A Fish

Several people have asked me why I named my class on creativity A Fish Swallowed My Pencil. That seemed a lot more fun than Creativity and You or Let’s Ramp Up Your Juices, or even Ladies and Creative Collage. I had named the class several years ago when I first conceived of it. But the title sort of fit in with EGA’s 2010 National Seminar Stitchin’ on the Barbary Coast. Coast, fish, get it? Pirate’s Gold, the other class for the 2010 seminar, was named specifically for the theme.

This was a long, but productive cold season for pilot classes. The first class was in February and was a four-day. The second was in March and was a four-day. This one on the first two days of May was only a two-day. That’s okay--I was close to mental exhaustion by that time. Three brand-new classes in four months is a LOT. But they are done.

I flew up to Cheyenne to be with Ann for Fish. It is a great rest for me to go up to see her always. We always do interesting things. But this is the first time I have ever run a pilot there. We had a cozy group with Ann’s sister Sharon Wilson from Denver, Ann’s daughter-in-law Tiffany Erdmann from Laramie, Virginia Hazen from Casper, and, of course, Ann.

Class kits are getting more expensive these days because of shipping. No longer can we throw an extra suitcase onto the airplane gratis. I shipped up the kits themselves and most of the class materials by US Postal Service. Then I had to ship back the class materials via the same carrier. Coming and going can be expensive.

The class itself was wonderful. We were certainly a compatible five-some. Tiffany and Sharon are not members of EGA, though Sharon has taken one other pilot from me and so has some idea of the work that the students have to do. Poor Tiff was taken blindside, but she passed through the ordeal with shining colors.

We grouped around Ann’s large kitchen table the first morning. It was a cold May Day in Cheyenne and there was wind as I recall. I mentioned the duties of a pilot class. We went through the kits to make sure everyone had everything. And then we were off. It can be difficult to get immediately into the spirit of the class, especially if a person has no real idea of what is going on. But everyone managed it all.

Fish is a creativity class with a dash of design theory and color theory thrown in. Since a lot of people think of creativity only in the context of art, I decided to teach from that angle, even though creativity permeates a human’s life. But in order to do art, that same person has to have an idea of the ground rules for artistic expression. So the first morning we looked at design theory with the elements and principles of design. We made a few notes in our notebooks. We looked at a few things. Then we started the first of the collages. The first one was doing a collage from one of our own photos. And from there we took flight.



It was a fast two days. I was able to estimate the timing of the various parts of class. At seminar I will have at least twice any many students and I could have as many as 22 altogether. The class will go much slower with that many. But I can adjust for that too. I was glad to have Tiff and Sharon there as people unused to this sort of class. I could judge more clearly what did and did not work. With more people I can shorten the last section with no harm to the main part of the class.

I had a good time in Cheyenne. Ann and John Erdmann as hosts were wonderful. We ate well. I was soundly beaten at Boggle by both Sharon and Ann. And I slept wonderfully well.

Thanks everyone for giving me your time and attention.

Pirate's Gold Pilot Class

Pirate’s Gold pilot, the ides of March, Monday. The hardest day of all. I felt like a not over warm zombie at the end of the class. Fortunately there was little for me to clean up (poor Rita), so I was able to get my stuff together and get out of there. With the time change, my sense of timing was a little off, but I am sure that no one complained that the class was forty minutes or so short. A four day class is like a hike across mountains--steep whether uphill or downhill and never-ending. As was pointed out in class, at seminar there are two-hour lunch breaks and a whole day’s break between the second and third day. We seven had no such luxury.

I saw color awareness grow in every one of the students. Possibilities were suddenly open. I was grateful to have Debbie in the class. I know it was a bit frustrating for her, but she was essential to the pilot. I hope she had a good time and learned a little about color. I believe it was Sandy who said that when the class started she didn’t believe that four days could be filled with just the study of color. We changed her mind.

I am making good changes to the syllabus. I think the order of the class will remain the same, but I am including more info in the student syllabus. I have some corrections to make where my teaching notes and the student syllabus did not quite match up. They will match perfectly by September.

Thanks to everyone for making these arduous four days happen. But I especially thank Rita for her unflagging goodwill and hospitality. Thanks to everyone for bringing goodies--they were delights for lunchtime and for afternoon breaks. And thanks for everyone’s thoughtfulness and time in getting this unwieldy rainbow on the road to seminar.

Pirate’s Gold pilot, Day 3, Sunday. This was an easier day for all of us. There were fewer exercises, but they are harder because we had the optical illusions to illustrate. It was winter out and the light had a bright, flat quality. So some of the illusions were harder to achieve.

We are getting tired, but are still eager to learn. I think that they are absorbing all the “book learning” I can dish out to them. Now they mostly have to go out and experience for themselves how color works in the real world.

We are a bit ahead of schedule, so I inserted some enrichment--actually some of the lecture from my original color class, A Fine and Dancing Light. This was very welcome by all. They had a chance to think about color rather than madly getting paper exercises done.
As far as I am concerned, the biggest thing we did today was to obviate the need for needle and thread in one of the exercises. We all decided that the exercise is better done in paper. That is good news. It is also is a sign to the whole class that the pilot class system works and that a teacher can change her plan of attack because of experiences within the pilot class.

Tomorrow is the last day. We will finish up the exercises and start thinking about our own work. We will work outside comfort zones tomorrow.

I hope it doesn’t snow again.

Pirate’s Gold pilot, Day 2, Saturday the 13th of March. This was a much better day. Only one or two major glitches. I feel that everyone has settled in and become acquainted. We even had a few laughs today. We finished up the CCCs, the Classic Color Combinations, and went into the study of Value, certainly the hardest section of the whole class. Even the least experienced grasped value very quickly and was able to peg works of art into the correct Value Key and category. Near the end of the day we went over the difference between Value and Saturation. And everyone could distinguish between them. Congratulations to us!
Tomorrow we finish up value with a couple of Value tests (yes, as cruel as it is, even ladies of a certain age have to take tests) and then we go on to the next topic: Optical Illusions in Color.

Today we had more biscotti from Anna. Again very delicious. We had cranberry bread from Rita, and more of the coffee cake from Debbie.

Debbie is making great strides both in design and color. From being a neophyte in the studies, she has gone on to conquer the first few steps. It is a pleasure to watch her.

I am becoming better acquainted with Sandy and find her very droll. She is a good artist who had a fine, innate sense of design.

Sue is one of my favorite people. She is fun, witty, and very generous. I took her out of her comfort zone a couple of times today, but she easily swanned through the work. Good job.

Patricia is as wry as ever. She does good work and often comments how my art sensibilities and hers do not match. Well, no, they don’t. But that doesn’t stop her from learning and me from teaching. We get along very well--except for focal point!

Anna--still waters run deep. I have the feeling she knows everything I try to teach her. Today I tried to take her out of her comfort zone and was unable to even when I switched her up. Cool as a cucumber.

And Rita I am afraid I am working to a frazzle. At least when she is done with us in two more days, she will have most of Rainbows Bend under her belt. So she is getting a twofer for all her work. I believe that she is seeing new design possibilities around her. She is the best. Oh, and she told us to call her Mother Rita. Well, I had a mom and it didn’t work out well, so we will just have to be good friends.

Pirate’s Gold pilot Day One. This day was a rough one for me. The material I am teaching used to be so close to me and I was used to its rhythms and nuances. But now that I have not taught it in its entirety for most of a decade I have lost that awareness. I thought the first day was choppy and badly paced. The students are a dream team. There are six of them in various stages of expertise in handling color. Debbie our newest member is very brave in even taking the class. But she is willing and very game to try. Our three most experienced members are handling the class information very well. They are taking risks in their little composition and doing explorations into designing. This is exactly how the class is planned--to study composition (design theory) side by side with color theory.

Now we are going to pay a little more attention to the compositions as well as the color, discussing both sides of the coin. Two students, Sandy and Sue, second cousins by marriage, are doing very well. They both come from another part of fiber art. Sue is a world-class tatter and Sandy makes greeting cards besides doing cross-stitch. I feel a bond with each of them. Early in my career I taught quite a bit of needle lace and even tatting on a needle once. But Sue and I are old friends anyway. And I make dozens of greeting cards every year for my own use and to sell. In fact I regard the making of greeting cards as my hobby as opposed to embroidery that is my vocation.

Rita is our hostess. It is in her cozy little room with the perfect light that we are settled for the four days. Rita is also taking the pilot of Rainbows Bend, Carole’s and my ICC on color theory. We have now advance beyond the first lesson of the class into new territory for Rita. I hope she can put Pirate’s Gold to good use with Rainbows Bend.

Despite my rocky start, I feel the second day is going to go much smoother. That is what a pilot is for--to smooth over pebbles in the path. So my thanks to Patricia, Anna, Debbie, Sue, Sandy, and Rita for putting up with me this first day. Now let’s plunge into the second!

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.