So here’s the reason for this week’s post: if I tell you about this new workshop now, I’ll have no choice but to finish it by the end of next week. Public accountability can be a wonderful motivator. Do you ever give yourself those kinds of self-imposed deadlines?
The funny thing is, I’m not having trouble creating the workshop. Quite the opposite.
I keep wandering off the path.
Every time I sit down to film the next lesson, I become so absorbed in making these little reliquaries that I disappear into another creative side trail. One idea leads to another, another box wants to become a shrine, another story asks to be told—and before I know it, I’ve spent the afternoon happily exploring instead of recording videos.
Playing around with “relics”
It happened with the first three workshops, too—The Keeper of Fragments, The Listening Vessel, and Tokens and Talismans.
Apparently, getting delightfully lost is just part of my process.
So here’s where this newest adventure is leading…
Relics of Meaning: Creating Contemporary Reliquaries and Icons
A small shrine for someone—or something—you never want to forget.
Some gifts arrive in the form of people. Others come as places, animals, (or birds!) mentors, memories, or moments of unexpected grace. In this workshop, we’ll create a small shrine of gratitude—a contemporary reliquary that honors something that has profoundly influenced who we have become.
This workshop was inspired directly by my recent series of Crow Reliquaries, currently on exhibit at the San Antonio Art League + Museum.
From the Crow Reliquary Series
One unexpected diversion has been color.
In the first two lessons, I talk about painting and texturing the surface of the reliquary canvas itself. I’m not primarily a painter, but I’ve become completely absorbed in mixing what I’m calling timeless colors—those quiet, weathered hues that don’t seem to belong to any particular decade or trend.
They’re created by letting complementary pigments soften and gray one another, and somehow the process takes me right back to my art school days. I’d forgotten how much I love simply mixing paint.
Naples yellow, Pthalo blue, Quin gold
But this workshop is really about more than color.
It’s about the things we choose to remember, honor, and carry forward. Sometimes that means creating something entirely new. Sometimes it means giving new life to something you’ve held onto for years—a treasured object, a fragment from an earlier piece, a photograph, a small keepsake, or an image that has become part of your own visual language.
Reliquary in progress . . .
I thought I’d give you a little sneak preview from one of today’s lessons. It’s about what I call the Icon Box—the small space at the heart of the reliquary.
The name is intentionally simple. It’s the Icon Box—the place where the reliquary holds what matters most.
A small book in an Icon Box
The overall question is simple:
What belongs inside a reliquary?
There isn’t a single right answer.
It might hold a small encaustic collage you create today. It might cradle a collection of found objects that have quietly traveled through your life. It might become home to a vintage photograph of someone who still guides you, or a meaningful fragment rescued from an earlier artwork and given a new purpose.
The little box becomes a place of remembrance—a contemporary shrine for someone, somewhere, or something you never want to forget.
I’m hoping to have the workshop finished next week. (Now that I’ve told you that in public, I suppose I’d better get back into the studio instead of wandering off on yet another delightful tangent.)
I’ll keep you posted.
