Art & Soul

This week I spent two wonderful, inspiring days in workshops at the Art & Soul Retreat. Art & Soul has been an annual happening in Portland, Oregon for
about 10 years. It got started there at about the same time I moved to Las Vegas. And for all of those years I have wanted to go, but one thing or another had always come up. Some months ago I discovered that Art & Soul was expanding and in 2010 the workshops were going to be given, not only in Portland but in Las Vegas and one or two additional locations. The minute that I read: Las Vegas!!!!....I got to my computer and signed up for two days of workshops....and, of course two days of shopping at the vendors who would tempt me with wonderful arty things that I just couldn't live without. Quite a better deal than the casinos around here offer. At Art & Soul you always come out winners. Learn a lot, buy a lot, and come away enriched and inspired.

Well...February finally came and on the 23rd I spent the whole day learning about encaustic painting and collage. What you see above (or wherever the pictures land once I publish/post this bit of writing) is the result of my day at the Encaustic painting workshop...the brochure called the class "Dreams in Wax". And it was just that...a wonderful and productive dream-of-a-day. The piece of the woman with blue hair was a combination of collage and my drawing of her face in pencil and acrylic on paper...the whole on a painted wood substrate. The other piece was done in pencil, acrylic paints, found images (ink jet prints) on a painted/stained wood substrate. I am just amazed at the depth of color that the final application of wax brings out. I loved the process...which was completely new to me...and I love the result. I'm definitely going to frame and hang both paintings. I'm just amazed at what I was able to do.

On the second day, the 24th, I made a journal out of junk mail. The instructor was Carla Sonheim who was wonderful to work with. She showed us some painting techniques that I had once thought impossible...to make beautiful paper out of plain old junk mail....envelopes, advertising flyers, etc....and then how to bind these odd sized pages to create a journal in which to write, paint, collage, or whatever else one might want to do. I may never throw another piece of junk mail away. I'll just transform the junk into art. I'll have to take a photo or scan some pages to show you....but right now the dogs are getting restless...the dog park (and their dog-friends) await our arrival.