Last Missive from Artiscape

"Waxing Literary with Charlotte" was the first class I taught at Artiscape, and the last but not least, that I'm sharing here. I want to share these lovely assemblages before I leave on Sunday for Art and Soul Retreat, just outside of Kansas City. (More on that below.)

The "Charlotte" class was really fun! All of the Artiscape classes were half day, so students had to jump in and create. This class rose to the challenge and made these great assemblages. Each person brought an unwanted book. We covered the books in encaustic medium and paint, collage, and a wide variety of embellishments. Each student received a genuine Frozen Charlotte doll. I love what they did! 

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I'll be teaching four classes in Excelsior Springs MO starting next Monday! Art and Soul Retreat will be held at the historic Elms Hotel and Spa--a lovely old lodge with lots of atmosphere. (And they say, a ghost...) I still have a few spots open in my classes, so if you are planning to attend or want to, check them out! 

"Altered Alchemy" at Art and Soul

Before I share photos from the second class I taught at Art and Soul last week, let me show you what I came home to...We had water damage to two bathrooms a few weeks before the retreat. Now asbestos folks have come and gone as well as the damage cleanup people. Now we're ready to reconstruct the bathrooms. Happy retreat memories sustain me during this process!

The gutted upstairs bathroom. Kinda wabi-sabi?

Now I'll get to the good stuff. This class was subtitled "Altered Books 101." We covered preparing the books, backgrounds, photo transfers, adding embellishments, and a lot more. I hope I led the students into becoming altered book addicts like myself!

Time Travel: An Altered Book Diary: Pictures from Art is... You Retreat

Here are some pictures from one of my workshops at 
Art is ...You. Hope you enjoy them!

Time Travel Journal

In this workshop, students created an altered book journal in the form of a diary or journal honoring a  person or being they admired. You can see here how the work progressed, and I have included some of my class samples as well.

This student begins a journal written from the perspective of her great-grandmother

  The addition of a lace collar brings the old photo to life

My demo pages

The lacy page above was made by coloring with a white neocolor crayon over collage. I then used packing tape printed with a lace image over the layers below. The result looks like it was embroidered. On the left hand page above, I pasted a lightweight beige tissue onto the book page and then wrote on it with a steel nib pen and walnut ink.

 

 A beautifully decorated page using rubber stamps,

Tim Holtz tissue tape, added text and color

 

The beginning pages of a book dedicated to the Divine Feminine

 The student utilized the original design on the book pages, layering them with translucent colors, and adding text.

 

  Delicious pages to the Hindu Goddess, Kali

 

 Pages to Radha, consort of Krishna. 

The student combined a collaged image of a pillared pool, and image of Krishna and Radha, layers pf paint, and additional images to make a luscious whole.

The gold leaf embellishment was the perfect final touch for this page

 

A page from my demo journal