Category: art retreats

  • I mostly relaxed with a novel yesterday. My hands needed a break. The lichen tea dyepot was the last art project, and it was a success, although it produced almost exactly the same color as the onion skin dye, which was a tad disappointing. However, I was thrilled to get any dye at all since…

  • Yesterday was a full day of mixed emotions. I mixed up three colors of Procion dyepots, then combined some to get a variety of colors on a variety of rags, fabric remnants, and silk and wool skeins. I didn’t get the purples that I wanted, so I’ll take that up at home. The dyepots were…

  • I am back in one of my happy places – my cousin’s house at Lake Waccamaw. This time we are here alone for a couple’s art retreat. Sandy brought canvases and paint, and I brought dyepots, fabrics, yarns, hot plate, Procion dyes, and acrylic paints, paper, brayers, collage materials, and my Gelli plate. Also a…

  • Now is the time of year that most of the class and workshop schedules come out for 2013, and it has been making me crazy! I am so addicted to these retreats. I realized that I am not going to be able to do Art-is-You Petaluma again this year. Too much is going on either…

  • On Saturday, Sept. 22, I signed up for something a little different for me. Mary Beth Shaw paints textured abstracts that just blow me away, so I decided that it was time for me to play with some acrylic paint again. The name of this class was “More is Less.” We began with a gessoed…

  • The Sheraton Sonoma is also a marina on the Petaluma River. This was the view from my room on Friday morning, Sept. 21. Albie Smith was really the teacher I came to see in Petaluma. It wasn’t that I felt that she had bookbinding techniques to teach me that I could only get from her.…

  • September 19-20, 2012. My trip to San Francisco was nearly perfect. It was so easy to take the Airporter Express, a very nice bus with free wi-fi and a bathroom, to Petaluma. I finally got to travel across the Golden Gate bridge, and I had perfect views of the Marin and Sonoma County landscapes, which…

  • Stenciling gesso onto bookboard makes both a nice raised design and a resist. My work area in Albie’s class. The bookboards above have been trimmed down and painted, and will be bound with a coptic or French stitch using the papers drying in the rear of the photos. A very wee book – I like…

  • I need to take more photos, but as usual, I became entranced with what I was doing. I kept going until I absolutely could not do it anymore. Today I have to remind myself to SIT DOWN. My hands are not too bad, but my feet and back were letting me know it last night.…

  • Journalfest was, as expected, another awesome experience. I flew to Seattle and took a shuttle bus over to Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington. The town itself is beautiful and if I did nothing but walk its beaches and explore its shops and restaurants for a week, I’m sure that I would have…