Transitions

Winding Roads

A class in dyeing and painting ribbons and grounds, then appliqueing

the ribbon to the ground, adding , paint and beads to create bouquets.

The Bee Book

Even the book itself is an embroidery because of the

hand-stitched and beaded binding that we will learn to do.

We will embroider the covers and the inside of the book

is a stitched sampler on a series of fourteen "pages."

Now is the lull between two pilot classes. Intense Pattern with its intense preparation days is giving way to Pirate’s Gold with less intense preparation. The only reason for the downgrading in intensity is that I have taught color theory many times before and have a pretty good handle on what needs to be taught in the class, at what point, and for how long. Intense Pattern was not like that at all. When I went in the first day of class I had little idea on just how long each phase would take. It was a class that was completely new in concept to me. It worked wonderfully, but not exactly as I had thought it would. All the women in the class were A-1 students who each in her own way helped guide us all through the blackwork forest. Usually I have an idea of what day we will do what and how much time it will take. But the class went much more quickly than I had thought it would through the building block material. I was to the point that I wondered what we would do the last day. But then the class changed and when we seriously started to do the patterning and all its manifestations the women took all they had absorbed and applied it to new stuff. As I mentioned before, they did not want to stop for breaks. They wanted to work on through with their current lines of thought. It was wonderful to see. Thanks, guys!

With Pirate’s Gold I will have a very good idea of the timing of the thing. But during each seven-hour class day, several things have to happen. There has to be concentrated learning, there has to be exploration time, there have to be light moments with laughing and a complete relaxation of the concentration, and there have to be physical breaks; for instance, an hour for lunch and two ten or fifteen minute breaks during the day. In my color classes there is just as much first-rate creativity among the students as there was in Intense Pattern. When we get to the exercises of the classic color combinations, we create about fifteen small collages. Usually the collages get to be more thoughtful and more elaborate as the time goes on. The students are building on their creativity and exploring their own notions about the subject matter whether it is double split complements or hexads.

I am just now putting together the visual aids for Pirate’s Gold. I have most of them from other times I have taught similar classes. But with this class, we will deal with some other concepts also, like luminosity and aerial perspective in color. The student text is about written and just needs a few additions and some tweaking. My lecture notes are essentially done. The star of this show will be that each student gets a full set of Color-Aid® papers to help with the study. These papers are the true hues printed on matte paper. With these true hues we can begin to see how red looks at its true value and saturation. The Color-Aid papers are invaluable.

Next I start on the third pilot I am going to do--A Fish Swallowed My Pencil. This is a two-day class about creativity and design. I have most of the visual aids for it, but still have to write the lecture notes and student text. I do not teach it until the beginning of May so I still have time.

Look for Intense Pattern on the EGA website: www.egausa.org under Extended Study Programs. It is to be taught here in NM in mid-July. I cannot tell you how terrific this class is.

Look for Pirate’s Gold and A Fish Swallowed My Pencil also on the EGA website under the 2010 National Seminar in San Francisco around the first of September.

But best of all--look for my two newest classes The Bee Book and Winding Roads to be taught in the 2011 EGA National Seminar in Naples, Florida.