2020 Workshops - Winter, Spring, Summer

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope that the new decade finds you happy, healthy, creative and well.

Thought I would round up my 2020 workshops and talks that I have scheduled so far in hopes that I will get to see some of you out there!:

glean, gather, group: Jody Alexander and the Santa Cruz SCRAP residency

Free talk at San Francisco Center for the Book about my recent residency at the Santa Cruz dump

Thursday, February 13th, 6:00 - 8:00

Mending Sampler Needle Book

French General, Los Angeles 

Saturday, February 29th, 10:00 - 4:00 

The Boro Aesthetic: Creating Fiber Arts Pieces Inspired by Japanese Textiles

Aya Studios, Stuart, Florida

March 21st - 23rd, 2020

Japanese-style Mending as Utility and Embellishment

A Verb for Keeping Warm, Oakland, California

Saturday, April 25th, 11:00 - 5:00

The Boro Aesthetic: Creating Fiber Arts Pieces Inspired by Japanese Textiles

Fibre Arts Australia, Ballarat and Toowoomba, Australia

June 29th - July 5th - Ballarat

July 6th - July 12th - Toowoomba

Very excited for all of this teaching and traveling and especially looking forward to all of the wonderful people that I will meet along the way. 

I hope that this post inspires you to take a workshop but I realize that it is not always possible...so remember...

I have workshop online at Creativebug 

and a book that goes over much of what I cover in some of these classes:

The Boro Aesthetic: Books, Bags, Zakka, and Zokin

Here is to a creative 2020!

Fall 2019 workshops and looking forward to 2020

Here is a quick look at upcoming workshops for Fall 2019:

Japanese Mending as Utility and Embellishment

A Work of Heart Studio

San Jose, CA

October 13th, 11:00 - 5:00

Boro Sampler Book and Boro Bags

Southwest School of Art

co-sponsored by San Antonio Fiber Artists

San Antonio, TX

November 9th and 10th, 10:00 - 4:00

(class is full - waitlist open)

 

and looking forward to 2020 for those of you planning ahead:

The Boro Aesthetic: Creating Fiber Art Pieces Inspired by Japanese Textiles 
Aya Fiber Studio,  Stuart, Florida
March 21 - 23rd, 2020

The Boro Aesthetic: Creating Fiber Art Pieces Inspired by Japanese Textiles 
Fibre Arts Australia
Ballarat, Australia: June 30 - July 4, 2020
Toowoomba, Australia: July 7 - July 11, 2020 
  

There will also most likely be a February workshop at French General in Los Angeles - we are still cooking that one up - it will be something new! ****update - new workshop is up here**** And, an April workshop at A Verb for Keeping Warm. Keep your eyes peeled for those...

I usually announce workshops first on Instagram and my Wishi Washi Studio Facebook page so join me there to hear about them first. I also list them on my blog - workshop page.

As always my Creativebug classes are available 24/7 from anywhere you have internet access, and my book The Boro Aesthetic is still available from Blurb Books.

Art of Textile Repair and Reuse Workshop, Summer 18

 I taught a new class recently at Cabrillo Arts. The name of the workshop is:

  

The Art of Repair and Reuse:

Looking at Mending and Re-purposing Traditions in Various Cultures as Inspiration for New Work.

 I did quite a bit of research for the course and showed students examples of repair and reuse traditions in the American South, Australia, Japan, India, China and France.

We also looked at the work of contemporary artists who create in the spirit of repair and reuse, and watched videos that exhibited different stitching techniques.

The students created samplers in the various traditions.

These samplers represented Gee's Bend and Wagga Wagga:

Of course, we made samplers inspired by Japanese Boro mending techniques - I always encourage students to vary from the indigo palette and rather focus on line, shape and texture:

 

 Samplers inspired by Kantha from India:

 When I was in France recently I saw some lovely mends on grain sacks that I shared with students - they interpreted those mends in the most creative way!:

 Chinese Ge Ba has been making the rounds on the internet and social media so we explored creating in that style, too:

 The workshop was only two days and would benefit from being a 3-5 day course where we could make the samplers at a more leisurely pace and then move on to personal projects.

 Some students just focused on the samplers but a few applied these techniques to garments that they brought into class and the results were creative, fun, whimsical and unexpected.

I'm hoping to teach this workshop again so look out for it in the new year!

Spring Workshops 2018

Happy New Year to you all!

Mending on a large furoshiki found at a Tokyo Flea market

I was so fortunate that my art and teaching took me to so many interesting places where I met such wonderful people in 2017. Teaching took me to Arrowmont in Tennessee, and to the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico. Both storied places where artists have been visiting and creating for years. My part in co-curating the MUSUBU exhibit took me to Tokyo where I made many new friends and became even more enamored of that alluring city.

Boro fragment from my personal collection - I take this example to every class

Now here we are in 2018 and I have a number of workshops coming up in the first half of the year that I want to share with you. Here is my teaching schedule through the end of June 2018:

One of my Boro Sampler Book pages

Boro Sampler Books

French General, Los Angeles, CA

Saturday, February 18th, 2018, 10-4

(class is full - get on waitlist!)

Japanese Mending as Utility and Embellishment

A Verb for Keeping Warm, Oakland, CA

Saturday, April 21st, 2018, 11-5

Mending on a large furoshiki found at a Tokyo flea

Boro Sampler Books

A Work of Heart, San Jose, CA

Sunday, May 6th, 2018, 10:00-5:00

The Boro Aesthetic: Creating Fiber Arts Pieces Inspired by Japanese Textiles
Mendocino Art Center, Mendocino, CA
Friday-Sunday, June 1st-3rd, 2018

Boro Sampler Books and Boro Bags
Ashland Art Center, Ashland, Oregon
Saturday and Sunday, June 9-10th, 2018
10:00-4:00 each day

Boro Bags

At the end of June I will be traveling to France to join French General's France Getaway Retreat! I will be teaching in the afternoons after the morning outings and adventures. How can you NOT join us?

Exploring Craft, Textiles and Food
French General's France Getaway
June 22 - 29th, 2018 

detail from one of my teaching samplers

 

If none of these locales are near to you remember that my book The Boro Aesthetic: Books, Bags, Zakka and Zokin is available on Blurb and Amazon. It includes handouts from my workshops, text that covers what I discuss in class, color images and a glossary. It is a slim volume but it includes how-to information from three workshops.

I appreciate each and every time that any of you sign up and take a workshop with me and I hope to see you in 2018!

Fall 2016 Workshop Wrap Up

When I had my teaching studio I would try really hard to create a blog post after every studio workshop with a little report on the workshop containing images and information about the structures, instructors, materials, etc.

Since moving my studio this summer I have been lax about writing up reports on my workshops that I have been teaching out and about.

So, here is a little wrap up of my Fall 2016 workshops.

In September I taught at 3-day workshop at Cabrillo Arts Extension (as a result of the Summer workshop filling up and having a waitlist). I took more pictures of the summer workshop that you can see in this previous blog post, but I just wanted to share this wonderful bag that one of the students made on the last day of the September class:

This is a structure that I casually teach as a bonus project on the last day of the 3-day Japanese Boro Textiles workshop. I've played around with this structure a little in the last year or so, and I just love how it looks in this rather unfinished state with the "floppy ears".

In October, I traveled across the bay to A Verb for Keeping Warm to teach my Boro Bags class. Verb is such a wonderful shop and they always gather fabulous students for me who do beautiful work:

In the Boro Bags class we practice Japanese mending techniques on a length of fabric and at the end of the day make the cloth into Japanese style bags. Always a fun day.

Later in October, I had the pleasure of teaching a group of public school art teachers who were in town for a conference. I decided to teach them the Exploding Picture Box since it was something that I could teach in half day, and it was a structure that they could pass on to their students:

I have to say that sometimes teachers are not the greatest students but this group was an exception - a wonderful group that was talented, creative and appreciative!

Next up was a unique opportunity to teach photographers a book structure and talk to them about the Importance of Play. I was invited to teach at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel as part of their PIE Labs (Photography + Ideas + Experience).

 I showed some slides of my work, talked about how allowing myself to play in my studio has led to new ideas, and then engaged them in a little play of their own by having them use their own photographs or found photographs in an accordion structure. They were encouraged to extract lines and shapes from their images, repeat them, and create interactive structures.

 I've taught my Boro Sampler Book workshop many times but it was so nice to teach it at the San Francisco Center for the Book in conjunction with their current exhibit In Remembrance: People, Times, Places curated by Lucy Childs. It is a beautiful exhibit if you get a chance to see it, and my original Boro Sampler Book was included in the show so it was nice to teach along side of the exhibit. And, of course, the students did gorgeous work:

You can see more Boro Sampler Books from previous workshops here and here and here. 

Lastly, was a new workshop for me taught at Handcraft Studio School - one of my favorite places to teach. The workshop was called: Zakka, Zokin and Chiku-Chiku. I have been teaching Boro Books and Boro Bags a lot in the last two years and wanted to vary from that a little while still teaching stitching inspired by Japanese mending techniques. I came up with this class so we could just make stuff! The class was inspired by zokin which are Japanese dusting cloths made from old pieces of fabric that are layered and stitched and stitched and stitched:

My collection of Zokin

Zakka is a Japanese term that means: anything that improves your home, life or appearance. Chiku-Chiku is an onomatopoeia that mimics the sound of needle and thread passing through cloth repeatedly. I just love all these words so I put them together for my class.

Students did beautiful work interpreting these ideas:

 

Phew! That was a lot of teaching. I'm going to take a couple of months off from weekend teaching so that I can concentrate on my own artwork, and some other projects, but I will be back at Cabrillo Arts Extension in March for a two-day workshop called: Creative Textiles: Deconstruction, Reconstruction and Re-Use. We will be taking old clothes apart and drawing inspiration from seam lines, tears, and fading to create new textile objects.

Then, I will be teaching a similar class at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in June that will be a five-day class called The Boro Aesthetic where we will also be taking apart old garments and then looking to Japanese Boro textiles for inspiration in creating new objects

Be sure to check back and visit my workshop page on this blog where I will continue to post workshops as I schedule and confirm them. And, as always, I have classes on Creativebug that are available 24/7.

This is my last post of the year so I will wish you a Happy New Year and I hope to see some of you in a workshop next year!

Three Days Are Better Than One - Japanese Boro Textiles

I recently taught a three day workshop at Cabrillo Extension entitled: Boro Textiles: Books, Bags, Zokin and Zakka.

One of the students brought in this stunning Boro specimen

 

I won't go into too much detail here since one of my students, Gayle, wrote a great blogpost with much better pictures than I was able to take. And, a student's perspective is always different than the teacher's! Here is a link to her blog: Gayleygirl

Some of my books brought in for inspiration

 

For almost two years now I have been teaching the Boro Sampler Book Workshop (see previous posts here and here) and just this last year I developed and taught the Boro Bags workshop (previous post here). They have been very popular and students have done such wonderful work that I wanted to give them three days in a row so that they could really immerse themselves in the subject.

Student sampler pages before binding

 

On the first day we made sampler books to learn what I call the vocabulary of Boro so that students had the language of the stitching and mending techniques in their hands.

 

Student sampler pages before binding

 

On the second day we were able to dive right into the bags since they already had the language down. This allowed them to explore different iterations of the stitching techniques as well as incorporate some surface design techniques into their bags. And, of course, many of the students brought their own gorgeous textiles like this eco-printed fabric:

 

Student work - on its way to being a bag/tsunobukuro

 

Day three was a free day where students were allowed to revisit anything previously taught or to dive into something new like a garment, zakka items or an art piece! To my surprise many students wanted to continue on their bags which was just fine and that resulted in some stunningly detailed work. 

This student made a boro-bunny-bear in addition to her sampler book and bag:

 This fabric was on its way to becoming a vest:

 

The workshop filled so quickly that we immediately planned a second date at Cabrillo Extension and that is coming up in September 2016: information here.

It looks like there may be some longer versions of the class in the works and coming up at a couple of out-of-state venues in 2017 and I'll announce those as soon as things are confirmed and posted.

Next blogpost will be a Fall 2016 teaching round up so you are sure to know where I'll be teaching in the coming months. (And, I'm working on creating a central place where you can go to see where I'm teaching and what is coming up - possibly on the "workshops" page of this blog - makes sense, right? Working on it!)

 

Boro Bags!

What's with the bags? 

I usually teach bookmaking and paper arts classes but for a number of years now textiles have been creeping their way into my artwork, and naturally, my teaching.

Tsuno Bukuro and Azuma Bukuro

Japanese Boro textiles have been an inspiration to me and have greatly influenced my series KEEP: Modern Library. In researching Boro I have taught myself many of the stitching techniques, learned a great deal about the different kinds of textiles that form boro, and started a small collection of my own.

Some Boro Textile pieces from my collection

 

In looking at Boro textiles, I couldn't help but notice the beautiful cloth Japanese bags. Traditional and contemporary Japanese bags are simple yet ingenious in design, and combined with Japanese textile printing, dying and weaving techniques - gorgeous. And then patched and repaired - scrumptious! Possibly, too, I gravitate toward bags because, like books, they are containers that can be stitched in a number of different ways. Their construction fascinates me.

Stitching on one of my Boro Bag class samples

My gateway bag was the tsuno bukuro. Yoshiko Wada taught us how to make that bag at Shakerag and ever since then I have been teaching myself to make other types of bags, mostly by looking at bags that I have seen and/or collected.

Class samples and supplies

I had been teaching the Boro Sampler Book class for a while and it has continued to be popular but I wanted to mix things up a bit so I developed the Boro Bags class. In this workshop we use one length of cloth as our sampler enabling students to work on a larger scale than was possible with the books.

Student work - Boro Bags Workshop

Students learn basic Boro mending and repair techniques that they practice on their cloth and then at the end of the class they make the cloth into a bag. Two different bag patterns are taught - the tsuno bukuro and the azuma bukuro. They are both quite simple, but clever in design, and can be used as a project bag, shopping bag, or even a clutch like bag.

Student work - Boro Bags Workshop

Students can then incorporate the learned techniques, and what I call the Boro aesthetic, into future sewing projects or into their art practice. 

 

Student work - Boro Bags workshop

It took me a while to develop this class since there were so many variables so in January I ran a "beta" class in Wishi Washi Studio to test it out. Everything went swimmingly so I offered two more in the last month and I now feel like the class is tried and true!

Student work - Boro Bags workshop

Two more Boro Bags workshops are coming up so check out these venues if you would like to learn about Japanese Boro textiles, try your hand at some of the stitching and mending techniques, and make a bag!:

Mountain Maid Workshops, Grass Valley, CA - April 23rd

A Verb for Keeping Warm, Oakland, CA - May 14th

(Update: directions for the Boro Bags are in my book: The Boro Aesthetic available on Blurb.com)