Thursday, May 27, 2010

We're BACK!

Perhaps you know or maybe not, but I've been away at ART and SOUL in Hampton Virginia over the last week. Of coarse I rode along happily with my travelling companions, Leslie (a superior driver) and Lennie. I neglected my posts in that regard, quite simply, it's an overwhelming event. When registering for the workshops I took Martha Brown's suggestion and signed up with Melanie Testa.

from Art and Soul description.


Melanie Testa is both a quilt artist and textile designer and life long journaler living in Brooklyn NY. Melanie's interest in art began at an early age and continues in an exploration of color, light, texture and surface embellishment. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in Textile/Surface Design in 1999. She has written Inspired to Quilt, Creative Experiments in Art Quilt Imagery and a DVD called Print, Collage, Quilt both by Interweave Press, has authored several articles for nationally renowned magazines and has been a guest on Quilting Arts TV.

Melanie led the class quite orderly, we started with stating why we were afraid of artistic journaling and then we covered up all those fears. I have not quite dispelled all my fears. I'm still afraid of wrecking my book, I used my hand made full metal jacket book and immediately had to tape over the spine so it wouldn't get dirty. I've now decided that perhaps what would work best for me is to work on my daily journaling just on individual signatures so I could hop from idea to idea, and then bind. This is all going toward my character development in that romance novel I have not yet published. And while I love the idea that you could just think up characters, we all know some characteristics are attributed to characters from people we have known. My inspiration has come from some of the characters in our lives when I was growing up. My mother was a dressmaker so many many women came through our home, and as I've cleared out my mother's sewing room lately, I found all her books with measurements. The mere mention of certain names conjures up all kinds of images. So these are going to be my notes/pictorial or other of all these wonderfully colourful people.

I can't show you a picture of what I've done yet, I'm still afraid to do that. But soon. I'm just doing laundry today, and watering the garden, otherwise I'm decompressing. So much inspiration, so little time...

9 comments:

Leslie Jane Moran said...

This is a wonderful post. I'm so glad to see you going in this direction. I loved hearing all about your class with Melanie and it is a really valuable concept for writers and artists. I look forward to you sharing your "characters" with us. Great to hear that you will now focus on your book and face your fears in the process.

Alyce said...

It sounds like you had a great time! I look forward to seeing photos of what you did.

Alyce said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
giorno26 ¸¸.•*¨*•. said...

Hi Irene,
non sò se il traduttore on-line ha funzionato bene per farmi ben comprendere ciò che hai scritto...
spero di leggere presto dei tuoi personaggi e di vedere le foto del tuo lavoro.
Happy day, e grazie dellka visita.

Jenners said...

Sounds like a wonderful time with lots of inspiration.

Annie said...

wow..it sounds terrific Irene. Lucky you! Look forward to seeing some of your creations here soon!

And thanks for popping over to see the moon at my place!

It has been good to catch up here again!

Melly Testa said...

Have no fear! We live this once, short and fleeting. Not all our work will be good (go check out my blog, I have some mediocre pages up. I am proud of you for doing!

Jenny Girl said...

Interesting post. I bet there is a good story lurking about in your memories of your mom's dress making business.

Donna said...

The beginnings of a book is so cool! Can't wait to hear more about it!

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