After 4 years and more than 600 hours...

EfM (Education for Ministry) is done. It took 4 years and well more than 600 hours of classroom and prep time, but last night was my final class. Take me out of the oven; I am officially done.

If you detect an element of relief in my voice it's because I just got back two evenings every week (one for class and one for reading) for 9 months out of the year. That really adds up. There's also a bit of sadness, which will only really set in late in August when the group reassembles, welcomes new members, and begins the next year of study. I'll also miss the people. We've talked about a lot of sensitive issues and taken risks to speak from the heart about our personal struggles, beliefs, joys, fears, the whole range (or at least most of it). I miss spending this intense time with those who've graduated before me. I'll miss the folks I'm studying with now, and I'm sure that my absence will be noted as well. That's just part of the process.

Four years of studying scripture, church history, and theology then attempting to apply it all to reflections on the reality of day-to-day life has been wonderful. I feel that I've grown spiritually and intellectually as a result. The program isn't perfect, but the overall experience has certainly been a positive one and a good use of my time. I'm not sure that I have many more "answers" to the big questions of faith than when I started, but that wasn't the real goal. What I have is more ways of asking the questions and, hopefully, a set of more developed and thoughtful ways of exploring the possible answers.

If you have a similar chance to explore your own faith in a trusted community with a good mentor (and our mentor, Nancy, is excellent), then I encourage you to do so. It only makes the journey that much more interesting.

"Thank you" to all of you who shared the EfM experience with me. I've learned from each and every one of you and I'm grateful for your generosity, insight, courage, and compassion. You have helped me grow.

Pattern & Content: Day 5

Well, today was a great end to the week. Here's a picture of my final collection of cloth on the wall (all except for the 3 that are still batching). I wish that you could see the rest of the room. It was amazing.

I'm surprised by the volume of work that I did this week, but also by the amount that I feel that I've grown since last summer. The work that I did here is very different from what I did at Peters Valley: more complex, more complete. I feel good about that.

I had a really good critique session with Kerr. She gave me some very helpful feedback and somethings to think about as a way forward.

The picture below is of the last piece before cleanup. As expected, I was getting a lot looser. With this piece I was using polychromatic screen printing to explore complementary colors and designs that don't incorporate my ubiquitous black lines. I like it. It's big, rough, and basic.

My final observation about this is week is this: what a great group of people. As I said in an earlier post, all of my classmates are accomplished artists, some very much so. More importantly though, they were all open, enthusiastic, and supportive. That contributed tremendously to the success of the class. I feel like we all pushed and supported each other. And, if I'm going to give all due credit, then I must say that this second workshop with Kerr did not disappoint. She's a great teacher and guide. If you're a fiber artist and have not studied with her then you owe it to yourself to seek her out. I also have to say that Nancy and her family are excellent hosts, and chef Margaret did her part by making sure we were wonderfully fed all week. If you've never been to the Barn then it's time to visit the web site (www.nancycrow.com) and start shopping for a workshop. It's a great experience.

So tomorrow morning it's off for home for a couple of days of decompression before work starts on Tuesday. I've also got to get back on my diet and try to drop the pound or two that I picked up this week. I wasn't kidding when I said that Margaret's cooking is top notch!

Pattern & Content: Day 4

Here are some pictures from today. There are a couple of today's pieces that are still batching. One of them is radically different from anything I've done. Those will have to wait until tomorrow.

I'm tired. I've been having a lot of fun, but I've also been pushing kind of hard. Cleanup starts at 3:30 tomorrow. Even though we don't have a full day (i.e., 9 PM), I think I need to slow down a bit. I'm hoping I wake up with a clear head and a good idea for how to end the week. To be honest, I think I could just walk in the woods and hang out in the studio and get a lot out of just being here.

Pattern & Content: Day 3

Today's topics were printing with fabric paint base extender + charcoal and/or water soluble crayons, and discharge. It wasn't a good day for discharge--too much wind to work outside and not enough sun to activate the thiox under black plastic. Personally, I'm not fond of using an iron to discharge. I prefer to steam, and that's not an option here. So, tomorrow will be my discharging day.

Here are pics of some of today's work and the washed out versions of pieces from yesterday. Other stuff is still batching, so more pics tomorrow.

Yesterday's work.

A couple of works in progress from today.

And finally, the lady herself, demonstrating proper use of safely equipment. In this picture Kerr is laughing as she struggles to wiggle into her respirator before the discharge demo.

Pattern & Content: Day 2

Another good day--actually a better day. I spent a good bit of time today working on a large piece based on the design I worked up last night. Here are 3 in-process photos. I'm really happy with where this is going, but after looking at the photos I can see that there might be more work needed to pull the whole piece together. I need to get it up on the wall tomorrow.

Just before dinner we took a break from printing for a slide show of Kerr's work. Well, of course it was wonderful. I love the end product, but the process is equally engaging. I don't mean so much the mechanical stuff like, "What did you put on the screen?" and "Is that a mask or discharge?". What I mean is that it's amazing to hear someone talk about their work in terms of their vocabulary of marks and their family stories (such stories) and their life experience. She's able to dissect a finished piece an relate it to...well, to what seems like everything leading up to that moment. But, at the same time I get the impression that these images just emerge during the process of creating, rather than appearing on the cloth as part of a preconceived design that includes every detail.

I can really related to the mind-in-neutral creative process. In those moments when things seem to really be clicking for me, it's almost as if I'm not there or I'm just a spectator.

This class is making me think about my own vocabulary of marks. What are they? I keep coming back to the wonderful feeling of circles and curving shapes and gesture drawings. To me those kind of messy scratchy lines bring energy to a composition and are a joy to create. That's a very strong element for me right now--something to spend more time with tomorrow. But, that's tomorrow.

Ten hours yesterday and 12 today. It's bed time.

Pattern & Content: Day 1

It was a good first day. Even though Kerr is going over all of the basic stuff about the techniques, I still feel like I'm picking up where I left off. I don't know if it's this place or just luck of the draw, but all of my classmates seem to be well developed artists with a fair amount of dye experience. It's making for a fast-paced class, which is good.

Today we started with a warm-up exercise by doing a 4' x 4' charcoal drawing. We even had a jazz accompaniment! The photo below shows my drawing. After some initial gestures we were to think about the inspirational object that we brought with us. My object was a pair of scissors, which is were the oval shapes (the handles) and hexagonal shapes (the nut that holds the blades together) come from.

We did some sample deconstructed prints in the afternoon, and ended the day with prep work for tomorrow. We had to pick an image of a work of art from which to develop a color palette and design concept to explore tomorrow. I started with a painting, then related it to the hex nut image from the morning, and worked up the draft design below.

The plan for tomorrow is to explore this image in as many different ways as possible. It promises to be challenging but very good.

Greetings from Ohio

After a 6+ hour drive through wind and rain, over one massive hill after another, I'm here in Pickerington, OH--about 15 miles east of Columbus. This week I'm spending 5 days at the Nancy Crow Timber Frame Barn taking Kerr Grabowski's class, "Merging Pattern & Content" (http://nancycrow.com/HTML/barngrabowski.html).

Although class doesn't officially start until 9AM tomorrow, we had the option to go to the barn this afternoon to get our workspaces setup and meet the other students. There was a lovely dinner at 6, followed by a full round of introductions. I was surprised to hear how many people have been to the barn before and how many of my fellow classmates have taken classes before with Kerr. I think a number of folks are treating this as retreat time and not just learning time. I guess I am too. It's going to be great.

My very first show!

What do you know? I got into my very first quilt show. Remember a while back I said that I entered my art quilt called "Teach Us to Pray" in the SAQA Amazing Art Quilts Show? Well, today's post contained the usual junk and catalogs plus a thin little envelope with my handwriting on the outside. Dan figure out what it was before I did, even though I've been waiting for it. I gave it a quick squeeze, felt the square outline of a slide inside, and decided that it was almost certainly a rejection.

It was not! Much to my surprise the first sentence started with the word "Congratulations." I don't know what to make of this. I'm heartened, grateful, and surprised. The juror (Julia Pfaff) selected 39 pieces from a field of 122 entries. That's pretty good. The show runs in Staunton, VA Aug 29 - Oct 5 then goes on to the Mid-Atlantic Fiber Arts Festival 2009 in Hampton, VA. I got two for one.

This is just a great send-off as I prepare to leave for Ohio tomorrow morning for my week with Kerr. Five whole days of studio time--what joy.

Watch the blog this week. If things go as planned, I'm going to save a little energy for blogging each night.

Homework for Kerr, part 2

Read my last post before you read this one. It will save me the trouble of explaining what this "homework" thing is all about. The second part of the assignment is to prepare a written critical assessment of my work--not so much a critique, but an analysis of recurring theme, colors, techniques, etc. So, here goes. A critical look of my work

Color

• orange
• green
• blue
• brown
• tan
• black
• love purple, but I've avoided it because I've had trouble mixing it successfully (that's getting better since Carol's class)

Technique

• Mostly working with thickened dye
• Direct application with foam brush
• Doing a lot more painting than I expected. Maybe I'm part painter?
• Screened dye--often printing with the full area of the screen, with or without paper or wax masking on the screen. I like the hard square edges.
• Extruded dye to create messy lines. The syringe is a little hard to control and forces me to work fast, which is good.
• Layered application of dye (some technical problems here that need to be worked out)
• Discharge paste screened on with a mask to remove background dye (love to do this with leaves)
• Drawing with discharge paste in an syringe or a squeeze bottle

Form, shape, and pattern

• Almost nothing figurative or textual
• Lines and grids
• Round and square spirals
• Circles--regular and irregular
• Leaves
• Dots
• Splatters
• Question: what are my cultural motifs?

Texture, rhythm, descriptive words

• Happy
• Layered
• Depth
• Rough
• Messy

Scale

• Patterns tend to be 10" X 10" or smaller
• Overall composition size tends to be about 24-36" wide X 45" tall
• It's time to do a full width 2-yard piece
• Maybe I need a BIG screen

Fiber

• Cotton--some Kona, but lately Test 400M Print Cloth
• Silk--Habotai is my favorite
• Rayon--takes dye really well and great for whole cloth quilting

Embellishment and quilting

• Running stitch to outline specific shapes or add detail
• Fabric paint--outlining shapes with dots
• Fabric markers to add detail or outline
• Reverse applique
• Machine embroidery
• Yarn appliqued by machine--free motion or with an embroidery machine
• Quilting tends to be dense--stipple, lines, or grids, almost all free motion (I don't do feathers!)
• Starting to do some echo quilting

Homework for Kerr's workshop

I'm leaving one week from tomorrow for Ohio to spend a week at the Nancy Crow Timber Frame Barn studying with Kerr Grabowski. I've been looking forward to this workshop since I made my last drive down Thunder Mountain Road in a billowing cloud of dust. That vivid scene was on the last day of the workshop that I took with Kerr and Rayna Gillman last summer at Peter's Valley. Come to think of it, I started this blog just a couple of days later, after reading Rayna's blog and being inspired to give it a try. I'm a little conflicted (but only a very little) about taking a second workshop from the same person. There are some really great teachers out there. Shouldn't I be looking for breadth instead of depth? I guess I'm more of a depth kind of guy when you get right down to it. Anyway, I don't expect this workshop to be a repetition of last summer. I'm going with the expectation of refining an developing some of my skills, getting answers to some of my "what am I doing wrong here" questions, making great cloth, meeting interesting people, and working in the Barn. It's going to be great. I'm already wishing that it was a 2-week workshop, but my boss would have a fit so it's just as well that it's one week.

So, Kerr sent an e-mail yesterday to the whole class giving us a homework assignment. Can you imagine?! Like I don't have enough to d0? : )

First we need to bring "2 objects that you feel strongly about" and these are to be used for inspiration--sketching, collage, etc.

Second, we are to do a critical assessment of our work, looking for common themes, characteristics, etc.

2 Meaningful Objects This shouldn't be hard, but it is. I've done several laps around the house and come up empty handed (but I did do a little cleaning as I went!). I've come to a sort of weired realization: it's the house and it's contents as a whole about which I feel strongly. I have real trouble picking up a piece of pottery or some other object and saying, "I wouldn't want to live without this." Everything I see or touch has a shared memory attached to it. It's something that Dan and I bought together, built together, some connection. This is an amazing and emotional realization.

Now, I still need two things to take with me...I feel strongly about the cats, but Hillary and Isabella would not enjoy the trip. Isabella had a panic attack the last time she was in the car for more than 5 minutes.

I've settled on two odd things, but they are full of meaning. The first is a journal from a couple of years ago. It includes the beginning of my discernment period (the one I'm still working through), the time of my first serious fiber workshop (Jane Dunnewold), and my conscious, verbal acceptance of myself as an artist. Other volumes and this blog have followed, but this first volume represents the whole.

The second object is a pair of Gingher shears. They were a Christmas gift from Dan more than 10 years ago. They weren't terribly expensive, but something I had hesitated to buy for myself. It wasn't a big thing, but one that was incredibly thoughtful. I opened this gift in front of most of his family and sat there in silence with tears welling up in my eyes. I think it was the validation and support that was so moving.

That's enough of that for now. The critical assessment part of the assignment is going to have to wait for the next posting.