New Teaching Venue!

HEre is the delightful space where I will be teaching classes!! This is Sophia Street Studios owned by terrifically talented and generous potter, Trista Chapman.

Last Friday was our First Friday Celebration for March and I worked all week to prep for the reveal of the classes that I hope to teac in the classroom space that Trista will be providing. This is a very exciting turn of events for Fredericksburg as there are very very few venues that have dedicated teaching spaces. Other teachers will be sharing the space with me and we hope to grow this aspect of Sophia Street Studios to provide a dynamic roster of instuction opportunities for the community. Trista was incredibly generous in wanting to sell my work at the studio as well.This is such a wonderful complement and I am so grateful to have my work displayed along with the other wonderful artists work here.

The pottery that you see here is a wonderful example of Trista's delighful and colorful work!!

Sophia Street Studio's ona typical First Friday Night!!! The loft upstairs(at the top of the window) houses the studio's of painter Mirinda Reynolds, Karen Whepley and the pottery studio of Trista Chapman. The classroom space is in back behind the gallery area.

For the launch of the Classes , I set up two tables in the classroom area and displayed class samples of various areas of instruction along with class descriptions. I am gathering names and will start classes as soon as I can arrange convenient times for students. I will be offereing daytime classes during the week and also on the weekends. I am not going to be teaching in the evenings

I hung lots of textile art samples to Art Up the place as well and to show all of the wonderful possibilities for artistic expression.

I included my recent publications with the original pieces. I plan to teach Journal Making and Techniques for Altered Books.
Gelatin Monoprinting and Sun Printing are also on the list.

Making Mark Making Tools and Carving Rubber Stamps will also be on the Class Line-Up.

Trista also asked me to display some of my art work in the Gallery.

If you are in the area, do stop by Sophia Street Studios or contact me directly and we can get some personal art experiences arrainged for you!!!!

Fabulous Inspiration!!

Working with kids and learning from kids and creating with kids is one of my main sources of INSPIRATION!!!
Last Friday, I returned to Fredericksburg Academy to help the 5th grade students finish up their collaged clip boards. The students were also working on a gift for their mom's for Mother's Day. Their stupendous art teacher, Mirinda Reynolds, had combined a coiled clay pot lesson with the study of Ikebana (Japanese Flower arraingment) for a wonderfully creative and culturally expansive art lesson for the children. Mirinda does not let a single lesson get by without tying the creative endeavor into a world history lesson!! She is an AWESOME teacher and a wonderful artist!!
Several of the students had experienced some of the sorrows of kiln firing and had lost their pots in that part of the process. They had time to create new pots and fire them once but the glaze process had to be left behind. Together with the students, we came up with a very creative and colorful solution to the unglazed pots. With several decorative napkin tops, some matte medium and a bit of gold ric-rac , they put together a Mother's Day gift that any Mom would be thrilled to recieve!!! We were all very pleased! The students were also very proud of their inventive solution and realized yet again, that almost anything can be used in the creative process. Here are the modified glazed pots- our colorful collage pots!!!!


Now I will share with you some of the creative expressions in mixed media collage created by the 5th grade classes!!!

They were all so very proud of their work and excited to explore more collage projects.

The same days that I worked with the 5th graders, I also worked on projects with 47 4th graders. I posted about our project previously, here.

The students painted using acrylics on Art Wipes (our term for Baby wipes).

Then we strung our flag shaped painted pieces on a string with barrel swivels tied to it, to allow the flags to spin on the string. The kid's added embellishments and then picked favorite affirmations to place on each flag. As we were creating we talked about the meaning of the word affirmation and the traditions of the Tibetian Prayer flag and what those flags represent.

At the bottom of each banner we tied a small bell. It was a very successful project.

I had a fabulous time and I am very excited to be planning for next years projects. Mirinda has requested that I return in October!! Whooo Hooo!!!