Artfest-day two of classes + Vendor Night

Apparently the art region of my brain requires a sacrifice each time I go to an art retreat. Day two of Artfest threw itself onto the altar screaming.

Things started off well in "Palette-ability"... Stephanie Lee was relaxed and funny as she worked the paint scraper, gift cards and palette knives. And she thoroughly approved of my rock-star-remedy for early morning sunshine in the eyes.

But I didn't take notes... and the frustration mounted as I began to forget earlier steps in the demo... plus other stuff my head that wouldn't go away even after lunch break... Well, the point is, I didn't make anything in this class. I explained what was going on to Stephanie, and she graciously busied herself elsewhere as I packed up and left.

Others managed quite well, though...check these out. I think these ones were done by Melody Ross.

After a nap and dinner, things brightened up a bit: Vendor Night!

I'd hoped to find a necklace that combined ribbon and metal: some of our fellow Artfesters make amazing works of art in this vein. And Liesel Lund had just such a necklace!

Besides ribbon, she also incorporated green sea glass, a vintage button, and a little sun charm. (You can see it up close on Liesel's homepage.) I scooped it up the moment I saw it, much to the displeasure of Norma Hoeppner (she's the blonde on the left).

Hey, Norma was already trying on a pink and blue necklace which looked great on her! Nevertheless, she and Nancy Orlikow gave me crap about how Norma would never recover from the loss. Eh... both of them are therapists. They can help each other work through it, right? Right. Glad you agree with me.

Artfest-art throwdown, evening one

As much fun as it is to hang out after class at Artfest, you do find yourself looking for something to do after dinner. This year there were two choices: the bonfire party and the "Iron Artist" competition.

The name is a take-off on "Iron Chef," and the artists have a short amount of time to create something out of mystery items. Kind of like the short-lived "Craft Corner Deathmatch"...

CRAFT CORNER DEATHMATCH (Style) from Idiot Box on Vimeo.
... but this time featuring the Artfest instructors working like mad.

Here's Michael deMeng twisting strips of masking tape around some sort of cord...

... next to him Stephanie Lee, sweating as she furiously wraps her own cord with plaster-cast strips...

Theo Ellsworth, shielding his eyes from the ideas shooting out of his pen...

... my old roomie (!) Liesel Lund slapping Yes! adhesive onto paper scraps on an old record.

Can I just tell you how hard it was to catch the brush in the Yes! pot? She was moving that fast. And Ricë and Earl wandering throughout it all, documenting the throwdown for their project.

Sorry I never found out if there was an official winner (um, there was wine and cheese distracting me), but I did remember to get a shot of a couple finished projects. Guess whose they were.

Right! Michael deMeng with the serpent, Stephanie Lee's bunny head (I have no idea if the skeletal heads really were rabbit skulls) and Liesel's embellished record. I think. Again: wine... cheese...

We managed to make it down to the beach for the bonfire, but we stayed in the warm embrace of the journaling cottage, where we saw Alexandra Castro Ferreira (who flew here from Lisbon, Portugal)...

and amazing Grace Witherell deep in thought. Not being capable of the focused thought it takes to journal, I spent my time mocking Tally (she's talking to the video guy from the band that played opening night)...

 ... with lewd gestures from the comfort of my chair on the other side of the room. Ricë, Janine and our new friend Adeola filled in whenever I ran out of jokes.

Earl caught me mid-gesture once, but he went back to work to clear his head. Poor thing. Takes a strong man with a good sense of humor to put up with that much concentrated estrogen.

Artfest-day one of classes

A good way to start the day: I took Gina Rossi Armfield's "Story Painting with Punch" for my first class at Artfest this year. All the workshops I took dovetailed with a goal I've been trying to realize for the past few years: use the photos that are languishing on my computer hard drive.

First things first: print out the photos on matte paper, and go big. The images overlap, but Gina showed us how to reduce the bulk in certain areas. Which sometimes leads to Happy Accidents (more on that later).

I don't often save old credit cards or gift cards, even though I figured they'd be good for something. "Something" turned out to be pulling heavy body paint across a large area. Try it sometime -- it feels so... transgressive.

One thing that's not so fun: losing track of the directions you've been given while you're watching a demo. Possibly the most important lesson I (re)learned that day was that I really do need to take notes, not just watch. Otherwise I start to forget step #1 while the instructor is demo'ing step #4.  And I get frustrated, which throws off my concentration.

Fortunately, Catherine Witherell's jewelry class downstairs set off the fire alarm. Which forced us all to leave the building -- and forced me to stop and smell the flowers, so to speak...

... and gave my classmate Morag Campbell time for a quick broomstick flight around the building. (I kid, I kid. But she does happen to be a flight attendant in her other life.)

So once we got back into class, I got crackin' with some suggestions from Gina.

I combined a picture of the house where my mother grew up, with elements from the house where I grew up. Very different styles of architecture (think early 20th century Victorian vs. '70s California wood and stucco). But Gina pointed out the diagonal lines were strongest: the rooflines, and the curbside in particular.

As I reduced some of the paper bulk, I had a couple of tears -- one right through the bedroom facing the street.

But it worked. This bedroom may have been the one my much-married grandfather slept in while his second wife slept in another during their divorce proceedings. (My grandmother, the third wife, converted that room into a parlor. Oh yes.)

And right away (how 'bout that?!) I used some of that technique for my anniversary gift to The Husband.

I used a stenciled piece of watercolor paper I prepped in a later class as the background, adding a transfer of a honeymoon photo. I lightly went over some of the stencil lines with Caran d'Ache water-soluble crayons, echoing the window lines I extended to the edge.

Then I added a piece of a quote from the Baal Shem Tov that appears on our ketubah (a Jewish wedding contract):

From every human being there rises a light that reaches straight to heaven. And when two souls that are destined to be together find each other, their streams of light flow together and a single brighter light goes forth from their united being.

I fully realize the ironies of an African-American woman, married to a Jewish man, quoting the rabbi who founded Hasidic Judaism. But I'm also aware of the irony of a long-buried divorce surfacing in artwork people in Malaysia could see online. (Hello, my Malaysian reader!) So there's probably quite a bit of spinning in graves going on right now, but art does tend to revel in life's ironies.