My Melange

Monday, November 2, 2009

Peppers

The dish of peppers

Kaleidoscope of color

A bright souvenier

Of a night at the forum

With my kind, lovely daughter

ART IS YOU

Art is you beckons
Artists gather to create
Beginning the day
Journaling in the garden
An adventure awaits all

Art Is You, the East Coast Art Retreat, was a wonderful adventure which started with anticipation in March when I selected my workshops and culminated with a week end in October filled with friendship, inspiration, and learning. My daughters joined me for parts of the week end making the experience even more special. We started by attending a showing of the film,
"Who Does She Think She Is?"on Friday evening followed by shopping with the vendors. The days conisted of journaling in the morning, an all day workshop, including a delicious lunch, and an evening workshop. The morning journaling workshops were conducted by Loretta Marval. I took workshops with Janette Schuster, Taryn Reece, Kecia Devaney, and Keith LoBue. Working with metal was realitively new to me and I enjoyed every minute with Janette and Keith. I learned new collage techniques with Kecia, and made charms with Taryn.

Flamingos Abound

Nichos in Progress

From Janette Schuster's Posperity Nichos workshop

Working on Nichos

Marcy and Christy getting ready to work in Kecia Deveny's Layers of Clarity workshop.

Layers of Clarity Projects

In Keith Lobue's Paper Over workshop we learned many techniques.

Tea-tering Tea Cup

"What Kind Of A Teacup Are You?" was an Art Is You challenge for the Alice in Wonderland theme for this year's Art Is You retreat. My submission is pictured below. As you can see, I am a "Tea-tering Teacup". The teacups were scanned and reduced from an original watercolor of teacups that I painted to decorate my Alice supply box for the retreat. The face was drawn using a technique that I learned in Angela Jarecki's internet class, Windows. The background is a canvas board painted by my 3 year old granddaughter.

Creating Cupie

Cupies Abound

Those attending this year's Art Is You retreat received a cupie doll to alter.

For us, it became a family affair.

Grampie's and Princess Buttercup's Cupie.

Princess Buttercup altered Grampie's Cupie even further.

Auntie's Cupie

Mommy's Cupie

Unfortunatley, I don't have a photo of my Cupie, altered to be one of the Gardener's painting the roses red in "Through The Looking Glass".

Alice Supply Box For Art Is You

This started out as a size 14 shoebox on the bedroom floor just asking to

hold something other than the shoes since they no longer needed the box.

At the time I was thinking of the supplies I would need for this year's Art Is You retreat which had an "Alice In Wonderland Theme" and decided to turn it into my supply box.

My creation was inpired by an article in the July/August 2007 issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors.

The article was "The Workshop, using a single image to explore different media" by Misty Mawn.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Cloth Pages

A few years ago I participated in a cloth pages exchange with a group of friends.

I made each person a page that reflected something about them.

The pages were composed as digital art and then printed onto fabric and embellished.

Shown below are the pages before they were printed and embellished.

Who Does She Think She Is?

Showing in Cromwell, CT

Friday, October 9, 2009

Crowne Plaza

Berlin Road

Presented by Art Is ...You

the east coast retreat

I will be attending Art Is ...You and taking classes with Kecia Devenay, Taryn Reece,

Jeanette Schuster, and Keith LoBue as well as participating in all of the other amazing

activities planned by our dynamite hostesses, ellen and Salianne.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Three Amigos 8 8 09

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Wordless Wednesday

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Monday, August 17, 2009

Coming To An End

August 17, the day and summer is coming to an end. We are having our first heat wave since last summer, a little late, but at least we now know that it is summer. I have been very neglectful of my blog, but with good reason. This has been an extremely busy summer, but then our summers usually are. I spent a week at Johnson and Wales University at an educator's forum, then it was off to the White Mountains of NH for a family vacation, and after that we traveled to Indiana, PA to attend our niece's wedding and celebrate my mother's 80th birthday a little early. In between trips we celebrated 5 family birthdays, dealt with a few family crises and spent as much time as we could with our 3 year old grand daughter. And now in a week and a day, I will be starting back to school. This will be my 41st year of teaching (although I will only have 31 years credit toward retirement because of part time), and I am looking forward to a lot of lasts, my last first day of school, my last 1st quarter progress reports, my last parent conference, my last grocery shopping, my last final exam, and the lists goes on. I know I will have very mixed feelings about my last days with students, our last play school graduation, our last group dinner, my last pie demonstration. Unless something drastic happens, I am planning to retire in June. I am much more focused and organized when I am in school, so I will no doubt be back to more regular blogging. For now, I have to make the most the next week.

Butterfly Wings Collaboration

Butterfly Wings

Princess Buttercup and Grammy decorated butterfly wings today.
It's was too hot to spend much time outside, but we did try them out.
The kit to make the wings was purchased at Local Works Market Place,
part of the Wren community, http://www.wrencommunity.org/ , in Bethlehem NH.
We are hoping to visit Magic Wings this week.