Monotypes and Chine Colle in Medford

Last month I was lucky enough to be able to take a three week class and workshop with Nancy Jo Mullen in her studio. This workshop was my reintroduction to printmaking which I have essentially been away from for 10 years. When I walked into Nancy Jo's studio I was greeted by all the familiar smells from my days as a studio lab assistant at Santa Barbara City College. The class was so much fun and all the other gals made for such a supportive atmosphere, I am inspired to get my main studio cleaned out, my press set up and get back into printing. Here are a few examples of prints from the class and workshop and you can see the rest here...







Now I am very excited about the possibilities for combining the printmaking with my fiber design and then throwing encaustic into the mix. It seems there's a great circle here Fiber>Printmaking, Printmaking>Encaustic, Encaustic>Fiber. So hopefully will begin a few experiments to see what I can come up with in those combinations. I'll also report on how the studio remodel is going. For now, here is what my work area looks like. Shocking!!

Busy Times

It's been a while since I posted and I know I need to get caught up with what's been going on here, so I'm putting up a few photos from over the last few months of little play projects that I have been working on. Since I have been doing a lot of waiting lately, I decided that I needed to update my hand sewing kit with some new things that would interest me more than the English paper pieced stars I've been working on for the last few years. So I decided to bring on my favorites, batiks and texture. Hence this braided stitched piece made from batiks inspired by Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn. Who knew ripping fabric could feel so good?



Another is what I call my "teabag" project. It's a small piece made with teabag papers and hand stitching. Thanks to friends who helpfully saved their teabags for me (another weird art project...) I have enough to make something really big if I decide to. I love the look of the tea stains which make it seem very vintage and the hand stitching is fun because I'm not worrying about sizing or direction, just seeding them in. Now how can I get people to drink more blueberry and raspberry tea so I can get more colors in here? Not sure what I will do with all this yet, but am enjoying the play aspect of it as well. Perhaps it will evolve into a new piece.



In the next few weeks I'll try to blog on the monotype workshop I took in February and the encaustic painting workshop I did earlier this month. Been trying lots of new things so I have lots to share.