Missing Artfest ...

As spring gets closer a part of my creative self is remembering this is the time of year (in past years) I'd  be getting ready for Artfest, which was hosted by Teesha and Tracy Moore and a crowd of volunteers. I'd be reading supply lists and gathering materials and thinking about how wonderful it is to gather with hundreds of like-minded artists for 5 intense days of learning and sharing. But (alas) Artfest is no more, so for this part of the process memories will have to do.

Oddly, what I miss most of all is making the trades. Given the population of Artfest (500+ artists), I took real pleasure in making small arty items to share with as many people as possible, and would often make something like 150 of whatever I'd decided to make, usually small books (quelle surprise!). I mean, how often in one's life (unless you're in manufacturing), do you get to sit down and make 150 of anything, particularly a small token of your creative self. Even now I find my fingers twitching to buy some little twiddle I've found in bulk with the idea that it would make an excellent start for trades at Artfest.

Fortunately for me, Artfest has brought some deep and wonderful friendships with other artists and I continue to meet (and retreat!) with them on a regular basis. It also introduced me to some fabulous teachers who I otherwise would only have known through their blogs. Like Roxanne Padgett for instance. It was in her class that I overcame almost all my colour fears. In fact, just looking at her artwork before I went to Artfest led me to Be Brave with Colour while making my Artfest Journal to take with me (as you can see by the front cover above).

And it was in her class more colour fears fell by the wayside as I created the portrait above. It's so completely different from anything I'd done before that I still can't believe I made it myself. I enjoyed her class immensely ~ from the warm up exercises that loosened us up, to the actual techniques of creation (this portrait was developed front to back on a sheet of plexiglass), to seeing the amazing variety of the work by all the other students. I've been eagerly awaiting her book "Acrylic Techniques in Mixed Media: Layer, Scribble, Stencil, Stamp coming out soon, and I'm *so* looking forward to it, although it won't be the same as having her right there encouraging me to *explore*, but it'll have to do.

My experience in her class, and in other Artfest classes have continued to feed and nurture my creative courage even today. So colour me bittersweet - missing Artfest, but loving where it got me.

Oooooo .... pretty ...

Sorry ... couldn't resist showing you the rainbow of painted buttons I finished today to trade at Artfest. Is it just me or do they look like giant, shiny, tasty smarties? They look so pretty all spread out together, I've been running them through my fingers like a colour-demented Scrooge McDuck, enjoying how they feel and sound ... oh, and trying to figure out how to keep them all for myself. Mwah-hah-hah.

Whoosh! Say ... wasn't that a deadline?

This year's trades: Books, Mini-Zines, Buttons & Tags

Time tends to speed up as Artfest approaches, and this is especially true when it's time to make all those items to trade with other attending artists. I decided to make a variety of items since this'll be the last Artfest (insert moment of silence here).

The largest (and most collaborative!) trade item is the Book of Faces (top left). I posted an invite on the Artfest Yahoo group for people to send black and white line drawings of faces to add to my ongoing collection ~ an attempt to encourage myself to draw more faces. I'm pleased to say the finished book contains more than 150 drawings, as well as additional sections on tracing and clipart, as well as blank pages so people can continue to add their own faces.

Also included (by kind permission of Kathy Barbro) is a section I'm calling "Art Projects for (Big) Kids", which features some of the face-themed projects over on her Art Projects for Kids website. Her site  has *way* more than face-related art projects, and I highly encourage you to surf over and have a look, particularly if you have children or, what the heck, if you've ever been a child. The full-size version of my Book of Faces will be traded with people who submitted drawings, and I've made four mini-zine excerpts of the book (the blue covers along the right-hand side of the photo) to trade with other attendees. I'm so pleased with how they all turned out ~ and relieved to have them all done in time!

I'm also making some laminated luggage tags with some cool thread "dribbles" on the back. Mr B. wanted to know how exactly you "dribble" thread ...he insisted it's not really possible ... of course, when I showed him what I was doing, he agreed that dribbling was as good a word as any he could think of.

Artfest-wise, I'm also making some fun 1" buttons, as well as participating in the Artfest ATC book AND the 4x4 chunky book, but thank heavens all those bits and pieces were sent to their respective organizers long ago. I might even manage to get a few more ATCs made when all is said and done. Whoosh, indeed!

For any of you who've been to Artfest, I don't need to tell you how wonderful and rare an experience it is. So, here's a shout out to Lelainia for taking me to my first Artfest years ago, and bunches and bunches of appreciation for all the fabulous teachers and like-minded friends who've grown out of my Artfest connection. I know this last Artfest will be amazing and bittersweet and I plan to soak up every little bit of it ~ hence the overkill in my participation this year. I wish Teesha and Tracy and their whole gang all the best as they set their sails for other projects and artistic horizons.

Artfest 2011 - Part 4 - Pretty Vial Things

My last class from Artfest this year is Pretty Vial Things with Michael deMeng. Our mission was to alter a bottle into something more interesting, but these words barely convey the extent of alterations these bottles endured.

It's been a few years since I laid my hands on tools as beefy and vigorous as the ones we used in this class. Michael gave us a guided tour of the tools and rules before we set off ... how to (or how not to) drill, burn, scrape, paint, attach, detach and puncture nearly every material imaginable, what sticks to what (and what doesn't). A good refresher for me.

And then we set to working with our amazing variety of shapes and sizes of bottles. Some of us came with something like a clear plan of what we wanted to do to the bottles we'd brought with us. Some of us were busy rifling through our bulging containers of random bits and pieces hoping a juxtaposition of materials would activate a lightbulb over our heads.

My bottle was supposed to be a "practice bottle". I thought I'd tinker with it until I got a clear idea of what to do with a lovely (and rare) tapered squarish bottle I'd brought. But the practice bottle somehow took on a life of its own. Michael's supply list had included some materials I'd never worked with (apoxy clay, primarily), and I set about a little task to test its strengths and weaknesses. My test was to raise up the bottle off the table by creating a "fence" of hairpins around the bottom. I wanted a space underneath to put something (I wasn't sure what at the time). Not only did the apoxy clay work ~ it worked fabulously, although it did take some time to dry. As for what went underneath, well even I didn't see that coming.

The day went by very quickly, each of us hard at work on our own little creation, and Michael flitting about the room answering questions and offering assistance with the more dangerous experiments involving sharp revolving metal things and/or fire. He also gave us a really in-depth session on how to mix those crazy paint colour combinations he comes up with. I have to admit that learning his paint mixes was a huge motivation for me choosing his class and he didn't disappoint. I indulged in one his Shades of Alchemy swatch books - it's just the sort of thing I'd create if I'd come up with paint names like Serial Killer Red and Verdigris Crunch.

Somewhere along in the morning Michael reminded us that he would playing music all day, but at 4:00 (sharp!) he'd be playing the theme music to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and we'd be expected to bring our creations (at whatever stage of completion) for a group show & tell and critique. I must admit that the first few times he said this I didn't really get the full import of his statement, and didn't even catch the ironic humour of the song title. Bruce and I had just re-watched The Good, The Bad and The Ugly a few weeks before Artfest, and my first thought was how cool the music was. Somewhere after lunch (when he said it again!) I finally got it. Also, my piece was definitely headed for the Ugly category at that point in the afternoon. Okay, maybe not "ugly", but definitely not "done".

At the appointed hour (4:00, as I mentioned) we all gingerly placed our ex-bottles (which were now sculptural to the nth degree) on a long table and gathered our chairs to see what Michael might make of our efforts. It's been awhile since I've been in on a critique session. Okay, there was a writing workshop with Lynda Barry, but her critique (as promised before the writing exercises) was simply to say: "Good! Good!" with genuine enthusiasm and move on to the next reader. So what would Michael say, I wondered. Firstly, I give him full marks for asking each person "Is your piece pickupable?" before gently holding it up for us to see. I can honestly say he never once said anything negative, even when the creator in question (including me) was not so confident about how exactly to finish off. I thought my piece was a little "light and frothy", especially compared to some of the darker pieces in the class, and Michael said not to worry, to finish it the way it wanted to be finished. I'm glad I listened, I kept it light, tending towards a kind of weathered Victorian ornamentation rather than the aforementioned Serial Killer Red.

If the variety of bottles before we started was exotic, the variety of things we'd done to them was astounding. The question I asked several times of the artist whose work was being held up was "HOW did you do THAT?!". There's something about the layering of paint and texture that can completely obscure the methods and materials, and that's pretty darn exciting when you're an artist ~ that you can make masking tape look like worn linen, that you can make glass look like rusted steel, that you can make plastic netting look like metal mesh (which is what is wrapped around my bottle).

I hadn't finished my piece by the end of the day, and I spent a few hours after class getting it ready for the Big Show & Tell at the end of Artfest (where all the students are encouraged to show the results of their 3-day adventure). When I bumped in Michael doing the rounds at the Show & Tell, he asked me if I'd finished. "Of course," I said. He asked me to show him what I'd done, and I have to say that even though I was pretty happy with what I'd done it was icing on the cake to have him *really* look at it and appreciate the final result. He looked almost as pleased as me, and then he high-fived me, which I think is quite possibly the first time in my life I've ever been high-fived and even thinking of it now makes me grin.

I'm not sure what to call this piece, although the name that sprang to mind while I was working on it was "Where Sweet the Late Bird Sang" in honour of a Kate Wilhelm SF story. It's been awhile since I read Kate's story, but in some ways this piece reminds me of her writing. You think you're reading about one thing, and then you find yourself aware of some darker undercurrent that's actually been present all along. At the Artfest Show & Tell, just as I was about to pack away my things, a young woman came along with a friend and said: "This is the one I was telling you about. You think it's all pretty, and then you see the hands underneath and you get a little chill ...". I smiled to myself and thought of Kate ... ah, *just* the affect I was going for.

Artfest 2011 - Part 3 - Encaustics!

More about Artfest ... yes, I know it was in April, but I've been, well ... bizzy.

Today's image is from my encaustics class with Patricia Seggebruch. I'd tinkered with encaustics before ... even bought one of those little encaustic irons after 2 days of classes last year.

The classes I took last year were definitely a more painterly approach to encaustic wax. I struggled mightily to create things that looked like real trees and flowers with a medium that seemed spitefully determined to look like crashing sea waves, nebulae and psychedelic dream sequences in 1970's movies. I felt a certain urgency to get things right, even while the hot iron was sliding dreamily about on a cushion of hot wax which looked deliciously edible and exotic. At the end of two days I could see that if I stayed at it, I would eventually be able to do landscapes, floral arrangements and other non-psychedelic representations of reality.

The trouble was that I wanted something *deeper* ~ I wanted the wax to be absorbed into stuff, be embedded with stuff, be scratched into with tools and have pigment rubbed into it. I wanted encaustics that even the hard of seeing could enjoy ~ by running their fingers over edges and bumps. I wanted to look at the surface of the wax and feel like I was looking *through* something into something else ~ like fog, or water ~ getting hints and glimpses of what lay beneath. A kind of archaeologically sculptural experience, rather than a painterly one.

Luckily, that's exactly the kind of encaustics that Patricia was teaching at Artfest. What I've shown you here is my "warm-up" exercise ~ we were given three small boards, and then shown a whole bunch of possible ways to alter them. I decided immediately that I would make a tryptich showcasing as many techniques as I could ... the red panel has embedded pattern tissue, and surface incising with oil paint added. The center blue panel has image transfer, and scattered gold leaf crumbs embedded. The last yellow panel has texture built up by stencilling through punchinella, text made by impressing with metal letters and dotted lines made with a pattern tracing tool with red oil paint added. All three had underpainting with pigmented wax and their edges tinted with pan pastels, and then overpainted with medium again.

Our main project for the class was a book with wooden covers that we altered with encaustics, and although I tried a few more techniques, the end result was a little boring after the freedom of playing with the triptych. I think (having made more than a few books in my time) that I stayed to the tried and true in the book construction and really didn't let loose the way I had with the warm-up exercise. A shame that ... there were some really amazing books that came out of the class, mine just wasn't one of them.

So ... I have this *problem* when I make art ... I just get so *danged* attached to it that I can barely let it go. Whenever I make something, I always (yes, ALWAYS!) make two ~ so I can keep one. It makes the letting go a little easier. But I have to say ... encaustics might be the thing I can finally do where I'm not compelled to keep one of everything. I can see myself actually parting with my creations happily ... not because I don't love them just as much, but because they're so much fun to make that the sheer volume of keeping one of everything could easily overwhelm any storage space I might have. Of course, in reality, the supplies cost a fair whack, so that should help keep the volume down as well.

Since Artfest I haven't yet invested in all the accoutrements of encaustics (apart from buying the iron last year), but I know I will because it was just way too much fun. Now if I could just find a wholesale supplier of wax medium, I'd be a very happy camper ...

Artfest 2011 - Part 2

More on my adventures at Artfest ... this episode: too much fun with paint!

My first day's class was Roxanne Padgett's Lush Layered Canvas. I'd taken a class with Roxanne at Journalfest, so I had an inkling (paintling?) of what was coming, but I knew I had SO much more to learn from her. Like how not to be so timid with colours. Okay, I'm still timid, but it's not her fault ~ it's just going to take a few more whacks on the brain to make me more adventurous.

The first thing she had us do was paint a colour wheel, and you know in all the exposure I've had to art, art classes, art teachers and art supplies, I've never actually sat down and made a colour wheel before, and I gotta say - it was a treat. Yes, yes, of *course* I know the primaries, and the secondaries and even the tertiaries, and how it only takes a little bit of dark to significantly alter a whole bunch of light, but doing it was very instructive all the same. Roxanne's advice ("How *not* to make mud") was perhaps the most useful of all, since making mud is the thing that usually scares me away from playing with paint in the first place. We also learned about tints, shades and complements - the stuff that we all think we know about ~ and then you sit down and do it and you see it in a fresh way.

We worked on four pieces at once ... canvas, linen, bottom weight (no snickering out there!) and just your average pre-printed cotton. I eschewed the pre-printed cotton (which was too beautiful to paint on ~ sorry, Roxanne!), and opted to make my fourth piece on paper. Funnily enough, I think I like the paper one best of all. Probably because I chose colours near and dear to me (the colour coward wins again!). Anyway, that's the one I've shown you above. Our basic modus operandi was to start with broad strokes on the bottom layer, and work our way up to more and more detailed layers as we went. We moved from piece to piece, letting each successive layer dry as we did so ... by the time I finished layer one on the last piece, the paint on the first piece had dried enough to move on to layer two, etc etc.

I *did* try to coax the colour coward out of the box, but the results were (to my mind) so atrocious it's one of the few times I wished I could turn back time so I could *undo* my work and go back to the step before when I'd really, really, really liked the piece. Oddly enough, this is the piece (other) people seem to respond most positively to, so obviously I am *no* judge of anything. And no, I'm *not* going to show you that one. Well, not right now ... maybe after I stop sulking and trying to turn back time. This negative turn of events made me chicken out of finishing one of the other pieces, since I knew I was on the verge of Doing Something Undoable That I Might Regret to it and I wanted to think about it a bit before I did that. So that's why I'm not showing you that one either.

I blame *none* of this on Roxanne, who is an amazing and generous teacher. When I'd taken her class at Journalfest I spent most of my time muttering things like: brilliant!, why didn't I think of that? and OMG (in a good way). This time I resolved to a) take better notes, and b) take lots of photos, both of which I'm happy to say I did. I came home fired up to cut my own stencils! use paper plate palettes that become art in themselves! and never waste paint!

So far, I cut two stencils in class: an anatomical heart (loosely based on one of Roxanne's own stencils) and a rowboat, and since I got home I've been experimenting with a woodburning knife to *cut* my own stencils in acetate ~ hey, it works! Instead of paper plates, I've opted to use file folders for palettes (I have like 200 of them and they lay flat, and I can use their random painty goodness in future zines!). And I've been smudging, stenciling and stamping my about-to-be-leftover paint onto already-leftover bits of canvas lying about the studio. Cool ~ looks like I actually learned something.

The dress stencil I used on the piece above is one of Roxanne's own multi-step designs, and she has a *wealth* of ideas about stencils ~ commercially-available, cut-your-own, stuff that was never intended to be used as stencils, you name it ... she's made me aware that I should keep my eyes open at *all* times for hidden pattern and texture opportunities. I'd highly recommend anyone interested in this sort of stuff take a class with Roxanne - she's the bomb.

Artfest 2011 - Part 1

I must be getting old ... coming home from Artfest feels like jetlag {artlag? festlag? surely there's a German word to describe this, they have a word for everything}. It might be sleep deprivation ~ I stay awake far into the nights {did I mention the military beds?}, or I'm too wired to sleep ~ my head brimming with ideas, and then it's back up at 7:00 to get breakfast before class each day. Thank heavens all I had to do was wander sleepily across to the commons building and into the buffet line, where some very nice {morning} people put lovely edible things on my plate.

I kept bumping into people I knew ~ either from other retreats, or from classes at previous Artfests, or from swapping through other websites {hey, beenebag!}. And this year something odd seemed to be going on ... I'm not sure why, but I felt more "settled". I've yet put my finger on the why of it, but I just felt more present and confident and at peace. I didn't do my usual "sit-at-an-empty-table-and-see-who-will-sit-with-me" shy thing I used to do in the dining room. With 500 or so people milling about with food trays {okay, maybe not ALL 500 at once!} there was always someone to sit with ~ so I did. I traveled down this year with my friend Rose {hey, Rose!} and we always looked for each other at meals, and even had our first day's class together, but then it was off in different directions.

There was the usual trading frenzy at the first dinner, and as I'd posted a link to this blog on the Artfest yahoo group, it was heart-warming indeed to have people actually recognize what I'd made from seeing my blog post beforehand. Apparently I'm still getting used to be out there blogwise. I made 120 trades and only came home with about 20 {never fear ~ they will find a home!}, and I received very creative stuff in return. Lots of people handed out collage packs, which came in VERY handy in class on day three. The trading pretty much continues throughout Artfest, and Rose very kindly kept pointing me in the direction of people who had cool stuff I hadn't seen yet {Have you traded with the pea lady yet? She's sitting over there ...}.

And now a word to my gentlemen readers {if indeed there are any}, here's something you might want to remember when faced with an audience of 500 or so artists {primarily women} who've come to take three days worth of classes with roly carts bursting with art supplies ... after dinner on the first night, Teesha and Tracy, our most excellent hosts, had the teachers and the Artfest crew come to the mic and introduce themselves ... and one of the volunteers nearly got a standing ovation for this: "Hello, my name is Richard, and I also know Tracy from an unnamed online game, and my passion is ... lifting heavy objects for women." Of course, your circumstances may vary, but I'm just saying, you might want to have this line in your repertoire.

More on Artfest in the next few days ... after I've recovered a little more from Festlag!

Prepping for Artfest ...

It's that time of the year again, time to go off for a *massive* creative get together with 500+ like-minded folks ~ AKA: Artfest!

For those who've been to Artfest no explanation is necessary, for those who haven't been, it's hard to know where to start ... imagine summer camp for grown-ups, completely dedicated to the creative experience, hosted by people who are dedicated to creativity in their own lives.

The teachers are fabulous, the food is wonderful (I think *any * food I don't have to cook is wonderful, but seriously, it's a miracle we all don't gain 5 lbs in the 5 days we're there!), and the accommodation is ... um, barracks? Yep, that's right, the venue of this artful party was previously a military fort.

I'm scheduled to take three intriguing classes (more on this later), but there's so much beyond the classes at Artfest ... one of the traditions is that lots of people bring some small thing they've created. This year I've made three things to trade: a very traditional ATC (artist trading card), some artful little buttons and a rather clever (if I do say so myself) bobbin made by adding a whole whack of colour to a quite ordinary clothespin.

There's still a bunch of stuff I've got to do before I go, but I think I'm narrowing it down to the last few fragments and oddments ~ it's tempting to take a whole studio's worth of art supplies, but over the years I've learned to travel lighter each time. More about Artfest when I get back!