I don’t know what I expected at the Texas Gourd Festival when we drove up to Fredricksburg yesterday, but when I paid the $5 entry fee, the volunteer said,”You won’t see any birdhouses!” No kidding – there was an astonishing array of Things to Do with a Gourd. Some were quite beautiful, some were . . .not, but weirdly intriguing. There was also a huge display of tools with which to do these things – you can make quite an investment in gourd tools. Some of my favorite gourds involved the use of a simple tool – a sharpie pen (see the video) I purchased this gourd, above, from Jimmy Sublett from Wimberley and I think it’s one of the beautiful ones.

I’d been in a creative slump, probably because my studio is so disrupted by construction outside (and a busy mid-term schedule at school) – until I remembered that my friend Jessie Voigts of Wandering Educators told me to find an Asian market and check out their joss paper. Then another friend I saw at the herb Market today mentioned Tim’s Oriental Grocery just outside of the city and said they had lots of such paper, so off I went. Well! In the far back corner of the store I found an amazing selection of packets of all kinds of joss paper with lovely prints, foils, incense and candles – beautifully printed and reverently put together in bundles. I brought home an armful of these lovely materials for less than $15. It’s inspiration time again!

And then there was the food – just the packages made me swoon. Tim’s was a great discovery – just when you think you know everything about your city, someone helps you discover something new!
Here’s an online review of Tim’s from one visitor:
Probably the only place in San Antonio for Asian groceries.. well, the biggest and most well known anyways. I love going here. On weekends, they have bbq pork, roast duck, and roast pork hanging for you to select and buy. Never tried the duck, but the bbq pork and esp roast pork is DELICIOUS! So crunchy. They have frozen dumplings that I would literally die if I could not buy every week. And of course the spicy dumpling sauce to go with it! They have fresh veggies not available at HEB such as Chinese brocolli and Hollow vegetable. Lots of candies and sweets and chips from all over Asia. Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, etc. Some days I just go in there and not buy anything. It’s just that fun.

Agreed.

I’m giving a workshop tomorrow on personal transformation for a group of teachers at a great school where I used to teach. One of the things we’re doing is dyeing silk scarves and talking about silkworms as a symbol for transformation, etc. I had to practice the technique myself today since it’s not really in my “art repertoire” – it was fun and I think it will work as a metaphor for the group activity. First, we’ll write some favorite quotations on the silk about transformation, then do the dyeing project. Here are pictures from my experimenting this afternoon. I like doing workshops and am looking forward to this one, especially since it’s hard to make a mistake with abstract silk painting!

The first cool front in South Texas is always welcome, and it slowly filtered in yesterday evening. This morning when I went out for an early walk, there were stars, clear skies, and a temperature of 61F instead of the summertime low 80’s. Fall is definitely in the air, and i realized that I had been subconsciously picking up on that in the collage covers I finished yesterday – the palette is definitely autumnal.

Artists have probably always been influenced by the changing seasons – it’s nice to share that communal creative instinct!
I’m posting more photos of the new work this morning on my Etsy gallery site.

Simple but packed with informatiion – I need this kind of visual explanation! This is a You Tube vanillajoy tutorial, nicely done.
Part One: Cutting and Measuring

Part Two: Sewing the Book