2025 Workshops...so far...

 Thought I would round up the workshops I have scheduled so far in 2025.  Online and In-person. Hope you will join me for some!

Here they are:

Decorative Longstitch Binding (Zoom)

Wishi Washi Studio (virtual)

Saturday, February 22nd, 2025, 1:00 - 5:00 Pacific

Decorative Longstitch 

Origami Travel Notebook (Zoom)

Wishi Washi Studio (virtual)

Saturday, March 1st, 2025, 1:00 - 3:00 Pacific

Origami Travel Notebook 

Stitched Photo Collage (In-Person)

ASIF Studios, Grass Valley, CA

Saturday, March 15th, 1:00 - 5:00, 2025

Stitched Photo Collage

Art and Soul Retreat (In-Person)

Art and Soul, Portland, OR

Stitched Photo Collage

Mending as Utility and Embellishment

Print and Stitch: Stencil Printing and Embroidery on Fabric

March 22-24th, 2025

Print and Stitch

French Stitch Cracker Box Book (In-Person)

Wolf Craft School and Collective, Nevada City, CA

Sunday, March 30th, 1:00 - 4:00, 2025

French Stitch Cracker Box Book

Shape, Pattern, Color: Hand Stitched Sampler Books (In-Person)

Work of Heart Studio, San Jose, CA

April 26th and 27th, 10:00 - 4:00, 2025

Shape, Pattern, Color: Hand-Stitched Sampler Book

The Studio Coat: Hand-Stitched Garment (In-Person)

Wolf Craft School and Collective, Nevada City, CA

May 16th - 18th, 2025

The Studio Coat at Wolf Craft

The Studio Coat: Indigo Dyed and Hand-Stitched (In-Person)

Botanical Colors, Seattle, WA

July 24th - 27th, 2025

The Studio Coat at Botanical Colors

Looking forward to seeing some of you out there!

And, remember, I always have online workshops on Creativebug, 24/7!

Aqua Lab Project

 I've been quite remiss about blog posts lately but wanted to get some information up here on a project I've been working on and an upcoming gallery exhibit.

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I'll be having a solo art exhibit at Minnow Arts in Santa Cruz, CA entitled: Aqua Lab: in Search of the Third Thing.

The exhibit runs from May 3rd - June 9th, 2024. There will be an opening reception from 5:00-8:30 on First Friday, May 3rd, as well as a closing reception on First Friday, June 7th. I will also give an informal talk from 3-4:00 on Sunday, June 9th. Minnow Arts location: 204 Locust Street, Santa Cruz, CA. Regular hours are Saturday and Sunday, 2:00-6:00.

Since First Friday is often crowded and it’s sometimes hard to talk and see the work, I will be in the gallery from 2-4:00 on the Saturdays and Sundays following the opening and closing receptions: May 4th and 5th, and June 8th and 9th.

DH Lawrence wrote: 

Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one,

but there is also a third thing, that makes it water

and nobody knows what that is…

Aqua Lab is an attempt to define that “third thing” through open water swimming and the collection of data including: swim dates, water and air temperature, latitude, longitude and elevation of swims, the collection of earth pigment from the shoreline of lakes, recording swim routes, and photographing the color of the water. All of these elements will come together in the gallery with a watery and swimmerly installation. I hope you’ll float by…

And, just a reminder if you are interested in workshops - I'm good about updating my workshop page here on my blog. Also, online workshops are available 24/7 on Creativebug!

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.

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.

 

 

Shakerag 2017

I have recently returned home after my week at Shakerag Workshops in Sewanee, Tennessee. I had been there once before and it was so nice to return this warm, friendly, gracious and familiar place. It was wonderful to see some friends I had met there previously and join up with those that I was acquainted with from other areas.

 

After teaching for a week at Arrowmont I decided to roll on down the road and be a student at Shakerag Workshops. I took a class with Dorothy Caldwell entitled Human Marks: Drawing, Stitching, Batik, and Bookmaking. What a pleasure it was to meet and spend the week with Dorothy. She is grounded, giving, gentle, and that other "g" word again - gracious. A talented artist and teacher.

Textile piece by Dorothy Caldwell

 

 

We began the week by making simple marks with a variety of tools. Sometimes the mark would stand on its own and sometimes it would be repeated, combined, and layered.

 

 

 

Then we started stitching. Dorothy had conducted research in India on traditional and contemporary kantha cloth and she shared with us stories and examples of these wonderful pieces of women's work.

 

 

We started stitching cloth in the kantha style that would eventually be a wrapper for the book we would put together later in the week.

 

 

More mark making processes were shared.

Inspiration board of Dorothy's work and processes

 

Result of student blind stitching exercise

 

And, then the bookmaking began. I love the woven binding that Dorothy taught us - so simple yet rich and textural. The first book we made was from the piece of paper that acted as our place mats earlier in the week - by Thursday they contained ink spills, notations, and doodles, and when torn into book pages created some interesting juxtapositions.

 

Finally we put our week long mark making experiments together into another book. I had used the water harvesting system in the building where our workshop took place as my muse throughout the week. I was immediately taken with the lines, curves, and shapes of these structures and also the idea of reuse, sustainability and water!

 

 

I sketched, drew, and made stencils inspired by these shapes and then repeated them throughout the week in our mark making exercises.

 

What a wonderful class - the content, the teacher and my fellow students. A very kind, sharing and talented group to say the least.

 

A visit to Shakerag is not complete without as many dips as possible in The Rez.

 

To see more about Shakerag Workshops visit my posts from June 2014 - there are three of them and you can search in the box (upper right) or click here, here and here.

 

Thank you Shakerag, Arrowmont and Tennessee! I know that I will return - just hope that it is sooner rather than later.