Convergence: Molly's excellent Milwaukee adventure, part 1

Faithful readers of this blog have heard me go on about Convergence, the Handweavers Guild of America's biennial conference, for several months now.  I was excited to be selected to teach two studio classes.  Now that the conference is over, I want to share some highlights.

First, it was just great fun to teach such a capable, curious, engaged (and engaging) group of students.  They truly are the "cream of the crop," and tackled everything I threw at them with good humor and excellent results.  In both Fabric Painting 3 Ways and in Art Journaling to Kickstart Creativity, our goal was to experiment, to try many techniques and activities, to explore rather than to make finished products.  Nonetheless, I was impressed at what students were able to do,  Take a look at what happened in Fabric Painting;

Some great work with Dye-na-Flow silk paints

One student's take on Van Gogh, using Neocolor II watercolor crayons on cotton

Students applying Dye-na-Flow silk paint after their resisted designs have dried

Applying Pebeo gutta resist to stretched silk.  Resist contains the free-flowing silk paint
"inside the lines."

This resist design turned out great!

So did this one!

Using a toothbrush to push Shiva Paintstik oil paint onto fabric inside masked-off areas.
 The red-orange area shows a pattern transferred from a rubbing plate underneath.

Using rubbing plates and a Shiva paintstik to transform an "ugly" commercial fabric.  

The other class, Art Journaling, did a series of sketchbook exercises designed to explore line, shape, value and color.

This student's marks and lines convey particular emotions.

a collection of linear patterns gleaned from magazines and other sources

collage combining varieties of shape and line

a grayscale constructed from found papers

I've been seeking feedback from my students, and one student wrote that she felt one mark-making exercise didn't have much to do with what she is really interested in--weaving!--but then she found she was able to translate her marks into a weaving draft.  Well done!

I first started preparing for Convergence over a year ago.  It's hard to believe it's finally come and gone.  I'm already looking forward to 2018.

Convergence Classes

Have I mentioned how thrilled I am to be teaching at this summer's Convergence conference in Milwaukee?  This is the biennial conference for weavers and other textile lovers and artisans, sponsored by the Handweavers Guild of America.  It's about time I shared some of the details about the classes I'm offering.  So here you go:

Fabric Painting 3 Ways:  This is a class in surface design.  We'll be creating patterns on commercial cotton and silk with three very different kinds of paint: Shiva paintsticks, Neocolor II watercolor crayons, and Dye-na-Flow silk paints.  Neocolor IIs are watersoluble wax crayons that work like watercolors on paper or fabric.  They are easy to use and to clean up and give great results with minimal drawing experience.  Shiva Paintstiks are oil paint in stick form.  They can transform commercial cotton fabric into one of a kind material for your art quilt, mixed media piece or collage.  Dye-na-Flow silk paints offer intense color and are easily heatset with an iron.  We'll experiment with all three of these paints, using stamps, stencils, rubbings, resists and other techniques, on both cotton and silk, to make a fabulous collection of patterned fabrics that you can use in a whole range of projects.  And you get to take home starter sets of each kind of paint!
There are still a few spots left in this class.  Click HERE to register for this full-day class scheduled for Thursday, August 4.

Fabric samples painted 3 ways

Art Journaling to Kickstart Creativity:  This is a full-day expanded version of my Design Kickstarters class.  It's designed to get you comfortable with using a sketchbook or visual journal to capture and develop inspirations for your textile projects.  Learn how to get around the fear of the blank page and generate quick compositions that can be the start of a new design.  No drawing experience needed!  Get acquainted with the essential elements of art and design and do hands-on exercises to learn how to make them work for you.  We'll also cover how to use photographs as sources of imagery.  This class is all about the playful exploration of possibilities.  Several spots still available in this class; click HERE to register.  It's taking place on Friday, August 5.

Collage is one way to work in a sketchbook

6/1/2016 UPDATE:  Collaging Convergence has been cancelled due to low enrollment.  But there's still room in the two classes above!  
Collaging Convergence:  I thought up this class as a fun way to cap off your week at Convergence.  Bring the goodies you've collected during the conference, combine them with mixed media materials and papers I'll provide, and make a collage that will encapsulate your experience.  You can choose to make a mailable postcard or a larger piece that becomes a lasting memento.  Learn tips that make collages visually exciting--there's more to it than just gluing a bunch of random stuff down on a page!  Discover how to use collage as a strategy for generating designs--and how to elevate it to create a true work of art.  This 3-hour class takes place on Saturday, August 6.  

Collage materials collected at Albuquerque Convergence 2010

 I hope to see you in Milwaukee! 

Keepin' it Creative

In both my Design Intensive and Design Kickstarters classes, I share my "Top Twenty Tips for Continuing Creativity."  Most of us struggle to find enough time in our daily lives for creative work.  And once we find the time, we may run into stumbling blocks that slow down our momentum.  Over the past twenty years as a working artist, these are some tactics that have worked for me: 

 Use even the smallest blocks of time.  Try to find at least 20 minutes every day to sketch, stitch, note down an idea or try something out.  I discovered "the rule of one hour" when I was making bed-sized quilts and hand-quilting them.  If I could stitch for just one hour a day, eventually the quilt would be finished.  Even 15-20 minutes a day, if that's all you have, can be productive.  In fact, I can really get down to business if I know that's all the time I have!

I wove on this for 90 minutes after dinner last night--soon I'll be done with the background and get to start weaving the image in the cartoon!  (Those are my initials in the lower right) 

Keep your supplies out and accessible as much as possible.  Make it easy to get started or to pick things up and work if you have a few free minutes.  More than one artist's dining room has become their studio.  Above you can see my tapestry loom in the family room.  (Do yourself and your family a favor though and keep any toxic supplies out of the kitchen.)  

Tell your inner critic to get lost until the piece you’re working on is finished.  It is artistic abuse to judge it in any harsh way while it’s still in process.  On the other hand, do listen to the small still voice of the piece itself telling you what it needs.  Be willing to let go of cherished preconceived ideas or materials if they don’t seem to be working (“kill your darlings” as writers say). 

 Keep it fun!  If it’s not fun, try some other way of working, some other art form or medium or size or process.  Try cutting up your piece and reassembling it! 

Make visual decisions visually.  You can’t tell from just thinking about something whether it’s going to work—you have to try it out and see it.  And this leads me to the topic my students can count on me to preach about:

If you are working with materials or processes that are new to you, make samples.  Do a model or a rough draft of a representative part of your piece before you do the full-scale version.  Use the exact same materials and techniques you plan to use in the real piece in order to get the most accurate information from your sample.  You may need to do several samples before you feel sure of where you’re going.  The knowledge, confidence and peace of mind you gain by sampling is priceless!  Save your samples—they will become a valuable reference library for you.  I have drawers full.

On the other hand, be careful not to work an idea to death before you start the real piece.  Save room for spontaneity and creative decisions as you work, to keep it fresh and loose.

I wound and beamed this warp for scarves yesterday but I'm not sure yet which weave structure or weft colors I'll use.

I have lots more to share on this topic.  In the Atlanta area, I'm offering Design Kickstarters here and Design Intensive here in the next six weeks.  Would love to see you in class!




 

 

keeping a visual journal

Recent pages from my sketchbook

 As I get ready to teach my Design Kickstarters class in a couple weeks (and there are still spaces if you're interested--learn more HERE) I decided it might be helpful to share with my students this list of guiding principles for how to use a sketchbook or visual journal.  For many folks, just the idea of a notebook full of blank paper can be intimidating.  The whole idea behind the Kickstarters class is to make friends with your sketchbook or visual journal or whatever you want to call it (Bruce, for example).  To make it a tool that works for you.  To accept that in itself it is not a finished work of art, despite what you may see in magazines or on Pinterest.  For me anyway, it's more like a scrapbook and a way for me to think and feel my way forward.  Nothing more, nothing less.  And if you keep these notebooks for long enough, those ragged old books can become a great resource and record of where you've been and where you might go next.

So, here are my "Rules"*:

1.      * There are no rules. It’s your book.  Make it work for you.  It’s OK to include writing.  It’s OK to cut and paste things into it. In fact a lot of what I do is collage rather than straight drawing or sketching.

2.      Don’t buy a fancy book you’re afraid to make a mark in.  Choose one whose size and proportions and overall look you like.  If you think you’ll use paint in it, choose one with heavier paper.  It’s OK for it to be messy.

3.      Remember, it’s a work book, a way for you to think out loud and try things out, not a Deathless Work of Art.  It’s For Your Eyes Only.  It’s a means to an end, not an end in itself.  Don’t judge it.

4.      You can use your visual journal to work out your ideas as much as possible before you start using art materials.  Saves on materials!  Believe me, I've learned this one the hard way. . .

5.      If you draw or sketch, use something bold like ink or thick drawing pencils and just keep drawing, even if you make “mistakes” or don’t like what you see.  Just keep going—don’t get bogged down erasing.  Silence that inner critic!  Try oil pastels, crayons, watercolors . . . .

6.      Get a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards and try some of the exercises in there, especially contour drawing and blind contour drawing.

7.      If drawing terrifies you, try “drawing with scissors.”  Cut (or tear) shapes out of colored paper freehand—without drawing them first—and collage them to make designs.  Then cut a viewfinder (a rectangular window) in a piece of paper and use it to isolate sections that might work well as a composition in themselves.

8.      If a blank white page is intimidating, start by coating the page with a light wash of watercolor, or paste in a piece of patterned paper as a background, or lightly stamp or scribble all over the page . . .anything to break up the white expanse.  You might even try a sketchbook with black paper.

9.      Take a small sketchbook with you on trips, along with some colored pencils or a small watercolor kit.  New surroundings often produce new perceptions.  Taking photos is fine too, but you only really know something once you try to draw it.  On vacation you can usually find time to sketch.

10.  The more you draw, the better you get at it.  

That said,  I find that lately I do a lot more collage in my sketchbook than drawing.  Or a mix of the two. Whatever works.  Recently I had the unusual experience of seeing a sketch translate almost unchanged into an actual piece.  That hardly ever happens!  

Do you keep a sketchbook?  How do you use it?

Teaching and Learning

Recently, on her always-thought-provoking blog, quilt artist Elizabeth Barton wrote about why she teaches.  Much of what she said resonated with me.  She says, "For me teaching has always been about what I wanted to learn myself."   Like her, I love the process of researching, synthesizing and figuring out to present new information.  When I teach about something I've been learning about, I know what questions and issues students may run into, having recently encountered them myself.  I hope that my new enthusiasm for my subject is contagious.  And when the class and the subject are fresh, I am on my toes in a way that keeps the class experience interesting and alive for all of us.  

Terrible photo used as inspiration for quilt below

Start in Your Own Backyard, art quilt by Molly Elkind

I hear sometimes from other fiber artists that they wished they had some of the academic art training I got when I was working on my M.A. in fibers at the University of Louisville.  As a student I felt like I was being given a secret decoder ring for art--I was learning how value and contrast and balance work in a piece and thus avoiding mistakes, or at least taking a short cut through the painstaking process of trial and error.  And I'm still learning! 

Lately I've found that analyzing and figuring out how to teach the elements of art and principles of design for textile artists is an inexhaustible topic.   The students I had in April in a weekend-long intensive class at Fiber Forum seemed to agree, saying they found the class very helpful.  In this class, called Design Intensive:

•  We talk about sources of inspiration, from nature to books to other artwork to emotions. 
•  We look at ways these nebulous sparks of ideas can be developed into actual work.  
• We talk about how to use a sketchbook--it doesn't have to involve sketching!  
• We touch on how to use--and how not to use--photographs as part of the design process.  
• We do lots of exercises to learn how to make value, color, shape, composition and balance do what we want them to, to convey the meanings and feelings we have in mind.  
• We also talk about how to evaluate our work, both while it's in progress and once it's finished, and how to avoid falling into the trap of thinking it's awful and you're a terrible artist.  

Altered photocopy used in design for Mary (gilded)

Mary (gilded), handwoven tapestry by Molly Elkind

I'm offering this 12-hour Design Intensive in a few locations around Atlanta this summer and fall.  Registration is open now for these locations and dates:

• At the Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild on Fridays, July 17, 24, and 31. 

• At Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance (SEFAA), on Sundays, October 11, 18, and 25. 

 For those who don't want quite such a long and intensive experience, check out my one-day Design Kickstarters class at CHG on August 15.  For this class I've boiled down the essential information and most helpful exercises from the Design Intensive. You'll learn how to start a visual journal (sketchbook), do some work with line, shape, and color, and talk about how to make the most of the always-too-limited time we have for our creative pursuits.

And if you're just itching to get your hands dirty exploring various fabric paints and approaches to surface design, you can take my one-day class, Fabric Painting 3 Ways, at CHG on August 22.. We'll experiment with silk paints, oil sticks, and watercolor crayons on cottons and silk.  You'll leave with sets of each kind of paint and a stack of samples you can use to make a small project or use as a springboard for more fabric painting.   I used oil sticks to transform the fabric on this quilt.  

Sam at Glacier National Park, art quilt by Molly Elkind

You can learn more about all the classes I currently offer at my website's workshops page.  And stay tuned. . . I am working now on some new class offerings.