Running on Full

Home from Journalfest; the best one so far and that's saying a lot. Everything was amazing; beautiful weather every day, stars at night (I saw a shooting star for the first time in months), magical, beautiful, wonderful, loving human beings sharing, laughing, being kind to each other.

I took 2 classes with Juliana Coles. Here she is dressed as a witch. She makes an awfully pretty witch I think and her classes were amazing. I've taken 4 classes from her now and she is very good at what she does. (which is take you to a higher level)

My room overlooked a green meadow and off in the distance was the water and the distant mountains.

Here is one of those amazing smiles I was telling you about. Warm, open, incredibly nourishing to experience.

Andrew Dyrdahl looking like, well, Andrew Dyrdahl. He's teaching at Artfest next March and his classes look like fun.

This is a spread I did in Juliana's class the second day. It represents my "house" and as you can see it has lots of guest rooms for my friends. I wish we could all live together in some exotic locale (with all our art supplies and a big studio of course!). We would just make art all day and eat strawberries and ice cream.

This is Graciella, my newest Sculpey doll. She can't be shown in full because she gets to be in somebody's book in a year or so. She's real proud of herself.

Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch sent me this beautiful kit of encaustic materials to try out in my studio and I can't wait to give it a whirl. I can see just by looking that the color cakes are extraordinarily heavily pigmented and inviting. I'm having a few friends over on November 20-21st for a 2 day class and we'll all try out the new supplies then. I'll report back on how I like them.

We have room for 1 more student (imagine a class with only 4 students in all!) - to be held right here in my studio and covering everything I know about encaustic. (November 20-21st). If you want to be that 4th student please email me for details at judywise@canby.com. All the information is here at this link. Once I accept the student I will update here and maybe I'll be having another class here in my studio in January.

That's all I have for you at this moment, guys. I have a zillion photos to go through and a week's worth of catching up to do before I head off to another retreat so I'll visit back when I can and when I do I'll show you my pages from Orly Avenieri's wonderful class. (yay! I got to meet another one of my heros.) I am happier and more full of life than I have been all year. I hope this is a good time for you as well. xo

Journalfest 2009

Last Wednesday, after a great overnight visit from Stephanie and Vince, we all threw our stuff in our various cars and headed north to Port Townsend, Washington, for Journalfest, along with approximately 130 other journal addicts from all over the world.

What greeted me there was gorgeous Pacific Northwest marine weather, dancing rainbows, autumn leaves and plenty of idle time to play in my journal. Time out from bills, telephones, the routine of home.

Where I could admire the books others had made, exchange ideas and form friendships.

Where I could learn about and buy a mobile PoGo printer made by Polaroid. Danger; this could give you the wants.

Where I could take classes from somebody else for a change and not have to ship boxes or schlepp packets or have a teaching on my mind. It was a wonderful holiday.

Teesha had a great band in the Commons to play for us on the last night and lots of wine to drink. We scribbled, laughed, sashayed to the music and had a perfectly delightful time.

I got to take a class from Anahata and try out all her techniques. I've never had to buy a pizza cutter for class supplies before.

Anahata is a great teacher, a great designer and a nice person. I feel so lucky to have gotten this class with her.

I also took a class from Theo Ellsworth who taught me against my expectations that I do not lack the doodling gene. I started from the middle of the above image and worked my way outward until it started looking fishy and then smiled happily at what had emerged under my pen.

Theo is writing a book entitled "The Quiet Family" about his family of thoughtful introverts. I laughed that I came from the loud family and did the drawing above to illustrate my thought. It was really fun. Maybe I should have been a cartoonist. he he.
On the last day I took a class from my comadre, Alex Shur. I've long been curious about her watercolor technique of finding critters in the soup. The thing that is so weird is that the critters look nothing like anything you've drawn in the past. Check out Lyle Lovett.

And then this entire menagerie of rodents, rabbits and whatzits. This is not how I draw!

A chicken with a hand coming out of its butt. And a Greek matron eating an olive.

An angel with only one wing.

Mercury, with unruly hair blowing smoke out his mouth. Strange stuff but fun too.

One of the coolest things I saw at Journalfest was a small, thick journal made by a woman who had filled over 500 of such books with her magical paintings. She shared with me that she just made an accordian style book and then glued on a fabric spine so I made one this morning to show you guys. In the photo above I'm folding strips of 4" wide Fabriano Roma paper like an accordian.

Then I affix the backs of the folds with a dab of ATG tape so the pages won't bulge out when they get wet.

The last thing I do is root around in my fabric scraps for a piece that calls out to me and I glue that with heavy gel medium to the spine of the book.

This is what the book looks like when it is all glued and dry. You can see the wad of thick gel that holds the pages to the fabric in the back. This is exactly the way paperback books are bound except the folded papers make it much, much stronger. Easy squeezy.

And now I'm home for the winter; eating ripe persimmons and drinking cups of hot tea. I have a big list of projects I hope to complete and a strong desire to cook more so I'll pop in and out as my mood dictates. Thanks for stopping by and thanks to all who touched my heart at Journalfest. We are a special community, we writers and paper lovers. It's good to share the love.