She’s baaack . . . in the swing of things – with Monika Astara this Saturday

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I just returned an hour ago from beautiful Whidbey Island near Seattle, WA, where I spent a week teaching and learning with Joanna Powell Colbert at the Gaian Soul Retreat – thank you, Joanna , from the bottom of my heart for this reflective time in such an incredible space at Aldermarsh Retreat Center. There was virtually no Internet or email and I was totally awed by huge trees, twenty amazing women, and the singing of frogs in the marsh.

I’ll have more to say about it as last week gets processed in my overwhelmed brain, but one of the most amazing experiences was walking along the beach on Useless Bay on Friday morning. There were crows and gulls and wind and chill and solitude, and in the not-so-far distance was Canada.

There’s so much more to talk about and think about, but right now I’m excited about being home and back at the Studio.

I’m especially happy to welcome Monika Astara back this Saturday the 28th! There are spaces left in her Inspired Dressing workshop and I hope you’ll email me to let me know you’ll join us  – here are the details.

SPIRITED DRESSING

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Monika Astara, highly-followed fiber artist and clothing designer from Austin, will be bringing her incredible wearable art to Lyn Belisle Studio for a trunk show on Saturday, March 28th, from 1:30-5:30. Many of you love to wear her designs, and now you can browse in a comfortable environment with friends and refreshments and no crowds.

But there’s more! Monika is teaching a private workshop called “Spirited Dressing” on that Saturday morning from 10:30 until 12:30.  She will work with each attendee personally to show how colors, layers, styles, textures can make our soul sing and give us confidence and joy. Monika has worked for over a decade helping her clients, and says, “If we get supported and strengthened by what we wear, we  stand up straighter, our voice gets stronger, yet more pleasant, we feel good about ourselves and we literally radiate from the inside out. People respond to us differently. Our days are brighter and easier.”

mon2Attendance at the private workshop is limited to ten participants. (note – there are six spots left at this writing) Tuition is $50 a person, and that can be applied as a rebate when you purchase $200 in clothing. You’ll get first pick of Monika’s designs before the sale starts at 1:30. And you will enjoy a light brunch and camaraderie with the group at Lyn’s comfortable studio. To reserve your spot and be among the ten participants, email Lyn: lyn@lynbelisle.com

This sounds especially good – Monika also says, “Prices at private shows are about 25% – 35 % below retail and I will also have a sample sale rack with wholesale prices and below.” Well, yay!

Monika’s looking forward to seeing you all on March 28th. And I’m excited, too! Please forward this to friends who appreciate wearable art.

Showing and telling all

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Man, you throw a few artists together in one room on a Saturday afternoon, and crazy things happen. We had the most info-packed, inspiring Show and Tell at the Studio on Saturday – everything from techniques on leather and fabric, to bone-bleaching, to Vicki Siptak’s Spirit Lamp. And more! The video will give you an idea, but ya just had to be there. I’m glad I was!

Franni’s Beach Project was a huge hit – and it even resonated long-distance to Bonnie Davis, who was in Florida but must have picked up the vibes, because she sent me this photo:

beachAnd speaking of beaches, I’m leaving tomorrow at the crack of dawn for Whidbey Island just north of Seattle to be with beautiful friend Joanna Powell Colbert at her Gaian Soul retreat. I’ll be teaching with Joanna – and can’t begin to describe how excited I am. Four friends from San Antonio are going along – we are anticipating all kinds of adventures. Maybe we will see whales from the ferry! Or polar bears – nah, probably not. But the next time you hear from me, I’ll be on the outskirts of Canada!

eBooks and iCovers

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Back in the olden days, when I first started this blog, I was still making a lot of Kindle reader and iPad covers to sell on my first Etsy shop (Steve Bennett of the Express-News did a story on them in 2010 – “Judge eReader by Its Cover”). One of my buyers from that time wrote last month to ask if I would make a custom cover for her iPad – she likes retro elements but with a bit of whimsy. Here’s the cover I did for her, the first in a long time – she just sent me a note saying how much she liked it. Yay! 

The iPad fits in between elastic cords on the inside front cover. It was fun revisiting this project – these covers are pretty labor intensive depending on how many collage elements you add, but you really can do one for yourself. In fact, I also wrote a post on how to make you own! You will enjoy this mixed-media project – it has both attractive form and useful function. Try it!

 

 

Jane Davies is amazing

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Have you ever seen an artist’s work that consistently delights you and fosters a sense of kinship and recognition? Jane Davies does that for me. I discovered her work through her book, Collage Journeys. Jane is incredibly generous with her techniques and has a number of short (and free!) tutorials on You Tube. Here’s an example – I hope you are as inspired by her work as I am.

So you are ever stuck for ideas (and who isn’t?) – just get on that computer and Google the incredible Jane Davies.

Artful Gathering 2015 – amazing!

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We just got our first look at the Artful Gathering Catalog for 2015, and I am blown away. This is my second year on the faculty – lucky me! When you click through the classes, the pages make a cool whooshing sound, and every page has tons of beautiful photos of all the workshops that will be offered during this hugely-popular online Summer Art Retreat.  C’mon, take a look – click on the image below to check it out, and then come back for a little more info:agcat15

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did you come back? Hope so, because, here’s something new at Artful Gathering – it’s the very first Two-Person Collaboration, and Michelle Belto and I are teaching it! Mask, Robe and Rune is an online version of the full-day workshop we taught at the Studio in 2014. If you couldn’t join us then, join us in cyberspace! There are lots of extras (see p. 17 in the catalog).

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I’m teaching two classes by myself, both of which I’ve done many times at the Studio – one is The Magic of Spirit Dolls, and the other is called Small Worlds, fantasy landscapes with Citra-solv paper and another altered collage papers.

So many of you who live far away have said you wish you could take workshops here at the Studio – well, now you can! They’re filmed right here at Lyn Belisle Studio, and include my usual goofiness and user-friendly teaching style. I’ve been taking online classes myself for a couple of years, and I have to say that it’s a great way to learn. Hope to see you  at Artful Gathering! Early Bird Registration is OPEN!

Painting with friends, part two

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sherryTwo of the best art teachers I’ve ever worked with are Sherry Christensen (left) and Linda McLaughlin. For several decades, we taught art in North East ISD and saw each other often at meetings and student art shows. Now retired, they are joining me at the Studio on Thursday afternoons to explore some of the new media that’s available, and to paint together for a couple of hours.

I had great plans for doing some mid-tone painting on canvas this past Thursday, but we started playing with some scribble crayon drawings on Bristol board while we waited for our canvases to dry. Then we painted over everything with white, like artist Jane Davies often does. We lifted some paint with paper, then added a wash of Quinacridone gold. But wait, there was more! I had the beeswax out from a previous workshop, so on went a layer of beeswax, which we incised. Then came walnut ink (of course) and Shiva oil paint sticks. Then some gold foil and stamping. Man, did we have fun! The canvases will have to wait until next time – this kind of  spontaneous exploration is good for an artist’s soul 🙂

Painting with Gloria

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gloI love painting with Gloria Hill – we’ve been doing it long enough (on Wednesdays for several years) that we’re comfortable with critiquing each other’s work and giving suggestions without judgment.

Pretty cool – and what’s also cool is that we learned today that both of us had our paintings accepted into the juried San Antonio Art League Annual Exhibit. It’s notoriously competitive, but I had two of my three pieces accepted and Gloria – tah dah – had all three of her paintings accepted! That’s rare. I am so proud of her! You just never know with jurors, but we couldn’t be happier with this one (Michael David Leslie, who is the Curator of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma). The opening reception is on April 12th, so come see the Lyn and Glo show 🙂

So besides congratulating ourselves until we got silly, we had a great painting session this afternoon. For once, I remembered to take photos, and I put them together in a little video. It’s always interesting to me to see how paintings develop – here’s how our work went this afternoon. Both Gloria and I were pretty pleased with the end results (although they may not be totally finished – ya never know).

Beeswax + Imagery = Fusion Collage

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Workshop prototype – Lyn Belisle

Sometimes you commit to an idea but you have no clue about how (or even IF) it will work. That was the case when I scheduled a “Beeswax Collage” workshop as part of my 2015 calendar, . But two serendipitous things came together to help me. The first was the online workshop that  Michelle Belto and I designed and filmed called Wax and Tissue (available at Roses on my Table website) The second was the PhotoEncaustic class I just finished with Clare O’Neill – both were invaluable learning experiences.

The premise for yesterday’s hugely successful workshop (whew!) was to combine collage elements, rigorous composition guidelines (my AB3 System), inkjet printed tissue, and elementary encaustic techniques to produce a fusion piece that was more than the sum of the parts. To develop the prototype (above), I started with gesso and walnut ink on board, adhered paper and photos, layered inkjet-printed tissue, painted beeswax over everything, scraped and distressed the surface, added more walnut ink and wax – well, it was just plain fun – I’ll play and refine, but it has lots of possibilities.

The participants thought so too, and produced an amazing assortment of beeswax collages, two pieces each, in just over two hours. I always tell my students that there is more than one right answer to a art assignment, and every one of these was a winner – take a look!

PS – Congrats to Rhonda Austin, winner of the little steel Asian chop that represents “understanding.” Rhonda, if you’ll send me a mailing address, I’ll get this to you right away.

Have a good week, everyone!

Understanding – the Friday Freebie

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  und3Today’s Friday Freebie is a wonderful little metal “chop” – a steel stamp of the Chinese ideogram for the word “understanding.” When I ordered several of these little chops because I liked the design, I took the concept for granted, figuring I totally understood what understanding means. But it got me to thinking – what is “understanding,” anyway?

The first definition of understanding is “a mental grasp, a comprehension.” Easy. But, whoa, read on – understanding is also defined as, “a willingness to understand people’s behavior and forgive them.” That’s HUGE. First you have to be willing to “understand” a person’s behavior (which sometimes seems quite impossible), and then you have to be able to empathize enough to forgive them. Yikes.

I always equated understanding with comprehension – like, “I understand some Spanish but I can’t speak it”. Understanding someone’s actions and why they do what they do is a lot more complicated. From now on, when I use this little “understanding” chop on a clay piece or in an encaustic collage, it will remind me of that deeper, more compassionate meaning of the word. And I’ll try to be more understanding.

If you are a SHARDS subscriber by midnight on Sunday, you will have a chance to win this little chop – and if all this rambling seems a little too philosophical, I hope you will understand and forgive me. 🙂 TGIF, Y’all.

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Curious evolution of a work on canvas

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dissofmem2Where do art ideas come from? Darned if I know – Here’s a piece that invented itself from 12 clay face slabs I made last week just because I didn’t want to throw away too-dry clay. The piece is called “Dissolution of Remembrance” because forgetting the names of objects and misplacing small items worries me, and I know I’m not alone in that.

I used these unplanned clay pieces to address this worry through an art piece. I arranged the fired earthenware slabs in an almost irregular pattern on a 24×30″ canvas, then sewed and adhered them in place. First came a wash of walnut ink (of course). Then I added some red oxide acrylic paint – here’s what it looked like at that stage – kinda disjointed.

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I tried to make it more cohesive with various colors of paint, attempting to suggest a progression of memory loss, and finally got the idea of putting rusted wire inside each head – it didn’t really work. Suddenly, I remembered talking about cheesecloth in my last post, and added a layer of cheesecloth over the whole composition to unite the elements. That was a good decision.

After that, there was lots of action going on with matte medium and fabric stiffener. Next came a thin coat of encaustic wax. Finally I added branches to allude to the branching dendrites in the brain. Science occasionally comes in handy 🙂

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The last element, silk cocoons, was another accident – the plastic bag of cocoons was open on the table nearby and the silk kept catching on the branches – well, duh – how obvious was that? So, on they went. Symbols of hatching new thoughts?

I’m not sure “The Dissolution of Remembrance” is completely finished, but it’s been amazing to watch the process as both the maker and the observer. Now if I could just remember where I put it –  – – only kidding. I think.  dissofmem1