Observations on life & art and the inspirations I see around me

Saturday, February 11, 2012

It's All in the Attitude

 Most of my days so far in 2012 have been spent with Karlie. I am inspired by her inquisitiveness, innocence, imagination, sense of wonder & pure love of life. I would wish that everyone had a Karlie in their life and I hope I can keep these feelings & attitudes alive & well.
Yesterday I received a letter from the husband of one of my "Top 5 Life Influencers". Diane was a mentor, inspiration, and heroine to me some 35 years ago. Sadly we lost touch about 10 years ago. Now I find that she is suffering with Alzheimer's. Dallas Area Fiber Artists is making small quilts for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. The last are due on Feb. 27th to be shown at the Dallas Quilt Show. I have made several in honor of my parents & now I need to get busy and make one in honor of Diane.  
When the Studio Group got together in Jan. we explored various printmaking techniques. I mostly played with monoprinting. Others tried silkscreening, relief and multi-layered techniques; here is Michelle stenciling. Carolyn came up with a great way to add background color to a stenciled design; she used Dynaflo on the back side of the fabric.


Getting together with this group is always a highlight of my month. This month we'll go to Denton to see "Materials Hard & Soft" and do a bit of "junking" at a new shop in town. I will report back on MHS; it is always an interesting show.

January was one of the warmest on record for most of the country. I took advantage of the sunshine to do some rust "dyeing". Karl & Elliott are building a bar-b-que trailer for the Austin food trailer market and a side advantage is new rustings stuff. I love the metal X grate and am going to do some more with some long cut pieces I spied yesterday. 
 Happy Creating and may your hearts be filled with Love