Sandra Brownlee: Tactile Notebooks workshop II

Yesterday I wrote about last week's workshop with Sandra Brownlee. Sandra brought several suitcases of goodies with her from Halifax, including her notebooks that have fascinated me for the past 16 years. As I shared, I learned a lot from Sandra and my fellow workshoppees (a new word soon to find itself into the next OED) and this week I'm giving my sketchbooks the royal treatment. I'm coating pages with gesso, ink, soil (yes, really!), and other colourful substances. I'm stitching into pages, playing with correction pens and vellum. Thanks to Thea, I'm playing with vellum and ink in different ways. Thanks to Noelle, I'm looking at my tea bags with a new appreciation and I've made a sinfully delicious vegan cashew cream! (Here I restrained myself to only one exclamation mark, but in truth my excitement for the cashew cream is the equivalent of five). Stylish Gitte shared with me her three favourite stores to buy clothes. I learned at least one thing from each workshop participant and a great deal from Sandra. Writing this just makes me want to go straight to my studio.

Sandra Brownlee: Tactile Notebooks & the Written Word workshop

Last week I attended Sandra Brownlee's week-long Tactile Notebooks and the Written Word workshop at the beautiful Contemporary Textile Studio Co-operative in Toronto. I learned a lot from Sandra and from my fellow eleven workshop participants and it will take a few weeks for me to absorb and integrate the new materials and techniques into my sketchbook practice and life. I was impressed with Sandra's teaching, her examples, resources, story-telling, and her Wednesday night lecture at the Textile Museum of Canada. The workshop participants amazed me with their openness and generous sharing of tips, ideas, techniques, and resources. Basically, I was blown away by the people and the well-equipped studio. If you have a chance to take a workshop or course with Sandra Brownlee, do so. If you are in the Toronto area, check out the Contemporary Textile Studio Co-op's workshop offerings.

Postcards: Jennifer Angus

Bugs. Who knew they could be so beautiful en masse? Jennifer Angus obviously realized the potential of bugs pinned into repeat patterns ten years ago. The first exhibition that I saw of her insect work was at the now defunct Tusk Gallery in Toronto, on a cold January day in 2002. The show was called Eupholus Bennetti and the above image is the postcard from that exhibition. Prior to her insect installation work, Jenny worked with photo-transferred images on felt that she stitched and embellished. Her imagery on felt brought her critical acclaim, but the insect installations shot her reputation into the stratosphere. In case you are wondering, Eupholus Bennetti is a weevil, an iridescent purple, blue, and green beetle in the family Curculionidae, and it's a beauty.

Quotes: Buechner + Smith

"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace" -- Frederick Buechner


"when it gets right down to it the individuals that are really doing interesting things and changing the world don't seem to [be] paying much attention to the cutting edge technologies. they're too busy conducting experiments, spending time alone, making mistakes, dreaming up new ideas, sitting in the midst of uncertainty...embracing mystery." -- Keri Smith, from her August 5, 2009 blog post

Found: Dots

Posters are a great source of inspiration. The black dots behind the cowboy and the white dots on his shirt caught my eye. The people who put up posters favour one of three techniques: pasting, taping, or stapling. For selfish reasons, I prefer those who staple because after the advertised event, I can carefully remove the poster and bring it home with me. The above poster was taped in place. Thank goodness for cameras.

More Illustrator fun

© Karen Thiessen 2011 One-colour hexagon pattern

The black-and-white hexagon figure is the first Adobe Illustrator experiment that was worth saving. Just for you, I put it into repeat. While I was a NSCAD student, I hung out with a friend who crocheted. She would crochet a swatch, unravel the whole thing, crochet another swatch, unravel that, and so on. Until I started to relearn how to knit and crochet this past winter, I didn't get it. The same goes for my Adobe Illustrator play. I make patterns, delete the whole file, make more figures and patterns, delete, and so on... until recently. I'm now onto day 50 of learning and practice and I'm beginning to get results worth saving.


The hexagon figure took me a while to make and I learned a lot in the process. I learned how to align figures within each other using the arrow keys and a grid and how to use the blend tool. Now I want to learn how to add colour between each of the black lines, but I haven't discovered the secret yet. I hope it is possible to do this. When I do, I'll share my results. 

Evidence

© Karen Thiessen 2011 Hexagon pattern

Ta da! Just for you, I learned how to save Adobe Illustrator files as jpegs. As I wrote in my Stain post, I'm finally learning Illustrator and I'm learning it from a book. I now know enough to play with the program and know what I don't know. Huh? Yes, before I didn't know anything and now I have enough knowledge to do certain things, but not enough to do it all. For example, the above design is made up of a figure that I rotated and put into repeat. The figure is made up of six triangles. With the knowledge level that I have, I don't know how to easily align the triangles side-to-side, point-to-point. I'm hoping that eventually I'll reach the lesson where I learn perfect alignment. That would be nirvana, but probably not very Buddhist. 


I now know enough that practicing Illustrator is fun. Everywhere I look I see designs that I want to try replicate in Illustrator, just to see if I can do it. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Furthermore, Illustrator is invading my thoughts and dreams. Friends who learn second languages tell me that when they start to think and dream in the new language, they are on their way to mastering it. I still have a long way to go in learning this program inside and out, but I'm on the right path!