Wabi-Sabi creations with cold wax and visual haiku

Photos from last Friday's class in oil and cold wax painting and collage, "Baby, It's Cold."

Below are photos from last Satuday's class: "Visual Haiku", in which re-inkers took a prominent part. One of the students gave me one of her pieces and wrote a haiku for the class:

Serena teaches 

haiku serenity--

plastic bags rattling

Thank you, Cathy!

Delicious papers from Art and Soul Retreat

We had so much fun last week at Art and Soul! Here are some of the decorated papers created by my students in "Papers Wabi-Sabi". Some of these are closeups while others are detail shots of the papers. (I didn't suceed in getting good photos of all the papers--some are too blurry to be saved even by "unsharp mask".)

Students used acrylic paint, re-inkers, alcohol inks, collage techniques, stamping, stencils, and more to make these unique papers.

Liz Kettle taught an evening class where students could take their papers and create gorgous tote bags from them!

Visual Haiku in Salem

Last weekend I was privileged to teach at a new venue for me: The Art Department, Inc. in Salem, Oregon. Owner Katy Vigeland is a delight to work with and I was thrilled that she took the class also.

I lived in Salem many years ago and there was nothing like The Art Department there then. That was long before I became an artist, though as I told the class, I may have become one much sooner if there had been a store like Katy's in Salem when I was there.

The class was called "Visual Haiku." It's a  concept that is a bit hard to explain, but everyone got it! They all did really complex and lovely work. Here are some works from the class, both finished and in progress. I showed the class how to seal their pieces with cold wax. Apparently in doing so I got cold wax on my camera lens, rendering a few of the pictures unusable. Those of you who know me won't be a bit surprised.