My Summer Art Projects

Every summer when I'm not teaching I love to try out new assignment ideas as well as finish off projects that I've started and never finished (way too many to count), and to prep new fibers for my Beginning 3-d class. Then at the beginning of the new school year I like to hang them all on the board and share them with my new and returning students so they can actually see that I am a working artist and craftswoman. So this is my 2009 collection :) The brown and plastic bags are filled with hand dyed raw wool fibers from Capistrano Fiber Arts and above each bag I've spun and plied up all the color ways that Lori Lawson dyed for me so my Beginning 3-d students can see what the finished yarn looks like. I take these students through a hand spinning unit in the spring. Instead of using a spinning wheel or drop spindle I teach them on a hooked coat hanger end. Works Great!


In the lower mid section here I've finished up a couple sawdust fired clay masks by adding some bead embellishments. Can't even begin to remember how many years those masks have been sitting in my studio. I do a mask a year when I demo them to my Beginning 3-d kids.

The pillow above was started in a crazy wonderful workshop with Valentine Devine many years ago and I just finally got back to it. The workshop was a free form knitting extravaganza with a bit of crochet embellishment. I love how this piece turned out with the bas relief front face.

These last two pillows were crocheted from the hand dyed, hand spun yarns that I made as the samples for the 3-d kids to choose from that were in those bags in the first pix. This first one was made from the 2008 yarn samples and the one below was crocheted from the 2009 samples. I gave the one below to one of my favorite people, Suzanne in our college center. She has helped me so very much over the years and was especially good to me last school year when she set up the art work for the senior awards banquet nite when I wasn't able to. Thank you again Suzanne! The backing fabric for both these pillows was hand dyed by nationally known quilt artist Ricky Tims, so the back sides are just as vibrant as the fronts.