Archive for the ‘making meaning’ Category

This project starts January 1, and you can read about it here. I’m trying this, as I don’t usually have a lot of luck with long-term on-line projects. But as luck would have it I bought a small sketchbook to practice my zentangle patterns, and as I was cleaning boxes and sorting for the studio, I discovered lots of different size sketchbooks tucked away. So I am ready….whatever that means for me……

The last time I did a Top Ten, the focus was on A Note from Your Mother. Their last three posts have been interesting. If you have nature lovers or collect nature-inspired art, you might be interested in their  Endangered Species Print Project. Plus, read the post on the decline of the glorious tiger…only 3200 left in the wild.

I read The Future Buzz on a regular basis, particularly his posts on viral images across the web. His collection for 2010 is amazing, and there are links to several other collections. There’s a great one on probability that will work for math class, humorous ones, and ones that make us think. The graphics are spectacular.

Bonnie Samuel’s Blog looks at TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles, a  fair trade, social enterprise to support  weavers and artisans in Thailand and Laos. These artisans are indigenous people who are carrying on the traditional arts of silk and cotton textile production creating beautiful fabrics and wearables.

For those of you who love sarcasm and the news, if you aren’t reading The Borowitz Report, you should. His latest column interviews the devil about the obscene bonuses paid Goldman Sachs executives this year. As the devil said, “best investment” he’s made.

From Cedar Canyon Textiles (The Paintstick Place) comes an interesting blog post on the importance of ritual, a reprint of a blog from the Harvard Business Review.  Just one of the gems:

“Each time we pause, notice, and offer respect for an activity, it reminds us to appreciate and focus on what we’re about to do. And by elevating each activity, we’ll take it more seriously. We’ll get more pleasure from it. The people with whom we work will feel more respected. And we’ll feel more self-respect.”

I discovered this blog like I find many others – just following interesting links. This has a tutorial for coasters, which just sparked an idea. This week I actually went through every piece of fabric, sorted and ironed, looking for inspiration for new projects. I rediscovered a few patches from a Quilt University class that I figured I should keep, as they were interesting alone, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d do with them. Now I know!

From Dumb Little Man (that’s the name of the blog….) comes Seven Important Questions to Ask Yourself Before the End of the Year. Excellent way to reflect on the past 12 months.

Alphabet Photography – really interesting concept, and lots of great images to browse. They are for sale, but the crative nudge from them is wonderful!

And finally, some eye candy – a great literate romantic spy novel, The Tourist….and Johnny Depp – ya can’t go wrong!

You might enjoy some other Top Ten Tuesdays……

November

October

September

Today was the first day of two for professional development on Understanding by Design, or UbD. The staff at the school all has to have this training as part of our three-year plan, and I was resisting this because I’ve read through elements of this on my own, as well as tried to apply some of the “big ideas” to a museum project several years ago. I am here to say today is causing me to seriously rethink retirement – the day was amazing, and I do not say that lightly about professional development.

Understanding by Design is a three-stage program to develop more meaningful curriculum that is effective, engages students, and promotes enduring understanding, as Howard Gardner would say. We spent the day on Stage 1, unwrapping the curriculum in order to plan for the end result. Duh. In 20 years of doing student theater, I always did what I call “backplanning,” but NOT ONCE did I think to apply that skill to my classroom teaching.

As we continued through the day, I kept seeing lights at the end of the tunnel, answering for me ways to fix what I am unhappy with in my algebra classes. I do too much direct instruction, I don’t have the kids do enough inquiry, and they aren’t engaged enough or see algebra as a meaningful course of study. I actually wanted to read through standards and try to cluster some of the performance objectives so the planning  makes more sense. The warm-up we did would make more sense than the (to be honest) drill and kill I usually do for practice (and, really honest, management…). In fact, I have some ideas for small group bell work for next week to extend some of the understanding.

All through the day I was (and still am) very conflicted. I am planning to retire in two and a half more years. I have been dealing with some health issues that may make me retire early. Plus, I realized if I go the full years more I will actually end up hurting my retirement benefits, as there hasn’t been a raise, and nothing is in sight. Two and a half years would cut off one of my higher salary years. So I am looking at numbers.

But then I sit in a workshop and get truly excited about trying some new strategies and ideas for teaching algebra, and I don’t want to leave. Retirement is an ending, as well as a beginning. I started teaching 40 years ago this September, and while it is probably time – age-wise – to go, it feels like “the end.” I don’t think I’m ready for closure, even though I want to seriously expand my art work and licensing. I’m not sure I can “let go” of 33 years of teaching, when I still feel like I have a lot more to offer. I still love this stuff – workshops, class management, curriculum, and all. I miss the teaching teachers that I used to do. I have all these skills and experiences (and endorsements) from all these years, and I’m not sure I can give it up…..

So just when I think I am coming to decisions, something happens to change it all. Darn you, Dr. Larry….now what do I do?

You might remember this zentangle from last week, and I said I was dying to try some Photoshop effects with it. Well, here’s one night’s work this week, in between grading linear graphs – this was MUCH more fun!

I love them both – they are each so different. This week I have been roaming the net looking for zentangle patterns. I hadn’t realized that part of this art is set patterns that enable you to really “zen out,” as I put it, into the drawing mode. I’ll have some new zentangles up on Sunday for my week of Art Every Day Month, plus on Tuesday’s Top Ten I’ll list a bunch of the sites I’ve found.

This week also saw me playing with some of the new photos from the Tucson Botanical Gardens. Here’s the original of the one I started play with:

This metal fountain is part of the Zen garden, and one of my favorite places to sit and be with nature. I was able to capture water movement in this one, which I really liked.

One of the things I have been doing in my attempt to create some collages is using my magic wand and capturing several sections of the photo, ragged edges and all – gives it more of a water color effect, which I do like. Here’s what I captured from this photo:

I love this just the way it is, but I kept going….Here’s the marbled fabric I chose to go in the background.

I know what you’re thinking…but wait, there’s more……

Same fabric photo, but with a gradient overlay that brings it closer to what I’m after with the fountain. Now I’m putting them all together….

First blend – I like it….

Second blend…hmmmmm……

This is the final, which I think I really like. I’m torn between the first one and this one. I’ll probably do prints of both! Weigh in – let me know which one you like the best!

Awright, so they’re not technically WIPs. But I haven’t shown all of them on here before, and I really do love them. And close observers will recognize the blog heading as the fabric in “Salmon Run.”

“Salmon Run” returned from its several-month engagement in Alaska at the Cordova Historical Museum. I love having it back – I am so fond of the fabric.

Here’s a close-up of the quilting.

You also haven’t seen my latest piece, “Bamboo Grove,” in a full shot.

This piece had so many techniques I hadn’t tried before. I am reconsidering the tops of the bamboo stalks…I may decide to take the leaves off and try another way of attaching them to increase their fullness. So I guess it still is a “work in progress.”

What am I working on now? I am doing an art show on November 20 with the Tucson Art and Craft Association, so I am preparing fabric for that, as well as requilting a few small quilts. I am thinking of revising my still-unfinished “Iceberg” piece from several years ago into a series of Icicles for Road to California – I have till December 15. I can still use all the techniques I had planned, just in some different forms. I am still thinking about the next “large” piece with marbled fabric and don’t quite know what it’s going to be……I have some really great large pieces of fabric lying around.

But…I also have about four other quilts in various stages that I need to get to! Such decisions we all have….what’s waiting on your list of to-do?

Ya gotta admit, that’s a catchy picture….the slippers on first glance look like little aliens checking things out. But this indicates it’s something cool from Dumb Little Man, which readers of the Tuesday posts will know always has something cool. This one is 30 Ways to Make TV Watching More Productive. There are some really great ideas here…for you sewing folk I would add “seam ripping stitches” – productive and therapeutic!

Also from Dumb Little Man, 61 Ways to find Inspiration When You’re Stuck and Feeling Down. We can always use a little practical inspiration. Number 13 suggests browsing through Flickr photos, which I have just started to do – serious eye candy. If you want marbled goodies, here’s our Flickr site:

From Maria Brophy comes How to Create Anything Even When You’re Scared, Inexperienced, and Don’t Believe in Yourself. It’s a mouthful, but it’s all about baby steps….

From PlugIn ID comes a great article on the butterfly effect, quoting Gandhi saying “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Problogger is a great source of ideas for writing a blog. Here’s some info on making it easier for customers to buy from you. Great ideas here.

Here’s some fabulous fiber art to look at – the fabric collages of Wycliffe Lincoln.

These guys always have great stuff – I’ve posted from them before. This is 60 Creative Examples of Infographics. If you like data presented in a very visual manner, check this out.

Now who among us hasn’t given some thought to making art from Post-Its? I create little cubes when I’m bored, but this kind of goes waaayyy beyond that! Check out Georgia O’Keefe…..

From Selfgrowth.com comes a really helpful article on pricing digital painting, something I’m becoming very interested in.

And finally, treating yourself like a Ferrari – something we should all do!

What have you found as you’ve been surfing?? Pass it along – I love looking at new stuff!

Those of you who are readers of my blog (and thank you for those who emailed me to see where I was!) know that I struggle with being a teacher and trying to develop an art business. Well, let me warn you now, this is both a rant and a pity party, so pass on if you’re not interested. It’s just that I have found my blog a great way to process what’s going on in this overactive head of mine.

Saturday saw me admitted to the hospital with chest pains and shortness of breath. 72 hours later and one fairly incompetent doctor I am released with absolutely no answers beyond “it’s probably stress.” Between family history and my own history of lung clots, these symptoms were something I couldn’t ignore. I had been feeling poorly the week before: lots of bloating (and knowing I wasn’t putting weight on), tiredness, anger, and frustration. While I am in the last three years of teaching, I really want to be retired, and that isn’t going to happen any time soon.

Friday last week was homecoming at our high school, and as I watched the band and pom line and cheerleaders parade through the halls, I felt a little teary about what I would be missing when I do retire. I can remember back – way more years than I want to – to marching band (in fact, the first kiss happened in the uniform closet of the band room…). I do love teaching, and I am positive that this was my correct life’s work. But I am tired, especially with all the changes to the field in the last 15 years. This is certainly a job for young people – or at least younger that their 6th decade.

Couple that with being in Arizona, the second poorest state in the country, with a state legislature that wants to disband public education, no budgets and large class sizes. As much as I despise NCLB, I recognize for me that the emphasis on curriculum development and standards has helped me teach. But I also know that the end-all of test scores has been a death knell to thinking and creativity. Kids need to know what they “will get” for learning something. The complete joy of learning is totally gone. No more reading a book because it sounds like a great story. No more pursuing an idea to see where it will take us.

Now I have always had a problem with the less-than-competent in my field, and I take criticism of teachers very personally. I had my share of bad ones, but there were more good ones than bad. I am so fortunate right now to be in a great school with very supportive administrators and a lot of really fine teachers. But I’m tired….tired of constant papers, lesson plans, students who can’t be motivated, pressure to improve test scores, and probably the biggest – a living wage.

This is year 33 for me, and I still make less money than I did in Vermont some 16 years ago. That to me is criminal. Part of the stress is trying to live on the income, especially when the school district decided to put everyone on the same pay dates, and we have to go for three weeks at the end of the summer without a check….that has totally screwed up finances for the start of this school year. We had to borrow to pay a life insurance bill before the end of the grace period. After all these years as a public employee, things should have gotten a little easier.

And yes, I am well aware that I still have a job in this economy. Which is killing any attempt I am making to build an art business. I have been very productive art-wise this year, and readers for years know I tend to be very fallow during the school year. Not so since January of this school year. I have completed a couple of large pieces, and I spent a lot of time this summer working on marketing. Now I did a lot of reading (as I always do…) about building an online business, and I must say I did everything suggested that I could afford to do.

Ebay is down, Etsy isn’t happening, my blog numbers aren’t up, nobody’s buying off the newsletter or the website, and I was rejected for a major art show. And there are all theses classes and techniques and supplies I want to try, with no extra money. We have to scrimp to buy fabric.

Don’t get me wrong, I have NEVER expected a free ride. I work very hard at everything I do. But I think it’s about time for things to ease up a bit. This summer I had a taste of what retirement will be – time to visit friends, work on art, write, all those activities that make my heart and mind sing. But it’s not happening right now. I look at people working full time on their art and I am so jealous. I want to do this NOW.

And that’s what’s stressing me out. Why can’t I build a business without having to wait for retirement? This is what I’m going to have to struggle with; what can I do in the time I have? While I love teaching, it makes huge demands on you emotionally and physically, and lots of weekends – and evenings – there is no energy for anything else, even a doodle. I haven’t written in the blog in 3 weeks, something I love to do. My brain is tired, my body is tired, and now I’m recovering from paying the penalty of stress.

Sure it could have been worse. I’m very thankful it wasn’t. But I need some breaks NOW….

In the meantime, I am attempting to prepare for Tucson Arts and Crafts Association holiday show on November 20. Every member says they do really well selling during the show…….hmmmmm, what about fiber? We’ll just have to see……

I attended an interesting meeting after school today, a discussion about what makes an honors program at the high school. We brought up loads of ideas and good points to pursue further, but a number of things stuck in my mind – maybe it’s because I have been at teaching for over 30 years.

Point 1 – and I think the MOST important when it comes to learning – is that the JOY of learning is gone for students. Everything is assessment-based, to the detriment of actually learning. Students no longer know what to do with an idea that might be interesting, or a book to read that’s recommended just because it’s good. A number of years ago – and this was before the mess that is NCLB – I asked my fifth graders to choose a piece of science fiction and read it. I then spent 15 minutes trying to convince them that there was no assignment or test – they might just find the book interesting. It truly was a foreign concept. Nowadays it seems that students try to figure out just what they need to do to pass a test and get the grade. The actualy learning is way down the scale.

Point 2 – “regular” classes are now considered the “stupid” classes. This was a shock to me. I am three years into teaching at this school, and I know there’s a strong Honors/AP set of classes. For two years I’ve been working with the kids who had difficulty all through middle school with math. A good many of them didn’t belong in the support classes, and they would admit they didn’t want to do the work. Now I am teaching “regular” algebra classes, and trying to improve on the rigor in the classes. It never occurred to me that is was considered “poor form” to be in a regular class as opposed to an honors class. The big question is how to we provide an education that is rigorous and appropriate for every student? Given the class sizes this year, it’s even harder than in the past.

Point 3 – should there be requirements for being in an honors class? When I taught AP US History, I let anyone in who waned the challenge. My biggest class was 33 and most of them worked really hard in the class. When we looked at stats last year for our students who are exceeding on the #^$%@$# state assessment test, we found we had fewer and fewer kids who were excelling. Students were getting by. So requirements or open invitation? How do we get kids to take the challenge and want to do some appropriate and different work?

From the meeting I went to the chiropractor. This year is taking a huge toll on me physically: cement floors for very sore legs, white board writing which is throwing out my shoulder, long class periods that are messing with my bladder – this is definitely a job for young people. And then I listen to discussions, and I think that nothing ever changes, it only gets worse. I guess I really do recognize that it’s getting to be time to retire…I can’t generate the enthusiasm that I used to, even two years ago.

Education will always continue to be a work in progress, which is as it should be…..but we need to see some progress somewhere along the way….

I’ve never read The Art of War by Sun Tzu. I suppose as a history major I should have, along with my reading of Machiavelli…but my college history department at the time didn’t have much related to Asian studies, let alone economics. So when I stumbled on this from Dumb Little Man, I was interested.

Hmmmm…..Five Factors for Life-Hacking Domination. Whoa – kinda strong when you think about marketing…but maybe not. Let’s explore this further. Something that has been around since the 6th century BC probably has something to teach us.

Life-Hacking – getting to the essence of life and making it work for you. Most of us struggle with this until we realize life is short and we need to get the most out of it before it’s too late. On a marketing level, most of us don’t know how to market our art, and we need to before we are left behind.

Teaching 1: The Moral Law

Sun Tzu said: “The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.”
Whoever is our ruler, spirit, creator, God – we must live in harmony with that. For me all my decisions have been predicated on the “do no harm” and “do unto others” principles. The same has to be true for me to be successful with my art and my business. What is the best possible product that is true to who I am, that is environmentally responsible, and that will bring me and an art buyer happiness? This can only be a great morality to live by.

“Every eye forms its own fancy.” from Mrs. O’Malley, Irish proverb, from “Native Wisdom for White Minds.” We all see what we want to see, or what we’ve been trained to see, and hence we miss whatever else we’ve not been taught to understand. Our reality isn’t the only reality…can we be open to other possibilities in our art and in our life that will serve us well?

Teaching 2: Heaven
Sun Tzu said: “Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons.”
To Sun Tzu, Heaven is a consistency and a variable, all at the same time, and not necessarily religious. We know where we are going, we have a plan laid out, but we need to be aware of possible changes, pitfalls, opportunities. In this current economy, how are we reacting to sales and the health of our art business? What are our contingency plans till people start buying art again? Are we still making art, planning, creating product, connecting with others, teaching ourselves new skills? Above all, we need to be flexible: study the environment and decide how we can make it work (great advice from Tim Gunn…).
Teaching 3: Earth
Sun Tzu said: “Earth comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death.”
I’m quoting Dumb Little Man here: “Those entrenched in the status quo make the obvious and socially-acceptable choices – regardless of how ineffective and/or inefficient those choices are. They don’t take the time to observe the ground beneath their feet. Hence, they are incapable of seeing and feeling the optimal way forward. The life hacker thinks and acts unconventionally. She looks for the paths of least resistance, the 80/20 shortcuts, and the hidden passageways through life.”

That’s a huge mouthful, and one most of us will not consider. Having always been accused of “unconditional optimism,” I think I am quite prepared for this one. Everything has a solution; it may be one we haven’t thought of, one that is uncomfortable for us, or one that forces us to seriously change our paths. A sluggish economy is a huge problem, one that will take extreme  courage and innovation to survive. Are we ready?

Teaching 4: The Commander

Sun Tzu said: “The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, and strictness.”
This ties in to all morality. We must all take the higher path, and I editorialize here that in this economy – and our lives in general – I don’t see this. There is so much incivility the ugliness among us that I think we’ve lost our courage and sincerity. Living by a moral code can only help us be better individuals, more productive citizens, and better artists. We do art not for the short-term gain but because it feeds our soul and hopefully those around us. We do art because we must, not because we have found the secret to making great riches. We can’t sacrifice our virtue and integrity.
Teaching 5: Method and Discipline
Sun Tzu said: “By Method and Discipline are to be understood the marshalling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure.”

This is marketing. How are we building our business? How are we preparing for sales? A personal story here: we did a number of demos of our marbling in the past, to some critical success. People loved what we showed them. But we missed a CRUCIAL piece – we had no product with us to sell. We had plenty of examples of what to do with marbling but nothing for people to buy. No sample fabrics, no remnant bags, no cards, no digital work. We totally missed the “buying” piece. Needless to say, we don’t make that mistake any more.

Think about everything you need to do to build your business. Do you have a plan? This is “method and discipline.” I need to take my own advice and be sure that I continue with the blogging; this is discipline, and this is focus.

Well…..I didn’t expect this to turn into an essay, but I guess it did. I had read the piece initially and felt it would be good for a post on marketing, but with the writing came analysis and lots to think about. Ultimately I feel validated, in that the moral life and the decisions and turmoil that come with it are the way to go. I am interested in your comments….what resonates with you? What method do you most follow? Leave me a comment below.

Native Wisdom for White Minds

It doesn’t look to be smooth sailing for this year at school, with an extremely difficult class of students. After a very upsetting day and a really rotten mood, I read through Facebook to find a collection of dances from movies. I watched it twice, it made me feel that good. Then I went to my guilty summer pleasure of So You Think You Can Dance and watched Alex Wong with some ballet clips and his amazing hip hop.

I feel lots better. I’m still grumbly, but the mood has broken somewhat. I can watch great dance, listen to amazing music, read a great book, and look at some amazing art and feel so much better. I think the only thing that is going to save me this year is working on fiber art as many evenings as I can. Then I can focus on the stitches and the design decisions and forget about unpleasant children who don’t realize how many people in the world would give anything for a free education. (Okay, political rant done….)

That said, I finished up last night on the bamboo piece and got the jpgs sent on their way. Here’s a sneak peek:

I am very pleased – now to go start something else….

Yesterday I wrote about what’s happening with the bamboo piece. Here’s a sneak piece of it in VERY rough form:

Now to today’s story – my piece for “My World in Black and White,” a show curated by Anne Copeland, like around 2003. This was a challenge issued on the QuiltArt list, and I decided to try something. Here’s the piece:

This was the first show where I realized I had to pay more attention to the theme. Mine was a more abstract look at black and white. We marbled a three-quarter-yard piece of unpolished white satin in blacks and whites. There was still a little orange left in the tray from a previous piece, so the name became “Black and White with a Hint.” I cut five strips and quilted them, following the marbled patterns. You can see the hints of orange.

At this point, I really didn’t know what form this was going to take. I decided to stagger each of the strips, but it was pretty boring with just the strips. That’s when the “hidden” architect in me took over. I marbled some ribbon, serged the edges of the ribbon to carry the serging motif through, and attached it to some strips of gray cotton. I did eight strips all together, some of them plain with just a meandering quilting line, and some with the ribbon, and then I wove them through the other strips.

I liked how it was shaping up, and now I had to deal with a hanging system, as well as finishing the bottom. I figured I wanted some beads to hang at the bottom. I went to the local bead store and found these teardrops – have NEVER seen anything like them since then.

If you look closely, you can see how each strip gets hand-stitched to the ones around and underneath it. I figured I would use a plexiglass rod for the hanging system. I marbled some thinner ribbon, and with careful measurements attached the various lengths at the top, with a bead embellishment.

I learned a lot, as I seem to do on every piece, and this is still one of my favorites – my first piece to travel (to Ontario, CA as well as the online exhibit), my first piece that was professionally appraised, my first piece that “hung” in a very different style, and my first ribbon (for entering, but none-the-less still special!).

I am really enjoying revisiting these pieces and their stories. I hope you enjoy as well.

I love Fibonacci – I discovered his math sequence about 15 years ago when teaching in a gifted elementary program. I was reading the curriculum and was astounded that I had never heard of him before. Since then I am always astounded at how Fibonacci shows up in nature….and now in poetry.

I was pulling materials today to take back to school, and I rediscovered these poems, from my bulletin board of favorites. The task was to use the Fibonacci sequence and create a poem, with each line having the requisite number of syllables – 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on. Just a little something different this week, as we get ready to go back to school

Here’s Elizabeth Kinn:

Mind,

Words,

Phrases,

Poetry,

Dances on the page.

Put together makes a meaning.

It’s from the full heart of a poetic writer’s soul.

A great mind full of creative twists ad turns makes a black pen whirl on a blank page.

Hre’s Sarah Walling:

Books

Are

The best!

They take me

From reality,

Places beyond imaging.

Enough subjects to let me read to jy heart’s content.

Boks are made to extend the imagination, made for the mind to travel away.

Here’s Rebecca Edmonson:

I

Love

Theater!

Best to act,

Dancing and Singing.

Characters and music change/

Putting on a new face and stepping out of the box.

The stage: a fantastic place to be yourself and just let loose in a different world.

Like so many of you, I am a regular reader of Robert Genn’s Twice Weekly Letter. This latest one looked at the traditional master-apprentice role in the arts, and I was particularly taken with some of the thoughts, especially since marbling has always followed this road. Apprentices worked with masters for years, learning and absorbing every trick and skills through watching – and later on by doing.

This made me think of how we get our own art educations, a topic near and dear for so many of us. I’m self-taught in virtually everything I have done artistically. I would hazard a guess that this is true for most of us baby boomer women. We were encouraged to go into paths that would support us or provide for families, with little thought as to what would make our hearts sing. As we’ve gotten older we have become more expressive.

Self taught. It seems to be fine in so many fields to say you are self-taught – tutored in life. But not in art. At least for me, I still feel intimidated when I see in a CV of someone in an art show all their schooling and formal coursework in the arts. My own art education early on consisted of a few art projects in elementary school and then a “class” as an elective in high school where we churned out particular projects. But nothing in creativity. Which ties in to a recent article in Newsweek on the dearth of creativity in modern classrooms and education.

I’m rambling, I know. But I’ve had to learn how to be creative, to break through the “OMG, what will it look like?” phase of making art. Would working with a master have helped this? I don’t know, but it probably wouldn’t have hurt any.

Who are our masters in the arts today? From whom do we study and learn? Enter the Internet, the cheap equalizer to getting an art education. The joke in our family always was that if my dad wanted to learn how to do something new, he would read a book. Well, I got that gene. I read everything I can get my hands on if it’s something I am really interested in. But that can get to be expensive, although still cheaper than a formal education or coursework.

The internet has opened up huge resources for us. I started on TV with Sewing with Nancy and Eleanor Burns and Kaye Woods. I picked up all kinds of hints – and reasons why something I was already doing (through guesswork) wasn’t working. Like many of us, I have taken workshops when I can afford it. Jennie Rayment and her muslin creations still stick in my mind – such possibilities for texture!

Just one of Jennie Rayment's books

The first professional workshop on marbling was with Galen Berry (over a year ago) and it was wonderful – lots of questions answered, problems solved, and energy renewed. We started to zoom ahead in our skills.

Galen Berry

Then I went to the School of Threadology with Superior Threads. Yes, I know I rave about their threads, but the professional education I received over the three days with Bob and Heather Purcell was priceless. My work has taken a dramatic turn for the better – and I don’t break thread anymore….

School Of Threadology

Now I’ve discovered Interweave and their dvds on quilting and other artistic endeavors. Better than a book because I can see things actually being done.

Interweave

I watched a leaf tutorial by Heidi Lund and already picked up a bunch of hints to try something totally new for my bamboo piece. Carol Taylor’s video on her Arc-i-Texture techniques had me making a new quilt last night to try out the ideas…and I must say I’m loving it! And Susan Brubaker Knapp’s video on machine quilting corrected a whole bunch of errors I have puzzled over.

Carol Taylor

Susan Brubaker Knapp

Heidi Lund

And of course we can’t forget YouTube. I have been devouring and studying very closely the wealth of marbling videos on line.

So my question to you is: What’s the best professional development you’ve ever attended – the one that has changed how you do your art? I want to know!

PS – all of these recommendations are unsolicited – they’re just stuff I have learned from and appreciate – nothing comes to me as a result of you checking these out! (OK, FCC – happy?)

I have to say, I have been busy. I originally was thinking nothing was going to happen art-wise in July because of so much work on the business. I was wrong…the last week has been incredibly productive. Last Wednesday I wrote about my lava piece just telling me it really wasn’t finished. Here’s last week:

And here it is now, since it told me it was “finished:”

Midnight Lava Flow

Turns out it needed actual lava – those little round pieces are actual chunks of lava I collected over a couple of visits to the Tucson Gem Show each February. I also added more lava flows, and nothing really interferes with the quote on the back. This is going to go up in the newly-developing Etsy store.

My “purse” didn’t make it as a purse…I loved the play of the fabrics together, but I couldn’t get handles to work the way I wanted them to…so now it’s a nice new basket for collecting fabric scraps.

If you were reading on Sunday, you saw the finished “Desert Heat” quilt, now on the wall in our bedroom.

Now I am working on my “bamboo” quilt, started about 5 years ago with a piece of marbled fabric in the chevron pattern. One of the things I like about this quilting is that it is very zen-like, in that you can just follow the lines of the patterns. You can see the original piece of fabric here. You’ll see what I mean about the lines of the pattern.

As I was quilting yesterday, it occurred to me to take pictures of the process, and then that led me to think about putting together a tutorial on quilting marbled fabric. There is an interesting story behind the quilting. Years ago I pretty much just put marbled fabrics with blacks, as I wasn’t sure at all about my color sense. I did slowly branch out, but it was Quilt artist Ellen Kohen who took a piece of fabric and quilted it. I knew there was more I could do with the fabric, but I wasn’t sure how to approach it. Once I saw what Ellen had done, I was hooked, but it took confidence to start the free motion needed to accent these patterns. Starting this Sunday, I’m going to introduce “Sunday Stories,” and I’ll take a look at the story behind each of the pieces in my gallery on the website.

For today, here’s a close-up look at one of the bamboo strips (which I am aiming to finish by mid-August, as I want to enter it into an art quilt show with my “Ocean’s Bounty.”) You can easily see all the “lines” in the pattern and how I have followed the lines with a variety of different colored threads. The problem you might run into (as I have) is when to stop with the lines – you can get easily sucked in to quilting everything.

Chevron pattern

Serged edge

You can see the serged edge in this piece – which is how I usually finish these weaving pieces. I’ve learned over the years not to serge until I am finished with the machine quilting.

Walking foot

This is with my walking foot, but I’m not totally happy with the control with this foot. Because there are slight curves to these lines, I use my regular foot and am quite happy with it. I think this is probably a personal preference. I tried the free motion foot on this, but I didn’t have the control and even stitches I wanted for this design.

I have four and a half “strands” of bamboo finished at this point. I can quilt for a couple of hours, listening to some John Denver and just kinda zone…as I mentioned earlier this week, I am amazed at just how much I get done when I think a project will take forever. Now what probably will take forever will be the leaves. I’ve tried marbling some silk leaves – not happy with them. I am thinking some thread leaves, but they may not seem “sturdy” enough for this hardy plant. I do know thread leaves would be a great use of all my lousy threads I have hanging around. I haven’t broken any threads with some 6 hours of quilting – have I told you how much I love my Superior Threads?

If you would be interested in a tutorial on quilting marbled fabric, please leave me a comment and let me know. If you’ve got pictures of some marbled fabric that you have quilted, I would LOVE to see it.

This has been a great week for goodies on the web. Great eye candy and inspiration.

* I subscribe to Dumb Little Man, and every now and then they have something that really resonates. This week it was “How to Adopt an Attitude of Gratitude.” The article is based off this quote from Tecumseh: When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light, for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food, and the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies with yourself. ~Tecumseh You can read the article here. Great words to live by.

Bien Mur

* Speaking of Native Americans, I picked up a great book at Bien Mur, the art gallery at the Sandia Pueblo in Albuquerque called “Native Wisdom for White Minds.” This is full of wisdom from indigenous people around the world, set up as a saying a day, so you have inspiration throughout the year. The book is available from Amazon – search on the left (disclaimer – I’m an affiliate, so if you order, I get a few pennies.).

From today, July 13 – “Nature is the storehouse of potential life of future generations and is sacred.” ~Audrey Shenendoah, Onandagan writer

Jane Dunnewold

* “What’s Trite, What’s Not” from Existential Neighborhood by Jane Dunnewold. Jane is an amazing fiber artist and I was licky enough last year to follow along on her daily photo inspirations. Is life trite? Here’s a provoking thought: “And there’s the paradox. The activities that keep me centered, authentic, and real could easily be dismissed as trite. It’s all phrasing and context. How much outside influence have you bought into lately?”

* Making Mondays – and Your Week – More Productive. Well, who doesn’t want to! There are seven questions to help guide you to more productivity – all of them worth thinking about.

iStock

* Self-Inflicted Time Management from Time Management Ninja (great name!). If you have issues with any of the following, read this post!

• Missed Deadlines
• Late Fees
• More Work Due to Undone Tasks
• Lateness
• Disorganization

Productivity501

* The Myth of Multi-tasking from Productivity 501. I thought it was just because I was getting older – I really thought I could multi-task well. Age has shown me I can’t… “It turns out that humans are amazingly horrible at multi-tasking. Many people feel like they are improving their focus by multitasking when they are really doing the opposite.”This is a good read.

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John Pugh

As promised, here’s more with Eric Maisel, author of The Van Gogh Blues and creativity champion. I asked Eric a question concerning come of the frustrations I have been experiencing in teaching this year.

Me: I have come to see that for the immediate future my creativity is tied directly to my teaching middle school. I really work at making meaning when I am teaching, but I need some advice for my students. How do I help them make meaning? There is no light of learning in about 90 percent of them – they literally do not want to do the work – they will admit “I am lazy.” I always look beyond that to see what else might be going on (living out of a car, etc), but I really am stumped.This is a very low socio- economic area (I have never experienced poverty like this before in a school setting), and a failing school under No Child Left Behind. These kids have no record of school success for themselves – no sense of any intellectual meaning….

One of your comments (page 28, I think) is about how hard it is for professionals to stay away from depression, as opposed to interns and persons just starting out, since we have seen so much more. How do I help my kids?

Eric: I wonder if the answer, insofar as there is an answer, might not be in having (or allowing students to have) existential rather than curriculum-based discussions. What if students were asked to identify their most cherished values and to then try to imagine a life constructed around those values? Would they draw a blank, wax ironic, or find the task rich and useful? My hunch is that it is quite worth a try; one teacher reported to me that she engaged her third-graders (!) this way and that it make a remarkable difference in the way they self-regulated and tackled their work the whole school year. It would be grand to see meaning brought into the classroom—what could possibly be more important for students to think about and discuss?

I very much want to try more of this with my kids. I need to think about how to bring it in to the group, within the context o the classroom and the benefits of their education. Or maybe I just need to raise the issue of what is meaningful to them, and leave education completely out of the mix to start with. I would welcome comments and thoughts from you all!

Some other questions for Eric:

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU GIVE TO ARTISTS TO HANDLE THE POST-CREATION BLUES? The blues that happen when a project is done and you’ve worn yourself out.

Eric: Meaning must be made at all times or else we start to get those existential blues. But that isn’t to say that we can’t frame a day by the beach or a week incubating a project as meaningful time. The art is in our self-talk, where we consciously address our meaning needs by announcing where we want to invest meaning today: in a good rest, in a visit to the bookstore, in a little office organization, in a visit with a friend, and so on. What we want to guard against is the experience of meaninglessness that follows the completion of a project, and this we do by investing meaning wisely even though we may not have a new big project wanting to launch.

HOW CAN ARTISTS BEST FILL THE TIME IN PERIODS OF DORMANCY?

Eric: The answer revolves around how long the period of dormancy is and what the quality of that period is. If you tend to take three years off between projects, there is something going on there that needs to be addressed and you need to do a better job of forcing life to mean. If we’re taking about two weeks, that’s a very different matter. If it’s that shorter amount of time, then you can catch up on business matters (there is always something in that realm that needs doing), remind yourself why you love your art discipline by visiting a museum or reading a book, and passionately living your “parallel life,” that life of relationships and other meanings not connected to your creative projects.

ARTISTS OFTEN FACE CRITICISM IN THE FORM OF NOTES OR REVIEWS. HOW CAN AN ARTIST KEEP THEIR “SPIRIT UP” AND “FAITH IN THE WORK” IN THE FACE OF NEGATIVE FEEDBACK?

Eric: The first step is remember that everyone has an opinion, that great works have been roundly panned, and that you and you alone are the arbiter of meaning and quality in your life. If you don’t buy that at a visceral level, you will block when criticism comes. You have to have more than an intellectual understanding that your opinion must count the most: you must feel it in your bones. Once you possess that absolute certainty, then you can examine the criticism to see if there’s something there for you to learn—for often there is. The tricky dance is to reject all criticism while at the same time making use of feedback that serves you, a dance that no artist manages perfectly. Some err of the side of grandiosity and listen to no one; others, lacking in self-confidence, err in the direction of caving in and blocking.

SHOULD YOU FIGHT THE BLUES OR LET THEM COME?

Eric:It is my opinion that we should fight them, though not necessarily in the first five minutes or the first hour. Being in “that space” for a little while may be unavoidable and even necessary, but remaining in that painful place of inaction and despair has nothing really to recommend it. As soon as we can—and if we have gotten in the habit of disputing the blues, this will be sooner rather than later—we stand up tall, remind ourselves that we make the meaning in our life and that there is no meaning until we make it, and decide where we want to make our next meaning investment: in a new project, in the business of art, or in another sphere like relationships. If we can nip the blues in the bud before they even come by making that next meaning investment before meaninglessness even has a chance to rear its head, so much the better!