Wabi-Sabi in Taos and some exciting news

 

A wabi-sabi ruin in Taos

One month ago I was in Taos, NM with Leighanna Light where we held a mini-retreat at her studio, called "Wabi-Sabi Enchantment." As always I was enchanted by Taos--the light, the colors, the sky, and the people. Those who attended our workshop were wonderful!

I've posted a ton of pictures here of work done in my encaustic class in Taos. Believe me, there were even more great pieces created.

On my other blog, I've posted some pictures from the fantastic book class Leighanna taught. At the end of this post, I will share some news I'm super excited about.

Our encaustic class with Sam who had to be in the picture

What has got me so excited? I have contracted with North Light Publishing (F and W Media) to write my second book. This will be about oil and cold wax painting and mixed media work. I'll emphasize the intuitive creative process as well as provide lots of techniques to create your own work.

I know what I"ll be doing this summer! I hope you all are having a fun and creative summer. If  you take any wabi-sabi photos, I'd love to see them!

Papers Wabi-Sabi from Art and Soul Retreat Class

Here are a few of the many beautiful papers student created recently in my Art and Soul Portland class, "Papers Wabi-Sabi." We used mulberry paper and other papers to create strong and flexible papers for collage, book covers, or wall hangings. 

I'll teach this class next March at the next Art and Soul Retreat in Portland. Textile artist Liz Kettle will teach a class the following evening called "Wabi-Sabi Tote." She'll show how to make a gorgeous and sturdy tote bag from your wabi-sabi papers!

Wabi-Sabi Finds and Collage Pages for You

After my chiropractic appointment this morning, I took my newly aligned self for a little walk around Portland's Brooklyn neighborhood. I chanced into Brooklyn Antique Mall, full of reasonably priced goodies of all kinds. 

  Today's Haul: An old Arabic/English dictionary, a
1918 Spanish textbook, a reversible Japanese purse, and a plastic
 thingy that should be great for cold wax texturing.

Side View of Dictionary

Front of Dictionary

Japanese Purse: About 5 x 6"

Reverse Side of Purse

Love the circular library stamp!
Lots of these in this
old textbook

Below are some high resolution images from today's finds for your collage enjoyment!

The Hunting and Gathering Report

This time I'm going to share some vintage book pages that were sent to me by artist Randi Case. She was generous enough to share three beautiful and fragile (likely hand-blocked) pages from an old book. These are so delicate and lovely. I think they should be framed. Of course I have scanned them so I can share them with you.

I've printed these in toner copies (copy-shop) and on tracing paper at home. We'll use them in my Art & Soul class, "Mind Your Own Beeswax", coming up soon here in Portland. 

Yesterday I went to Hippo Hardware to find more old doodads and thingamabobs to use in my upcoming classes. I found a pretty good haul, though I sneezed a lot from the dust in the old building full of valuable junk. Sometimes you just gotta get dirty.

Visit my other blog to see my latest Encaustic Literary Charlotte.