focus and artistic goals. Using original and time-tested exercises gleaned from sources around the globe, we’ll banish procrastination, make an annual love letter, work on a goals and artist date calendar for the year, and find ways to remind us of what really matters in our artistic lives. Meanwhile, you’ll work with mixed media and surface design techniques to start your artist’s journal.

FROM HEART TO ART; PERSONAL MARK-MAKING 

FEBRUARY 10-12

(optional Friday night potluck & heart-centered gentle yoga session)

In this workshop, you’ll start with common and familiar symbols -- like the heart shape of Valentine’s Day for example --  and through a series of creative generative exercises, you’ll make something new and different to incorporate into your design, composition and surface design. And then, in honor of the season, make some one-of-a-kind Valentines, too. Tools and techniques explored include paper lamination on fabric, hand-cut stamps, and gelatin plate monoprints.

 

TEXT ON  TEXTILES

ONLINE course at JOGGLES.com

MARCH 15- APRIL 12 includes 4 fully-illustrated weekly lessons, plus a bonus week, $45

Have you ever wanted to incorporate a favorite word, poem or quote into an art quilt, garment, art doll or other textile project -- going beyond simply writing or embroidering the text? This surface design/mixed media class will give you a set of process tools for making text and words an integral part of artfully designed fabrics that you can use in a wide variety of projects. Starting with design exercises, you’ll learn three specific techniques for transfers of text, words and writing to fabric using ink-jet printing, polymer medium and textile paints. 

 

CALLING ALL ARCHETYPES 

MARCH 23-25

(optional Friday night potluck & work-in-progress critique)

 Spend some time thinking and working on using your inner crew for work and support. In this workshop we’ll explore archetypes, inner voices, gut reactions and their influence on your art and art-making with lots of improvisational exercises to loosen up your approach to art. Make a small artist's altar using fabric and mixed media techniques including mono-printing, collage and digital printing on fabric to remind you of a practical and sacred part of your life. (artist altar frame, $10 supply fee)

 

MORE WORKSHOPS: 

April 13-15, FROM COMPUTER TO CLOTH.

And at Southwest School of Art: FINDING YOUR ARTIST VOICE,  Monday afternoons, Feb 6-March 26 

 

WHAT PARTICIPANTS SAY ABOUT SUSIE’S CLASSES & WORKSHOPS:

“ The exercises we did this weekend were freeing on the one hand, but will also help me focus.”

“This workshop was a fabulous, uplifting, nurturing environment to create in. The journaling was particularly helpful, I would definitely recommend it to a friend.”

“This weekend was totally awesome! I am humbled by Susie’s talents, her teaching abilities and her hospitality. I will come back as often as possible.”

www.susiemonday.com

210-643-2128

3532 Timbercreek Road

Pipe Creek, TX 78063

Read Susie’s blog at http://susiemonday.squarespace.com