Explorations in design work

I am getting ready for the next session of my design class starting this weekend - this is Session 3 with an amazing group of women. All are so talented in such different and inspiring ways.  I need to get busy with my work but want to post some of the ideas I have gotten from the types of play we’ve been doing; with watercolor pencil, oil pastel, acetate film, and one of my new favorite media : acrylic gel with fine pumice in it. Awesome stuff!  You can mix acrylic ink into it, as well as paints, and when it is dry on the paper, you can hit areas of it with chalk. YUM.

More on that later.

Felting Summer

Time to get busy with felt! August is the month to go for it: in Honolulu, August 1,2, and 3, at The Creative Festival, three wild days of make and take felt at the Calico Cat booth, with proprietor Carol Kuniyoshi. I look forward to a great time.  I believe there will also be a seminar at her shop on the 9th of August (after we return form playing on Kauai). Since we’ve never been to Hawaii, I am excited that our family’s opportunity for adventure is expanding - all because of my pincushions…

Then, August 15-18, some serious feltmaking takes place in my Experimental Feltmaking: Level One Certificate class at Gail Harker’s Creative Studies Center in Oak Harbor WA, on beautiful Whidbey Island. Students will learn an array of colorblending techniques with fleece and work with a variety of fibers in a controlled and reproducible way. A wonderful resource book and collection of samples will be the result, along with a new-found confidence in exploring this amazing medium.

For some reason I have been unable to post the brochure for this class on my blog: therefore, look in my blogroll and follow the link to Gail’s studio.  In the banner, click the course schedule link and find August. There you will find the brochure and the registration form to examine.

Happy felting! Hope to see you this summer!

 

What’s New With You?

It is spring at our house, and along with the 900-odd pincushions ordered so far this year, I am planning my class schedule for the summer. 

For those of you new to this media, to see photos in my more recent posts, simply roll your mouse over the bold words; these are photo links.  Some  start out showing the photo really HUGE but just wait a bit - they all come down to a reasonable size in a minute.

Upcoming Classes 

Here is the brochure for my exciting new class at Gail Harker’s Creative Studies Center: August 15-18, 2008. Come and learn about fleece types, color blending, and simple techniques in flat and 3-dimensional feltmaking.  Through a series of exercises we’ll explore simple design ideas while becoming very familiar with the felting process; you will leave inspired by the amazing properties of many animal fibers, with the skills to explore them more fully on your own.  This certificate class builds more deeply on existing skills and knowledge if you’ve already been exposed to feltmaking, but is designed for beginners as well, and is not a repeat of the class I taught at the Center in February of last year.  The skills you learn will lead into the level 2 class, already being designed for 2009 or 2010.   

This four-day class is just one of the things I am doing this summer! How about Hawai’i? I have never been there, but my family and I are heading there in early August (back just in time for the class above!), where I will teach make -and -take felt at the Calico Cat booth as part of the Original Creative Festival. Check out my blogroll for the link - if you will be in Honolulu August 1,2, or 3, or on the 9th, when I will  be teaching a longer seminar at the Calico Cat, come join me!

I am a “concrete” feltmaker 

 Many of my  colleagues on the Feltmaker’s list asked about my concrete mixer for feltmaking.  Yes, I really do make felt in a concrete mixer.  Here are the fleece sausages ready to put in the machine.  My helper, Tchaico (pronounced Chycoe) is always ready to add ballgames to the feltmaking fun. He lets me throw it, but always brings it back so I won’t be bored. The sausages go inside with the necessary hot water and felting soap, hard balls and stuff to beat it all up.  Then I put the lid on the front to keep everything contained and go on with the show.  The result?  About 5 dozen lovely pincushions after cutting and drying.  Though it is by no means the only feltmaking I do, it’s the one which uses many pounds of wool each year.

Updated March ‘08 Hot Greece!

I have been revisiting our photos of Greece, using them for design inspiration.  Here are some of my favorites: This one at Delphi  is the Treasury of the Athenians. Here is my husband beside one of my favorite things - it’s just a chunk of Corinthian capital from a bit of column there at the Sanctuary Athenia Pronaia, but I am so inspired at the detail and beauty of the carving in it. Its  has figured in many a design exploration already! At one of our first stops, I was still dealing with jetlag. It afforded me the ability to see sunrise in Nafplio like this, capped by a beautiful Byzantine church dome. We visited many a fortress, but my favorite style of fortification is called the Bourtzi, a fortress built out into the water. There is just so much to tell, but I will share more as my designs grow and take shape.

We returned from two weeks in Greece two days ago. First impressions: mountains, mountains, stairs, stairs, slopes, slopes.  That is a vertical country, at least almost everywhere we visited.  I am working on getting on-line picture storage and will post some stuff there, since we took 1064 pictures!

Another impression, more sobering, was that of forest fire, which did impact our trip in a big way.  We complain about what’s wrong in our own country, but others have struggles too, and there are always new ways to cash in on the misfortune of others, we have found.

Good food, friendly people, lots of history; what we saw spanned from 8th century BC and before, to the 1500s - the ruins we visited, anyway. Astounding, the sheer amount of rock moved to create these massive fortifications.  And since my current studies have lots to do with light coming through rock spaces, I definitely got lots of inspiration there!

 Maybe we’ll visit someplace next which is part of our own heritage, but this trip really expanded my world view. Toilet and shower experiences were very different in this country, and it’s interesting what part water plays in other areas of daily life as well. More on that later.

Photos soon!

Fresh Paint

Fresh Paint is coming! Here is a picture of my booth from 2006.  The Everett waterfront in Everett, Washington, is abuzz with activity for these two days in August. I must be a glutton for punishment because it is always the two days right before I go back to work in my busy library job.  It’s the most energizing event I have ever participated in - it is called a festival of artists at work, and truly, everyone is doing what they do to produce art. I make felt for two days. I get very tired, but it is such a great thing to do. We get to educate the public about what we do, inspire people about art in a huge variety of media, and that makes it worth every ache and pain. It is a blast, and if you are in the area, I hope you can come and join us!  The link to the Fresh Paint website is in my blogroll.

Come and see me! I am in booth #19, near Anthony’s Restaurant. To get to the Marina, take I-5 north to exit 192.  Merge onto Broadway, headed toward 41st St. Take a left on Pacific Ave, then right onto W. Marine View Dr.  You will see the Everett Naval Base on your left just before the light which takes you into the Marina area.

More on pincushions

All I can say about these is, WOW!  I can’t believe how busy we are with these.  It doesn’t seem possible that this many people in the world don’t have pincushions yet, especially since there are those people I encounter who don’t know what a pincushion is, or what it is for, since they’ve never seen a straight pin…

Fabulous Family Fiber Fun!

Wow!  I went to do my gig the Lynnwood branch of the Sno-Isle Regional Library last night and, well, had a blast. My daughter, along with two library volunteers and the Children’s Librarian to assist as well, helped me make felt balls with 32 people!  I was so busy, as were my helpers, that no one even thought about taking pictures.  There were felt balls rolling and bouncing everywhere, with water, soap and lots of great clean fun. The kids found out how hard it was to keep going until the ball was hard, but the smiles of satisfaction were fabulous. I had one little guy who was all of 2 years old, who was soaping and rolling along with all the rest.  This changes my own perspective - sure, the water wasn’t as warm as I get it for feltmaking, but progress was made, and everyone went home with the tools to make the ball harder, and the ability to make more, and everyone was smiling.  It also helped that it was air-conditioned. It was one of thos sweltering days when I was wilting at home, trying to find energy to make this class happen and be exciting and fun. I did, and it was.

Family Felt Fun at the library

I am ecstatic that I am going to be doing felt ball workshop at our local branch of the regional library.  This is so exciting, since I am a library media specialist and met the Children’s Librarian through her presentations at our school. She saw the Pathways to Knowledge piece and that led to a conversation about feltmaking with groups. I had to take off my library hat and put on my feltmaker hat and the result is a class. This is marvelous.  In July I will have this gig, and then I will post more.

Sheep: ain’t they sweet?

I can’t get over how meeting a sheep whose fleece I use makes me feel! It adds a depth to the feltmaking experience I can’t quite describe. This is my friend from Spring Hill Farm, on the Kitsap Peninsula of Washington State.

Pathways to Knowledge

Pathways to Knowledge was conceived and facilitated by Valerie Stein and Debie Frable, and created by staff, students and parent volunteers who worked from February to July, 2006, to make it a reality.

 

Here is the whole story:
Pathways to Knowledge: an all-school community project
Soundview School, Lynnwood, WA
Valerie Stein and Debie Frable, designers.
January, 2006-July 2006

The Pathways to Knowledge project started when Debie Frable, art teacher at Soundview School, and Valerie Stein, feltmaker (and librarian at Soundview) got together and started discussing all-school art projects.

Stein had facilitated many community weavings at various events, but had long dreamed of a project using felt. As it turned out, this was an idea which allowed for an amazing range of skill levels to participate; kids from 4 years old to adults in their 70’s were able to contribute significantly to what has became a very beautiful piece.

Frable and Stein taught art classes from 3rd grade to 8th grade how to make the soft “prefelts” from which shapes could be cut. Older students then helped younger ones to cut leaves for the tree and created the trunk and other components. In addition to cutting their own leaves, staff were invited to create the stones for the pathways leading to this tree. Parent volunteers and others crucial to the Soundview community also cut leaves for the tree. Several felting parties were held to complete the felting process. The piece is now ready to be finished and backed, and will hang in the school’s library, a focal point for the Soundview community.

The symbolism which is represented in the tree is that knowledge grows as we work and learn together; the pathways are the ways in which the Soundview staff leads its students to that knowledge, and through this experience of travelling the path, everyone grows - students, staff, and families.