Taos 2017

One week after I returned from Tokyo I was headed to the airport again to fly to Taos, New Mexico to teach with Diane Ericson, Design Outside the Lines, at the Mabel Dodge Luhan house.

What a wonderful, nurturing and inspiring venue Mabel's is.

 

 

I was brought on by Diane Ericson to co-teach alongside her and inspire the students with what I have learned about Japanese textiles, and Japanese Boro and mending techniques, and how I applied that to my artwork.

 

We practiced Japanese mending techniques on a piece of cloth that later was turned into a mini-bag:

I got to play around a bit and was experimenting with stencils and fabric painting on some scraps that I brought and turned those scraps into a different kind of a bag. When I asked the students if they would like to learn the structure, the answer was "yes"!

 

Well, a few of them became obsessed with this bag and they played around with the dimensions and pushed the original design of the bag into these fun structures:

 

Seeing as I had just returned from Japan, I could only really allow myself to take a day and a half to site see after my teaching duties were up.

But, my friend and I packed as much as we could into those hours.

The highlight was the Georgia O'Keeffe house and studio in Abiquiu.

 

So minimal and modern!

 And, the short drive to Ghost Ranch was just stunning with the post-rain saturated earth surrounding us:

Although I am thankful for the experience, Tokyo and Taos with just a week's catch up time in between is a bit more travel than I'm used to so I'm trying to slow down and process both of those inspirational experiences right now. 

As usual, more pics over on Instagram.