Missing Artfest? Me too.

This is the first spring in four years I haven't gone to Artfest, the dearly beloved/dearly departed art retreat held in Port Townsend, WA for the past 13 years.

It's not just the frenzy of trading precious bits of art... or even the amazing techniques I've learned there... it's missing the chance to let my freak flag fly with my besties, no apologies necessary.

There's a very good chance I'll see some of my Artfest friends later this spring, thank goodness. Here's what some of my other favorite Artfest peeps are now up to.

Teesha and Tracy Moore, the founders/organizers of Artfest, are now offering smaller, more intimate retreats closer to the Seattle area. Teesha's also offering her first online class, with co-instructor Jane Davenport.

Michael DeMeng and Andrea Matus DeMeng are about to team-teach at Art Is You-Nashville. (They got hitched New Year's Day 2012). They still teach separately as well.

For those of you who never experienced Artfest in person, here's a tribute, courtesy of filmmaker Andrea Kreuzhage of 1000 Journals. (Artfest veterans: get the tissue box. You might get a little weepy.)
Have you been to any retreats recently? Making any plans for a retreat later this year? Tell me in the comments or on Facebook.

Work in progress: barnacles and clinginess

My great-grandmother had both of her children by the time she was 22 years old. I got to thinking about that, and which direction my assemblage about her should go, on a gray day at the beach...

... and then I noticed the barnacles. They'll cling to whales, to rocks...

and I imagine Mickey found her kids clinging to her about as appealing as barnacles are to a boat owner. (Remember: she was not a Mother of the Year candidate.) I created my own using a papier mache recipe, and scattered them along doll arms.

Everything I've heard about Mickey sounds like two children were too early, and too much, for her. Her relatives told me Mickey constantly stashed the kids with her siblings or her father, to go out drinking. I'm going to add a drinking glass to the assemblage as well, one that I gave a faux-mercury effect.

But as I mentioned in the last post, I don't have an image of Mickey as a young woman, sober or not. So I'll use a stand-in image I painted over. More on that in the next post...

Work in progress: It came from the deep

I have lots of stories and photos of my mom's side of the family, but on my dad's side I have more stories than photos. That's one reason why my last three assemblages focused on my mom and her parents.

"Greener", which tells a story about my mother as a child

But lack of photos hasn't stopped me from working on a new assemblage about my dad's maternal grandmother. In my head I call her by her nickname, Mickey.

Not a pretty woman, or kind either. She grew up poor in rural South Carolina, and had a hard life, most of which was her fault. Her relatives described Mickey as a mean drunk who abandoned her kids and trashed two (maybe three) marriages. I wish I knew what her reasons were, horrible though they probably were, for lashing out at her kids and nearly everyone else.

Her harshness made me think of a cold sea with a rocky shoreline, which led me to thinking about barnacles.

And what do barnacles do? They cling. Much like kids do, even to a negligent mother. I'll tell you more about the barnacle thing in my next post.