I am so excited about the new studio space! It should be open shortly after Thanksgiving, and I’ll tell you about the December workshop very soon. I spent yesterday lugging stacks of my old work and hauling new supply shelves into this lovely serene place of creative belonging.

A first look at the new space – do NOT look behind the screen yet – too terrifying and totally disorganized to describe 🙂 I did that framed piece on the wall in 1976 – yikes – that’s a lotta art years

This whole year has been a tangle of change, fear, joy, sleep-robbing worry and  happy anticipation – all wound up into one giant hairball. But part of the useful stuff that I extracted from the hairball was a look at what has changed in my artwork and what has stayed the same.

Interestingly enough, my art has sorta circled back to a similar place that I was in 2011. At that point,  I was working with Renaissance images of women’s faces in collage with some dimensional elements – this piece is titled “Shutter Speed,” and it was in one of my first shows at La Vida Gallery.

Lyn Belisle
Shutterspeed
Mixed Media Collage on Canvas

After that, I decided to begin combining three-dimensional faces rather than images of faces into assemblages. This series was called Encantos.

Lyn Belisle
Assemblage with earthenware and mixed media 2012

When I worked with Gwen Fox in Taos, I wanted to use the same idea as part of an abstract painting.

Lyn Belisle
Acrylic and dimensional clay on canvas 2013

And then, abandoning the faces, I wanted to work in a purely abstract manner on canvas (but notice that the colors and the “feel” are similar). I brought circles and geometric shapes into this painting (those seem to follow me everywhere). My friend Ramesh owns this piece.

Lyn Belisle
After the Fire
Acrylic on Canvas

But guess what? For the past year or two, I’ve been working in collage again, this time with images of vintage faces and found objects with beeswax – it’s kinda come full circle. But the addition of wax is very exciting to me, and I will continue to explore it.

Lyn Belisle
Eva’s Bird
Beeswax and mixed media collage 2015

So is this bad? Good? My newest art hero, Nicholas Wilton, would advise us to embrace the change and don’t think of one phase as better, just different. This short video is so worth watching. It packs a whole bunch of great notions into less than three minutes. Plus ol’ Nick is a cutie. Maybe I could get him to visit my new studio? Hmmmmm . . .

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What a beautiful, busy,  bittersweet weekend  it was at Lyn Belisle Studio in Carousel Court. While the Studio itself will be open until the end of October, we had our final workshops there this past Saturday and Sunday.

Rosemary Uchniat led us through her signature Small Space Dyeing class on Saturday. She and I tried to remember how many of these great workshops she’s conducted at the Studio – at least four or five. They are always a success because she teaches methods that are no-fail and brilliantly simple.

Look at the delighted smiles on the faces of her students as they discuss their gorgeous results.

On Sunday, I taught a Mixed Media Portfolio class. As usual, the students astounded themselves (and me) with their dazzling creations. Take a look.

Teaching that class brought me full circle, appropriately enough. Ten years ago, getting back into art pretty much saved my life and my sanity after I went through a particularly bad time.

Back then, as a kind of self-designed art therapy, I began making handmade book covers that told a story.  Some were designed to fit over ebook readers like Kindles.They were popular with friends, so I opened my first Etsy shop and made and sold over 200 of these covers. The process gave me hope and confidence. Here’s a link to some of those early covers.

So, speaking of coming full circle, events at the Carousel Court Studio are not finished just yet – there will be a fantastic trunk show with Monika Astara on Saturday, October 15th, that you won’t want to miss. And there will be an October Show and Tell, details TBA. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I’m headed to Santa Fe in two days with art pal Michelle Belto to teach at the Artisan Expo. My solo class, Engraven Images, is sold out! Woohoo!

The next SHARDS blog post will come to you live (sorta) from New Mexico.

Artisan Materials Expo 2016: Creative Ascension Welcome to the seventh biennial Artisan Materials Expo 2016: Creative Ascension, an event for every level of artist, featuring a fabulous selection of world-class art materials at discount prices, as well as opportunities to take classes. The Expo also welcomes the Encaustic Art Institute & International Encaustic Artists Retreat.

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Caryl Gaubatz: Allein auf der Welt 2015 Deconstructed silk screen printing on hand woven linen (Linen woven by Käthe Weber in der Nähe von Bremen Germany, 1947)

What a pleasure and honor it was to be invited to Caryl Gaubatz’s studio yesterday to explore new techniques in fiber art and surface design!

I am a huge fan of her work – her newest series of story-garments, A Meditation on Aging and Loss, touches my heart on every level.

I watched Caryl demonstrate a technique called Deconstructed Screen Printing last year at a Fiber Artists of San Antonio meeting. The results were fantastic and mysterious (see the example on the left), but I couldn’t figure out how she did it, even as i watched her demonstrate. So when she offered to teach the process to me and to calligrapher-friend  Bonnie Davis, I jumped at the chance. And as a bonus, we also got to practice some indigo/shibori techniques!

Caryl is a master. You can see some of our explorations in the photos below . .  .

Deconstructed Screen Printing is fun to do but hard to explain – Caryl learned from Kerr Grabowski. Here are some of my my results from yesterday – as Caryl said, it’s unpredictable! 

If you want to learn more about how it works (and it can work on paper as well as fabric), watch Kerr Grabowski’s video below. Many thanks to Caryl for all of this wonderful information, for her time and patience, and for a fantastic lunch – visiting her is a delight!

Two great workshops raised the bar on creativity this weekend at the Studio – Saturday, Lesta and I did a four-hour marathon of “Art Snacks” – small protects that were quick and fun to create and give:

Sunday, the Wax and Fiber Talisman workshop exceeded all expectation – what a great project! Everyone put together remarkable combinations of fabric, clay, wax and cord to make a rich assortment of mixed-media masterpieces! This is one we will definitely do again – thanks, all, for helping me test-drive it!

Last, but not least, the winner of the Friday Freebie Free Bee dish is . . . tah dah . . . the lucky subscriber whose email is candm46@roadrunner.com – send me your info and I’ll send you the bee!

Happy Monday, everyone!! And I hope to see you San Antonio pals at Thursday’s booksigning for Linda Shuler 🙂

If the Saturday Show and Tell gets any bigger, I’m gonna need to rent out the Alamodome! More than 40 people came to the Studio on Saturday to share creative ideas, show recent projects, and brainstorm solutions to works in progress. Many thanks!

One of the favorite “shows” was David Chidgey and his amazingly informative presentation regarding his work in mosaics. He brought examples of his work in glass and tile and described his course of mosaic study in Chicago.

David’s website, Art Glass Mosaics, is an excellent resource for information about his work and the art of mosaics in general.  I was quick to ask him if he would consider doing a mosaic workshop for us at the Studio – and he said yes! We are working on a possible November date, so stay tuned.

Another fascinating share was from Lynn Maverick Denzer – she brought an oil painting she is restoring that was done by her grandmother, artist and conservationist  Lucy Maverick.

Lynn teaches at Inspire Community Fine Arts Center, another great art education resource.

Other presenters showed fiber art, including this mixed-media piece by Rosemary Uchniat (left). Questions and answers were flying around the table – lots of creative buzz going on. That’s why I love these Saturday Show and Tell get-togethers – there’s a wealth of talent in our community, and such generous people willing to share.

So I’m either going to buy more folding chairs or rent the Alamodome, because this informal Show and Tell event is a keeper! Hey, maybe next month we can expand out into the parking lot! Surely the first cool front will be here by then. Right?

Have a great week, everyone. And come to the next show and tell – date to be announced soon!

Carol and me in an earlier visit on our everlasting art quest 🙂

It never fails – every time I visit my dear friend Carol Mylar, I come home over-the-top inspired. Carol lives in Colorado Springs now, but we still share the same close ties in art and life as we did when we shared a studio on Queen Anne Street back in the 90’s. For example, we discovered we’d bought the same iPhone and the same iPhone case without knowing it – I’m sure you have friends like that, too – it’s kinda spooky but fun.

One of the best times we had during my short trip was a drive to Pueblo just south of the Springs to visit artist and writer Karen Wallace. Karen and I go back a very long way, but hadn’t seen each other in a few years. She’s amazing – her house, her life, her artwork are woven seamlessly into a fulfilling creative existence. You can get a glimpse of this in Karen’s book, Visions and Verse: Along the Path.

Karen lives in a small adobe casita that’s filled with her own art and that of friends, some nationally known painters. There are little altars and stories everywhere. Karen treated Carol and me to a lot of these stories before we went of for a lovely lunch in downtown Pueblo. It’s always so inspiring to see how other artist live and work – take a look at the home and studio of Karen Wallace (and her dog, Chamaya):

I’ll give a report on other parts of my Colorado trip soon, including the Georgia O’Keeffe show – too much for one post!