Art Camp or Bust

When I was a kid, summer was all about the out-of-doors: enjoying the weather (never too hot for a kid), the friends in the neighborhood (real face-to-face friends), playing in water to keep cool, using your imagination and savoring the sweetness of something inherently fleeting. Times were simpler and we were of average means. Water might mean the huge community pool with mobs bobbing, then sunning on towels on the hard concrete, the foot deep baby pool in the backyard, or most especially, running through the lawn sprinkler. We built forts under trees, caught fireflies in jars, drank pitchers of Kool Aid and waited every day for the pied piper music of the ice cream truck. Life, in short, was great.

Our favorite past time, beside art, is observing nature and the garden.

Chillin' after a wild storm played havoc with our nature.

Sunset on the front porch is one of the best times of our camp day. Work done, satisfaction registered.

But for some we knew, there was a different sort of summer routine. People with more money then we went away to "camp" where they took lessons in the arts, rode horses and played team sports, put on plays, sang around the campfire, and engaged in myriad mysteries we just knew belonged only to that special society. We were given a taste of camp several times in our youth, but that meant a two week session at a nearby day program, or the endless overnight misery of Girl Scout  camp, with latrines  we not only used but had to clean, sleeping bags in wet fields, tents with huge spiders on the ceiling, and more chores than fun.

Chores still need tending.

July 1 ? 

I thought I had found my final chance at real camp the summer after my freshman year at Penn State (sweet 1970). I was recruited with a lot of other foolish dreamers in need of a few bucks and a place to continue escaping home, to be a counselor in the Catskills of New York, in a little town called Bethel. If you're old enough, you might recall that's where the original Woodstock music festival had taken place just the previous summer.  I went with high hopes that quickly turned to homesickness and desperation after realizing I was neither cut out for camp life, nor was I the camper. I was a designated slave for ten weeks at slave wages and almost no free time, and nursemaid to five year olds who wet their beds and didn't like sports in the sun any better than I did. I broke out after two and a half weeks (along with about a third of the staff who felt the same way), returned home to work in a factory assembling riot control guns in a time when I was likely to be marching and in need of "control". But those were days when you did what was necessary to be independent of your parents, and I was trying the best I knew how.

In "Shoot Your Art" with Steve Sonheim, I learned about the magic of a couple of shop lights and a level. This quilt, called "Dancing Solo" was made specially for illustrating the design technique, blind painting, for the book "Design Explorations for the Creative Quilter" by Katie Pasquini Masopust.

Getting psyched for summer camp with Carla, we drew on our imaginations and sidewalk cracks.

Fast forward to my current life in "almost" retirement. In a sense, every summer day is camp. Sure I have many household responsibilities to fit in to the mix, but I can craft a day to take advantage of sun and summer opportunities. This year I have been doing what I would have if I could have as a kid: attending art camp.  Of course, it hasn't been the sleepover variety, but that would've involved a lot of travel if it did. You see, my teachers and fellow campers are kind of spread out around the world. So we meet each morning at the computer to get our schedule, go off to a day of creative sessions (with some responsibilities squeezed in) and return at dusk to share around the campfire, although our fire is the flame of "flikr" or Yahoo groups or our counselors' blogs. Works great except for having to make your own s'mores. But I don't have to take swimming lessons (not a water baby), I get to sleep in a private air conditioned room, eat when and what I want. For exercise, I choose to walk every day for 4-7 miles  instead of having to sit on the sideline of a hated team sport, have iced coffee breaks on the porch and a grownup beverage, if I desire, at day's end. I don't have to drink bug juice in a saggy wet suit or be bullied by mean girls. I do miss the story time around the fire, but some days the stories on campmates blogs are far more captivating, and I get to choose which ones to read.

Learning to loosen up and be expressive, these one-liners were so much fun.

As was scribbling.

Coffee  breaks are important in a hectic camp schedule.

Just a little shout-out to my great counselors: thanks, Steve and Carla Sonheim (calling in from Seattle, USA) for photography and drawing lessons, and happy attitudes. Thanks to Sharon Boggon, stitcher extraordinaire (all the way from winter in Canberra, AU) for her excellent lessons in creative embroidery design, the art of discipline with freedom. You can check them out for your next summer camp. But why wait, when summer is a state of mind, and it will soon be summer again in other parts of the camping planet.

At the end of week one, four paintings entirely from imagination, with the help of Carla's techniques for discovery.

Never a plan, just working from the "gut" and having fun.

When you finally like them, they are done, and not a minute before!

Oh, and as counselor Carla says is the first order of business: "spring out of bed enthusiastically!" You know that I always do!

My "blob" creatures are full of joy!

In the Summertime When the Weather is High...

The creative life presents such a quandary. To be creative you have two paths to follow. Practicing your craft is the most obvious: drawing and painting, photography, stitching, time spent designing and recording the parts of your world into interesting new manifestations of your perceptions and feelings. And yet there is an essential and primary path to being an artist: knowing how to be alive in the world. Being both an observer and a participant in the order of things is where you find the meat of your creative vision. There are many ways and places to do that interfacing, but for myself, the recharge comes best from direct connection. And in the summertime that means just go outside and plug in to life.

Looking at life through the canopy of a Japanese maple.
 What was planted as a spindly leftover that lost one-third of it's bulk the first year is now a beacon for my house from down the street.

Life and inspiration are everywhere right now. Sunlight and shadow, soothing breeze and violent thunderstorm. The constant movement of birds and insects across my path. The drone of mowers. An endless stream of golfers in carts and golfers addressing their shortcomings. 

The cool spring was perfect for abundant long-flowering of my azalea.
The garden hippo approved.

Ah, but the birds. They have been my constant companions lately. The drama of the territory and the building of homes. The whole birthing cycle with me as enemy of the peace (sometimes the squirrel gets chased from her new nest). Hey everyone, it's a big tree and plenty of space for all. But in reality, always the sad realization that some will be found lifeless in the grass and others too slow in the streets, and the hawks ever circling and watching. On my walks across the end of the lake, the swallows dive and swoop around my feet as if I weren't there, but the lone great blue heron will be threatened and take off across the water. I haven't seen the trio of swans yet, but they are probably nesting in a cove. At sunset, the entire population of seagulls takes to the sky and circles the big lake, always moving counterclockwise. I don't know why.

One of the backyard nursery occupants. She shared the gazebo with me on a couple occasions (until Mom and Dad wised her up about the ways of humans.)

The last of four to leave the nest. Never leave home during nest building, or robins will take all your favorite spots!

And my garden. Built on twenty summers of love and careful attention, and it's own will to return, expand or contract, give and receive. It has grown mature and lush, and I am continuously startled to know it is mine. And yet it is not, for when I move on in retirement, it cannot come with me, and those who come to stay in my place may abandon or remove it. I cherish it while I can, and try not to feel sad to move on.

Early growth in the formal herb garden: Echanacea and Sweet Woodruff,  plus an interesting planter that will hold mint.

My favorite clematis produces a major cascade of these lavender colored blooms.

Cranberry iris: a week or so of glory, and gone.

Oh yes, summer can fill you up before you ever gather friends to the grill, or head to the beach. So art has slowed down for me on this first summer of my declared art life, and yet I am happy and at peace. More often than not, I am pulling out the camera instead of the sketchbook. I need to record the constant changes of color and light and growth, and I need it to be quick, and not a major project.  In fact, I am beginning a two-week class to improve my skills a notch. Photo Silly is being offered online with Steve Sonheim (and a great assist by Carla). I am excited for the assistance and the feedback of the forum. I am learning to love this ongoing connection to other seekers of the creative life.

This practice assignment involved looking at light sources to begin to understand their effect on the subject. Then we ate the meal and shot the changes. What would life be without peanut butter and jam?

Because flowers are here for the picking, it was a good time to try eco-dyeing this past weekend. I'm not sure I have the big passion for it, since I started studying silkscreen printing last year and expect to return to that after the photo class is over. I like intentional mark making and graphic, bold lines which silk screen can easily reproduce. But it was fun to try after Jude showed us some delightful purple from petunias. I gave it a go after realizing everything was at hand, including a copper mixing bowl I had the foresight not to give away cheaply at my yard sale last week, some gorgeous dark eggplant petunias and grape purple pansies, a bit of habotai silk leftover from my recent shibori class, and some cotton twine. The resulting cocoon sat in some water in the copper bowl for a day and produced a seemingly tight connection between fabric and purple (with a tinge of green and some green cotton string.)

Copper Magic

The cigar is a roll up of habotai silk and flowers. The green comes from the copper bowl.

About twenty hours of contact between flower and silk. Rinsed and ironed.

Because I'd rather stare out the window and daydream, I have resumed a pleasant UFO from the late '90's to complete. It needs much rambling stitch for a ribbon effect, and them some simple free motion quilting. The blank powder room wall has been waiting two years to receive this quilt, and I will soon enjoy looking at the Finished Object every day.

"Almost" as good as being in the garden. (Not really.)

Machine embroidered ribbon detail.

Another set of curves.

I am also continuing to practice telling stories in stitch by embroidering a woven piece I started just prior to becoming a member of Jude Hill's cadre of slow cloth storytellers last winter. I loved it mightily before the stitching began and it is very difficult for me to use it as an experimental learning place, but how else can I make art or learn to be better, except to do that? I recently shared the story with my SEW forum buddies. It involves years of self doubt stemming from childhood. You see, as a kid, all I wanted to do in life was be an artist. But family and teachers without my vision steered me from this path, and onto none in particular, wasting a lot of creative time trying to fill the void. Before the Internet, a person's world was considerably constrained to family and friends of a local nature, and sometimes that wasn't a wide enough support group. So this piece is entitled "I'm Tall Enough to Do This Work" (a reference to other's unfair stereotypes laid on my shoulders.)

In the just pinned stage. The piece is currently being hand embroidered to continue the story.

The weave is built on the shortened hems cut from my jeans, and many types of hand painted cottons, recycled kimono silks and a bit of linen napkin.  The journey to today plays out from left to right with childhood in fresh green, thwarted by black through some muddled and diffuse middle years, and on to a time of upward growth and warming self-acceptance on the right. This piece came to me in a flash--probably my first stab at conceptual art. It started my journey.

A sculptural teak root bench on the front porch.

This summer I will absorb life, and I will practice new skills. I will think about how far I have walked in less than a year. I'm going to "chase right up and touch the sky."  And then maybe a picnic at the beach.

Reach Out and Touch

It's been an intensely arty couple of weeks. No time to think about blogging. Sure, the Internet encourages instant sharing: it's possible to finish a piece of art or a step in a piece or a thought about a step in a piece, and within minutes your blog world fans can be there with you communing, commenting, commiserating, cheering. All the sharing, so warm and fuzzy...or eventually tiring and meaningless? I mean, how many times in one day or week can we find something that someone has done or said to be remarkable, say something witty about it, be kind and helpful, contribute in any useful manner?


At what point as an artist do you need to shut the door and just be with yourself, your muse, and your process? Too much Internet sharing and we not only lose time and energy better spent on the art, but we lose the integrity of our own vision. A poem (by someone who hasn't written one since high school):

We like too much,

we see too much.

Our art becomes homogeneous.

So as much as I love my blogging, online classes and forums, I am trying (with baby steps) to back off just a little, and give myself breathing room to work. That said, let me show you the recent reality.


One of the most constant creative muses in my recent life has been textile artist extraordinaire, Jude Hill, a true original. She doesn't teach her designs, she teaches how to design, how to think about design, how to let go of the rules and be original. Of course, we, her students, will tend to mimic her as we study, but we are learning something so much bigger as we build the pieces to a new type of "quilt" art, based on something ancient, but thoroughly modern at the same time.


Jude makes all her art by labor intensive hand sewing, and sells very little of it. So recently, when a small piece I had admired (as I watched it be born on her blog) found its way to her shop just at the moment I was paying attention, I was able to adopt this lovely creation. "The Edgekeeper" now lives in my sewing studio and looks over my shoulder as I work. Along with this small cloth came some of her magic thread, and an extra surprise cut from a piece of her exploratory work--treasures all!

The "Edgekeeper" under a March full moon

Fellow student and follower, deanna, has a marvelous blog that recently celebrated 200 entries with a giveaway, and somehow, on April Fools Day, I had my name drawn from the basket to win. Deanna's gift will serve as a daily reminder that my Internet friends are real (and talented) people.

A gift of friendship in my mailbox today

Lucy likes it! She says--no reason a pin cushion can't be beautiful.

Meanwhile my very real Designing Women met this week for the first time since the passing of our best pal, Jeri, in late February. It was a bittersweet reunion, because Jeri loved to try anything new, and missed out on a day of relaxed creative fun, food, and sharing. I passed along, to a great reception, the technique of making craft foam stamps that resemble entire paintings (as learned the best I could) from the article "Faux Silkscreen"by Patricia Gaignet, in the September/October issue of "Cloth, Paper, Scissors Magazine."

My friend, Jeanette, created the stamp, and gave me free reign
 to customize  a picture for myself.

For the past five weeks, I have been taking two classes online. One is "Mixed Media with Paper and Cloth" by Jane LaFazio, that has kept me massively busy producing parts and possibilities of interesting pieces that I will continue to work on for months to come. So far two are done (or nearly so.)

Time Machine--how a small paper/fabric collage became a quilt

Detail view to the layers of color and texture

Comfy Chair--mixed media paper on painted canvas,
 adapted from an original watercolor journal page

The other is an introductory course in shibori, or the Japanese art of shaped dyeing of cloth. It is taught by "Shibori Girl," Glennis Dolce. Motifs are dyed into cloth (rather than printed on the surface) through a combination of folding and clamping, stitching and drawing up, and wrapping around poles with string. The designs can be simple or complex, but are never identically the same twice. Again, I will be working on my own for many moons (an inside joke) to really put in the necessary practice to feel even somewhat accomplished.

Itajime Shibori--overdyeing with resists

Stitched shibori--mokume (wood grain)

Stitched shibori sampler showing the process

Stitched shibori scarf

As if my life hasn't been interesting and colorful to the max, I recently received a totally out of the blue surprise invitation to come visit an Internet friend on her own turf, a place I know from my youth, but haven't experienced for many years. I am more than stoked for that!


When I think about this creative life, it brings to mind the vision of a circle of people from my folk dancing youth. You always had to reach out both hands and take the hands on either side of yourself. Often they would belong to strangers. It didn't matter. They reached back and took yours. The music would start and the circle would begin to move. Together for just a moment in time and place, you shared a joyful creation through motion. Then over, but not lost. For the artist, the real creations are not the results, but the experience of the doing. Create something this week, alone or with someone. Make a friend, deepen a friendship, know yourself, find your place.

A New Paradigm

This week's story caused me a big brain cramp trying to birth it.  It may be because it's more about my messy state of mind than the neat and pretty art I've been up to. Change, which I can't control, versus drawings and designs, which I can. I've interspersed the art for relief when you get tired of the words. Hope you don't get a brain cramp too.

When I was a public school educator back in the eighties, our school administration conducted a serious of lecture/workshops to introduce the faculty to some "new" social terminology (lifted from the field of scientific research): the paradigm. Simply stated, this is any philosophical or theoretical framework widely accepted as the norm. When you embrace the paradigm, you are "in the box." 

The goal was to acknowledge our current habits of reasoning and learning, and  to begin thinking "outside the box." This movement to new social structures is called a "paradigm shift." As I recall, we were instructed that a BIG ONE was happening in society.  The computer was starting to be everywhere, and for that and other reasons, our world was getting smaller.  Now we had to be on board to teach our students  the art of change.

Sketching at the mall with water soluble pen

Soon to be a victim of changing paradigms

At least that's how I recall it. Maybe I was doodling in the margins, and thinking about a guy named Fred, but I swear there were boxes and arrows and all kinds of lists of "what's in" and "what's out" and "what's about to be in and out."

That was about twenty five years ago (I gave up teaching about five years later, for numerous reasons I may talk about another day), and it's all really a blur except for the gut memory of confusion and boredom at these sessions. But in the end, a lot of change has come to pass in the way we think about and live our lives. This considerable shift in social structures has brought about what I believe is a big change in brain function as well. In those days, even with the prevalence of computers and video games, most of my interaction with people in my life was face to face, or at least ear to ear (with extended phone conversation.)  On the days that I couldn't get to my friends, we would talk in endless detail in cohesive phone chats.

Sketching on location: outdoor details (as seem through a window)

Just before the snow melted

Nowadays the phone almost never rings, and "chat" is barely more than instant text exchange. Most of my daily human interaction (outside that old school presence of a live in spouse) is done in tiny tidbits of short isolated postings over the Internet. As much as I love to death all the new people I am meeting and the possibilities of relationships that abound, it no longer has the same intense, messy personal connection of those pre-cyberspace days. I look at the sheer number of humans I talk to daily and then consider how many of them can be there for me in real life. What can be so comforting in theory (unlimited connection), fails to fulfill the real human need for physical proximity, eye contact, touch. "LOL" is definitely not the same as laughing together.

A box made from art to store small art journals

The bottom and inside of the box; a real, not theoretical one

And yet, if it weren't for this new "box,"  I wouldn't be talking to all of you, and I wouldn't be exploring my art which has become, in a very short while, the center of my life. I think I understand there is no going back and I wouldn't want to. So I've decided not to emphasize the negative aspects that come with change, but embrace what's good in it.

My most recent design in Contemporary Woven Boro, called "Blue Moon Heart"

Being aware of the box, I too can think outside. If I can help it, I will have a long connected life. It is far from over, and I intend to continue looking beyond the horizon where the best of the future will be. I'm going to follow that sun.

Get Your Motor Running

Sometimes my mind goes quiet for a stretch and I don't have a need to connect in verbal ways. I mentioned this last week, and yet it struck again. It is not to be construed that I am out of ideas or projects or general joy with life. Actually, just the opposite. I am lately in the "Artist Zone". I am full of the doing. I am absorbed by the doing and don't need to justify, clarify, or quantify. Every day seems to just flow lately. The To Do Lists aren't being written, because there is basically just one DO--create something.


Actually many somethings call me daily, but I let them whine and scratch at the door to my attention. I'll open it when I'm good and ready for you! Today is blog day, yesterday was watercolor journaling day. Each session belongs to itself and no other. Each has all of me. So even with the enticement to "do it all", I am gradually coming into a place of focus and concentration.


The one area that still vexes me and gives me that twinge of guilt is the online connection. As I mentioned last week, I am taking two different classes in two different disciplines with at least 150 other creative souls. If you participate in these forums, you know how demanding of your time and attention they become. You are torn between wanting to know these people who stories are so like yours they could be you, or so different and mysterious, they fascinate with rock star aura. Here is the opportunity to make worthwhile and even lasting connections and yet the time spent talking, knowing and commenting often saps the quiet and the space required to create and learn. So I say here today, if you are one of these new friends, and I've not been duly attentive, it isn't for lack of wanting to, it's to be able to keep up with you!


The Strathmore Recycled Journal Pages lesson has come to a completion and I am thrilled with how much I learned in just these three drawings (in four incarnations).  They have given me a leg up on the use of many materials and techniques and an excuse to just run wild. No pressure, no purpose and yet, a lot of joy and good result.


(You'll get the most out of seeing these if you click to enlarge, or better yet view them on my flikr page where they can be framed in quiet black.)

Where Did Pinky Go?
The addition of a whole lot of doodling with markers, white and gold ink completes the craziness.

Fifi and Cow
Same materials and techniques, more subtly done. Really pleased with the outcome.

Deconstructed Hippo
My total favorite of the recycled pages, complex and very satisfying.

My class in Contemporary Woven Boro has produced two new starts. Unlike the drawing activities, most of these cloth designs have no endgame at this point. They are pure experimentation. Some will be embroidered, embellished, quilted, and used. Some will be considered "sketches" and put aside. Either way, they will mostly not be completed within the time frame of this class, so that I can concentrate on getting the most learning rather than the most product.

Initial layout designed in an online program by Jude Hill. After being woven, the fabric strips representing the earth began to grow a tree. That's how things work in this class. That's why you need time to consider and let the cloth tell you what it wants to do or be.

Experimenting with weaving parts of one t-shirt into another, seeing how knits react to the process.

The place I achieve both learning and product is the class designed to teach me how to get started with visual journaling of my daily life, specifically in small sketch and watercolor vignettes. My skill with both has progressed tremendously since I began the first lesson in session one last October, with three pieces of fruit set in a simple single line frame, with no particular journaling or story.

Week one assignment: keys

Lately I'm all about the storytelling

Now we are being required and released to head out to our public lives, to set aside the concept of still life, and bravely draw what we see in front of us in the "real" world. My first coffee shop session yesterday broke the ice and moved me to a new place.  I went to my artist zone, forgot the other patrons and painted. The only distraction was a truly lovely moment of connection with another artistic soul. A young cashier with a joyful smile came to peek and said, "Isn't drawing fun? Don't you just love it?"

I wanted to drink that latte so badly! (No worries, I didn't let it get cold.)

Truly I have taken last week's keys and headed out to the highway in search of my life. It's going to be a blast of a journey.