Teaching collage as Art Therapy - Camp Ronald McDonald

This past year, just before I was getting too pregnant to leave town comfortably,  I was given the opportunity to teach a collage art therapy workshop for 30 grieving parents. It was in Idylwild at Camp Ronald McDonald and the group I was working with was a very nurturing group for parents who had lost children to brain cancer.  Talk about wanting to be prepared to say and do the right things as I led. I felt like my own (lesser) experiences with grief and loss over these past few years and how art and collage had helped me to work through a lot of it - gave me a place to work from as I instructed these families. I brought in a couple of my own works - specifically ones that showed my healing process over losing baby G and prepared a mix of music to work with that was both thoughtful and cheerful for promoting the creative process.

 It was a very moving and precious afternoon. It was also the largest group I've taught and some of the participants had to be won over to the activity as it wasn't really something that they had specifically paid for or signed up for.  In fact, some of the dads were really skeptical at first and attended a bit begrudgingly, but as the afternoon progressed, they were the ones that got the most out of the experience (at least from what they told me).
 

They loved it and the time went quickly. There were tears and laughter and at the end, I received many hugs and thank yous. If I were able to post the un-cropped versions of these pics, you'd see the huge smiles on their faces. To know I was even a small part of bringing that was really special.
I love sharing art with others and these people deserved those moments of joy so much.
 

I've taught a bunch of collage, art, drawing, and silk painting classes to groups now,  and I have to say that this was definitely the most challenging and rewarding class I have ever taught. I am so grateful that I was given the opportunity.

Men Quilters exhibit

An artist friend of mine, Luke Haynes recently opened a show at the Craft and Folk Art Museum near my house. It's a show of quilts made by men, and it was a wonderful, very creative and liberating show to see. The emphasis was on the creativity and message and some of the quilts there simply blew my mind. Luke once introduced me to the artist Joe Cunningham, and I was excited to see he also had quilts in the show.

Joe's quilt, the black/white/chartreuse one that I have details of here was so stunningly quilted that I nearly cried with inspiration. There was also another quilter who I had not yet heard of, named Jimmy McBride, who made this Mars moon quilt which took my breath away.

I would have loved to stay so much longer than I did, but alas, I had a date with me names Dax, who was getting a little bit squirrelly by the end... His buddies Dash and Vaughn were also there (since their mom, my girlfriend, Hollie) was there as my real date. We figured that as quilter moms of boys, this was a great way to expose our babies to quilts as art.

Daring Adventures in Paint

My friend, Tori, encouraged me to take an online painting class with her by an artist named Mati Rose. The class is called "Daring Adventures in Paint" and it's really well organized - a daily email comes to your inbox, encouraging you to try a new technique, read about an artist, watch a video.
Honestly, I've fallen way behind with the core material, but it has motivated me to get the canvases and brushes out and just do some art.
These are all pics of some mid-progress work, none that I absolutely love quite yet, but we are getting there....

collage class - the first few weeks

Collage class started up again at Art Center. It was an interesting decision for me to try and figure out if I could go take the class without Franklyn as my teacher this time around. His passing left a major hole. It was especially noticable the first class. But Mary, who is also an amazing (and much less moody) Art Center professor - has been good for me.
She has each of us working on numerous small projects - one each week - which will end up quilt-like by the end of class. The funny thing for me is that I have years' (I'm not exaggerating when I say at least a decade's) worth of collected and half prepared materials for collages. Before I ever took collage out here in Los Angeles, I had a couple of amazing years of classes in Chicago as a student at the Art Institute continuing education program. I was even in a collage guild there.  I was in a certificate program, with an advisor and everything, and then had a baby and fell off the educational wagon for a few years- though my art never disappeared. Nor my love for collage.

Anyhow - all that comes together with my personality and makes my putting work together a really speedy process. In a way, it seems speedy - because I often leave class with 2-3 wet, finished pieces each night. I was feeling guilty about that for a while, but then I had a few thoughts... 1- my quilts, especially the hand quilted ones - take MONTHS to finish. Many of them take over 40 hours of work. So it's not that I am afraid of working hard or involved hours. And I'm an impulsive person - this is the good side of that! and 2 - the materials I have been using lately have been years in the making - I have about 100lbs of supplies that I bring to each class - many of them are treated materials, that I work on, put a layer of paint into - sew something onto - and then shove it back into the "file" to be used at a later date. Which means that it's not actually only 20 minutes to put together the piece - it's hours of work, paint drying, etc - just spread out over months.
So I'm feeling less guilty about that. Franklyn never liked how quickly I could work - but Mary doesn't frown on it. I've been told by many of my art teachers that I am PROLIFIC. I think sometimes that is meant well and sometimes it's looked down on as an artist. And I know that to be true for me from my very first foray into art. I never make one of something - I always make at least 5. I need that for my brain to settle.

I've recently come to understand that I am most definitely ADD. And not in the "can't focus" way - but in the "hyper-focus" way. And that's just the way I am. It explains why I can't ever sit still, why I am easily distracted, why i have to have something to do with my hands even when I am watching tv and why I do a billion things at once. I'm okay with that.

All that to say, here are some pics of the works I have recently done in the first few weeks of class. By now you know that I am in love with the red and brown color families - words, signs and quotes, silhouettes, books, my kids' artwork, my husband, travel, iphone photography, my children, scraps of old textiles and wallpaper, poetry, and trees. So there are some basic themes that continue to surface. I like to think, though, that each one of these is different enough. Some of them are explorations into my grief of the past year. Some of them are me being thankful for what I have - a healthy family, a new beautiful home in an amazing neighborhood, a marriage that is epically wonderful. I hope you can see that all coming through as well.

"dreaming"

"to be choked with tears"

"I'm remembering"

"it was all there"

"i wanted to be alone with you"

Mimi's fabric collage

Mimi's fabric collage, a photo by libby dibby on Flickr.

It took over our living room for two days. Mimi was a hard worker and even got everyone in the on the act at some point as she cut and glued through my scrap bag. The finished project is about 4'x6' and now is proudly hanging in her bedroom above her bed.
She worked on it between making a cement stepping stone and knotting a fleece pillow. The girl is a crafting machine...(can't imagine where she got that from, I wish my day were as fun as hers!)

Paint by Numbers Party (I have the coolest friends!)

I forgot to tell you about the paint by numbers party we went to. It was hosted by a friend of mine from Art Center and her funny group that calls themselves "The Society of Interesting People for the Advancement of Unique Social Recreation" and they sent out an email invitation that I simply couldn't turn down....

Everyone was told to bring 2oz of paint in any color and we were assigned a number when we arrived. The hosts had combined 3 different (hideous) paint by number designs and blown them up onto this massive canvas.

The  perspective was hysterical (note the ridiculously mammoth trees coming up behind the mountains) and the colors were whack. (pink glitter eagle)...

But it was one of the most fun parties we have ever been to and at the beginning of the night, we only knew one person there. (by the end, we were chummy with everyone)

I'm going to find a way to do this myself somehow.

Inspiration is free - take some ideas!

Isn't it great that we can get inspiration anywhere? Here are a few places I recently found some inspiration:

1 - A child's palette. I was making hair wraps with embroidery floss on the 7 little girls on our camping trip recently and one of the 7 year olds picked this color combo. And it was great on it's own, but when I put it down to photograph and think about later, I only had my pants to use to set it down on, and then this green was there with them. Even as I am typing this now, don't you think this entire photo would make a great quilt?

2 - A child's painting. I feel like Z has such a beautifully abstract sense of creativity.
He wanted me to leave this painting at the museum where he made it, but I couldn't. I needed to chew on the layout and amazing color choices he made. I so could see this being a quilt, too.

3 - Just messing around. While Z was painting the above masterpiece, Mimi was painting mermaids and I was just messing with the paints. I hate this page that I did below, but I love the idea of using it as a study in color, or isolating little sections to find as my Collage professor, Franklyn, says "little moments" that work for further study.

Old Artwork - post 4

I'm not sure if this is a tree or coral, or what. But I loved using an old burlap coffee bag and sewing semi-precious stones onto it. I called  it the "Carnelian Tree" and it still makes me happy to look at this.

Old Artwork - post 3

More installments in my "old artwork" series:

I grouped these two together because they may or may not have happened around the same time, but it's clear the inspiration was the concept of embroidering scenery.

 This tiny piece was what I spent a rainy winter weekend on as we escaped the frigid Chicago winter for a visit to Arizona.  We stayed in a friend's vacation home and though it was rainy, the desert was gorgeous and I sat there inside, overlooking the endless pool as it dropped off into the cool and green valley. The desert had never looked so pretty to me.  Even looking at this now, I can remember more senses and feelings than I normally remember about that trip. Isn't that one of the great reasons we make art?

 This piece also was made on a vacation. It was the view of a valley below us at the home we stayed at in Hyderabad, India. I found it so funny that there were boulders in the yards of the homes below that were larger than the houses. I imagined this would be called, "The Boulders Come With the House" - I'm sure that the doors were probably that color, too - knowing India.

Old artwork - post 1

I was looking through photos tonight and saw that I have a ton of cool artwork that I did 7-10 years ago that I have never posted about here. So here's installment #1. I made this 8"x10" embroidered skyline of Chicago for an auction. I can't remember who bought it, and I doubt I even signed the piece - but I do remember being so proud that it sold.  This was back in my days as a textile designer when I lived in Chicago and was involved in the interior design industry in the city, so the buildings all meant a lot to me.

These days I wish I'd kept this piece! Or at least taken a better picture of it.

Crafts and arts.

I've been taking a college level Collage course at Art Center this semester. It's taken me a while to figure out what I was going to do...I mean, my paper collages are fun, but my professor has been pressuring me to employ more techniques and one of the reasons I took the class was to try and bring together a marriage between my sewing and collage. I spent the first 12 weeks working on another series of painted textiles which may show up here someday, but currently I hate them and haven't been able to bring them to a place where I like them.... So not yet.
But these have happened in the last 3 weeks and I am loving them. They are starting as either family photos or random copies of my kids' artwork. This is just 5 of the 10 I am working on as I explore the concept of what it means to be a foster family. I've embroidered the kids' faces or artwork, or even an encouraging text message from J to me from our journey with Ace... Remember that nervous breakdown? Oy.... Where was I? Oh yeah, I'm embroidering these onto fabric and gauze and then turning them into weird mini quilts. In my mind I want them to look timeless, not current... Maybe a little aged and quirky- like something that you would find in your grandma's attic and wonder about. A series that together tells a story of a family that loves even when it hurts. They're not finished yet, I'm deciding on binding still... But they do make me happy.

Limited Edition Collages available

I've been meaning to post this for a long time - wanted to show images from the art shows that we had, but there weren't a lot of really great images from the shows themselves (see them below)... and then it was the holidays and busy life....

 well, I was finally able to list the collages onto etsy, since a lot of people had asked about buying editions of them and having copies for their own homes.... here they are... now available in large scale museum quality giclee on canvas prints. All will be limited editions. (click this link to see all of them)

New collages

I've been invited to have another art show in North Hollywood. (yay!) This time, I will be doing a themed show (solo) based on the Christmas story and will even be able to sell my big prints. (if you're local... It's Dec 17 and 19)
These two collages happened for me the other night and are going to be part of the show. 

Their descriptions:

a close look at the "Star of Bethlehem" one shows that the hills are made of images of war and destruction (there are images of Haiti, Burma and WWII). Basically the idea is that this moment we depict in peace is actually way more revolutionary than we give it power to be. He came to a messed up, broken world as the Prince of Peace, and actually has the power to implement it.

The second one is kind of spun off of the idea of what role an olive branch would have played in the Nativity. I imagined Mary's viewpoint, looking out over the edge of town from the stable, tired from the long journey, but amazed at what was still to come. The olive tree is just a periphery bystander, but it's presence harkens back to the olive branch of mercy and hope after another long journey that God offered to Noah. Olive trees being everywhere in Israel, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine one stretching it's branches into Mary's line of sight as she pondered all she had been through and all yet to be. 

Collage artist

We are currently on vacation in the mountains... (Big Bear Lake) at the lovely vacation house of some generous friends. On a jaunt into town yesterday, I went into a little gallery of handmade art - and fell in love with the mixed media paintings by A. Breunig. The symbols and imagery are ones I constantly fall back on in my work... Trees, roots, words, houses... I especially love the "home" one.

Bergamot outing

We visited daddy today at one of his offices and since we were in Santa Monica, and it was spring break, and mommy was craving the green mint lemonade you can only get at bergamot station... Well... I pressed our luck and we had a great outing. We practiced our "museum walking" in the tiny non-threatening galleries (we only visited 2) and saw some art that actually really inspired the kids. Mimi wants to go home and draw "right now"! And we didn't have any tantrums or mishaps, we were even complimented on good behavior by a curator...
And I got my mint lemonade.