A Spot of Tea in Springfield, Missouri

I had a lovely time in Springfield with the Ozark Piecemakers at their annual guild show.

My trip began with seeing a fabulous textile exhibit at the new Springfield Branson airport including the humorous work of Pam RuBert and beautiful organza work of Rosemary Claus-Gray, if you live in that part of the country I highly recommend a trip to the airport to see it.

On Thursday I gave a lecture and Friday taught my Tea and Ephemera workshop where we draw and paint imagery on tea bags then create collages on fabric; experimenting with a variety of processes from printing with thermofax screens to working with shiva paintstiks and stencils, rubber stamps and collaging printed abaca paper and decorative tissues.

Back to packing!

Charting a Course in Color

I teach color theory very much like you would learn it in art school, because I think the way to really understand color is by mixing paint and seeing what happens when you physically add one color to another. As an educator I believe experiential learning like this creates the deepest level of learning for most people.

In the first half of the class I show a power point explaining the various terms relating to color theory with graphics and going through all the color schemes with fabric swatch examples along with samples of my art quilt work that falls into the various categories.

One of the first charts we make is a basic color wheel with primary, secondary and tertiary colors created from red, yellow and blue.

It's funny how every class has an over achiever, who takes the project to a higher level than required :-)

Actually this gal is a fabric dyer who wants to really understand how to attain exact colors when mixing dyes.

I think she's well on her way.




After lunch I show another powerpoint with examples of how colors interact and affect each other so that one can choose colors to enhance mood, visual activity, depth and contrast. Then we get on with our next charts.

This is exercise is mixing complimentary colors, one of my favorites! I love the beautiful color palette you achieve when doing this, look at those gorgeous greens and browns made from blue and orange.

The class has 6 charts in all, we usually get through about 3-4 in 6 hours, but everyone has the experience they need to continue at home.

I teach an online version of this class too, but right now the class is on hold until after I move later this fall, am resettled, get a new web host and have the site up and running again.

Linda took my Tea & Ephemera class last year and brought in this fantastic pillow she made with her collaged fabric, it's backed with a rust colored ultra suede.

Beautiful!

Exploring Tea & Ephemera in Cincinnati

The first day of festival I taught Tea & Ephemera which is a class focused on learning a variety of mixed media techniques: drawing on tea bags and adhering them to fabric 

working with printed tea bags

collaging a variety of art papers, napkins, book pages and foreign language newspapers

additional color is applied with paint and colored pencils

rubber stamps provide more options for creating texture 

paint sticks used with commercial stencils and cut freezer paper can create transparant or opaque patterns to overlay imagery

I love having young students in my class. They still have their creative confidence intact and always do amazing work.

we even added printing with thermofax screens into the mix.

It was a fun day of exploration, and after class everyone hit the show floor for opening night.

It was also nice to see the Artists Village again, I had totally forgotten it was going to be at the show, it had a wonderful location between the 12 x 12 exhibit and Tactile Architecture.

This is my house from the exhibit, which is constructed using abaca paper (tea bag paper) that I printed with images and painted, adhered to heavy weight interfacing, quilted and stitched together into a house.

Wednesday: Tea, Preview Night and Dinner with Friends

On wednesday I taught Tea & Ephemera which is really a class about trying out lots of different techniques on one piece of colored fabric.

It's all very spontaneous, playing with various papers, printed paper imagery, drawing on tea bags, using printed abaca paper to emulate tea bags, stamping patterns and texture and using shiva paint sticks with freezer paper and stencils.

It's always fun to see everyone look at the work and see the different things other students did.

On preview night, the show opens to IQA members and then to the public. This is a great time to see the exhibits before the crowds roll in, catch up with friends and stop by the vendors.

 One of the exhibits I was anxious to see was the Artist Village as part of the Tactile Architecture exhibit. I was honored to see Kathy mentioned being inspired by me to start this project after I had made several houses a few years ago. Ironically, I entered my first structure, the Cicada house, in Tactile Architecture and it was rejected, so it's very nice to see a bigger and more elaborate project grow out of that initial art piece.

My house in this exhibit is one of the smaller ones in the center.

When I went by the Between the Spaces exhibit I ran into several friends

Kathy York, Andrea Brokenshire and Carol Soderlund

Jamie Fingal, Rachel Parris, Frances Alford, Me and Leslie Jenison

We have a similar photo of all of us sitting on the floor of the convention center from several years ago, it's nice to be consistent. At the time I didn't know why we were lifting our arms, but then I found out we were doing half of Rachels "too much information" signal she gives us at dinner sometimes. You see, Rachel is from the south and in her neck of the woods, I guess there are some things you don't discuss at the dinner table, lol.

After all the years I have gone to Houston for festival there aren't too many things I buy anymore, but these wood block stamps were one thing I had to get. They are from Coloricious. The owner Jamie Malden designs many of the stamps and has them carved in India. Use regular textile paint with them, just make sure you have a padded surface, like a foam mat, under the fabric when printing.

Me, Kathy and Frances

Jane LaFazio

One of the things I look forward to so much, is dinner at 8 each night of festival with my good friends. Indigo took all of these beautiful photos.

Jamie

One of the rituals at dinner is hanging spoons from our noses at some point during the evening.

Leslie, they both look so regal

Rachel is taking it quite seriously

Me, Kathy and Frances