One Down!

quite a weekend,but one sale is history and now we have to gear up for the one next weekend. We sold a little bit this time, enough to cover expenses and enough to go out for supper last night. The rough part was getting out into the country to the sale site during the first bad storm of the winter. Normally this is a half hour drive but Friday morning it took the best part of an hour and we passed several cars in the ditch (empty--we wouldn't pass a stranded person). My DH is normally a fast driver but we went the whole way with the cruise on 80Km/hr--on divided four lane highway. Saturday we drove out and then I had to turn around and drive back to the city for a class, and then drive back to pick him up. Thank Goodness the roads were much clearer by then.

The class was a little disappointing. I was quite looking forward to it. It was on mixed media collage, which I found out was quite different than multi-media collage. I think the difference comes in the number of human senses that are stimulated, with mixed media remaining basically a visual experience, and multi-media being more associated with vison and hearing--such as video's and concerts etc. In any case, it was the first time the class had been taught, and I think the timing got a little lost. There were three stages to the collage, and we spent 1 1/2 hours of a two hour class doing step one. Once we had the first layer glued down, we were to augment the surface with drawing, or painting or some sort of surface work that would either emphasize the design or alter it. I had great difficulty with this. The class had been advetised as a study in combining textures. During the first stage we weren't allowed to use people, animals or buildings--which was good. I used some very, very textural papers for stage one, but found it very difficult to mask or minimize the edges of the papers, between design elements, for stage two. We were trying to develop some sort of flow and it just wasn't happening. Stage three was to paint over the whole thing, again to either emphasize or mask various elements that had been developed in stages one and two.

Driving back to Beausejour I had a chance to think about the whole experience. What I'm doing in my collages really isn't that different. I build up a surface with paper and fabric, mask it to a certain extent with a final layer of tissue paper, or mulberry paper. I add a wash of paint, let it dry, and then add a third layer of more paper and/or fabric. This third layer may or may not have a lot in common with the first layer. IMHO, my work ends up looking much more controlled and planned (anal??), but I'm much more satisfied with it.

I have taken a few more traditionally "arty" classes. My work is much less mainstream, but much more reflective of me as a person. In the end I have to be true to what satisfies me. But I know that I'll be doing a lot of navel gazing trying to figure out if I'm just rationalizing an unwillingness to stretch myself. I think the answer to that rests with my age. If I was 25, the need to stretch and explore would be paramount, but at my age I've grown more comfortable in my own skin, and with the skills I've spent many years developing. The only area I want/need to explore is in making my designs better. So I think I'll limit further exploration to design principles and elements, but explore it from a perspective specific to fibre arts.