It’s a New Year!

It’s a New Year. I am so grateful for the chance to live another year doing what I love. To create.
2009 is going to be a year of travel, teaching and trying new techniques. I am off to Phoenix at the end of the month for Quilting In the Desert. Then back to Asilomar in February for Empty Spools Seminars.

I truly love to teach and the art of teaching is everchanging and constantly pushing me in new directions. I recently had a student not sure she wanted to take my class. She wasn’t sure she wanted to do flowers or raw edge appliqué and she wants to work in black and white. I know, why is she taking my class? It made me think. As an artist why do we take classes? Ask yourself that. Why did Mary Cassette hang out with Monet? Why did Van Gogh hang with Gauguin? Think about it!

Could it be to learn?

How can you learn when you come to a class wanting to do your own thing? How can you grow as an artist if you don’t want to glean something from the teacher and those around you? I don’t get it. When you stop learning you might as well just die. You know it all. How sad it that?

Art is a never ending process. It’s not who finishes what or what awards you receive. Creativity is playing, making mistakes, trying new ways and solving the problems. It is never about finishing. Because there is always something new to figure out. Completing a project is your reward for solving the creative problems. Then you take what you learn from that project and move on to the next, one hopefully more challenging and difficult.

I have been playing around with computer art for the last few months, trying digital fabric printing and manipulation. It has been great fun and challenging. I love my computer, it is such a great artist’s tool. My husband had no idea what he was doing when he taught me how to work the computer years ago and now I am just as nerdy as him, except when it crashes. Then my sweet man gets the frantic wife call from me at work. Picture him sitting in his PG&E truck working in the hood, giving me tech support over the phone. He is still the top nerd.
Here is my first computer art piece. It’s called “A Boy and His Yace”.

My son’s security blanket was a lace placemat we had gotten as a wedding present. He went through all 4 placemats before the age of 4. That’s one a year. I added the last bits of the lace I had saved to the quilt. He is 3 in this picture and very serious. The beads around his body are little sayings that he said as a child. The numbers in the background represent his love of numbers at an early age (he was doing math at 3). The butterflies are him leaving the nest and spreading his wings.

So this year let’s try to learn from those around us and try new things and see what happens along the way.

God bless you in the New Year.