Letting go of fear--another stab (or daub) at painting

     Today I took a 3-hour workshop from artist Stephanie West called  Awaken the Artist Within. . Check out her websitehttp://www.stephaniewest.com/ Stephanie  guided the class through a brief but comprehensive overview of  materials and techniques and let us play with color and texture. This is what I brought home. I am not sure it is finished  but I'll live with it for a while and will definitely play some more!

HAPPY WOMAN TWILL PAPER BASKET

A couple of weeks ago, the Misti Washington Gourd and Basket Guild  put on their biennial Weekend in the Gardens  which drew about 200 students for two days of classes in various techniques in baskets making and embellishing  gourds. Teachers and students came from all over the country. I have always wanted to take a class from artist Jackie Abrams :  http://www.jackieabrams.com/   . This year she taught us a twilled basket using painted (front and back) watercolor paper cut into strips . Amazingly, my piece turned out pretty good!

Chromatophobia?

You may notice that the work I’ve shown so far is devoid of primary colors. I am particularly drawn to subtle “earth colors” textures (just look at the colors I chose for this blog page) and why not??  Materials used in basketry  come in  colors from nature—bark, roots, grasses, rushes, cane, vines, pine needles, etc—and are usually harvested dry for weaving  or harvested green and then dried, although some are soaked  or dampened in water to increase pliability  for easy weaving.  My bead-artist sister LOVES color while I have chromatophobia (fear of colors). More accurately, I have zero confidence in the use of color to express myself. I certainly do not want to discount or belittle anyone who might have a clinical disorder related to  a fear of color—I’ve heard that some people get full panic attacks when exposed to certain colors. Me? I just become immobilized when faced with a blank canvas. It is more natural for me to choose colors made readily available for the picking by Mother Nature. She has already made the decisions for me.  Even when shopping for clothes (which I abhor) I have been known to buy outfits right off the manikin. Some fine arts major working as a window dresser in Macy’s throws together just the right look and color scheme and voila! (well, at least for the rare occasions  I wear something other than jeans and big shirts.).  So in the woven sculpture below, I broke out of myself and went for some color. This was a bit of a breakthrough, adding a spectrum of colors of waxed linen thread to a piece of driftwood, and although I have begun to learn more about color, I've a long way to go.

Ribbed Baskets and Sculptures

Here are a couple of  ribbed baskets and other ribbed projects I’ve done. The basic technique is all the same—twining reed, grass or palm inflorescence/palm seed stems  over a ribbed structure.  How to make it different?  Change the ribbed structure or try different materials. I took a great class from Mary Hettmansperger in sculptural twining.   Each student's work was very different  .  My first project (below)  hangs in our living room. Take a look at Mary Hett's  on-line gallery  www.maryhetts.com  

The other project (below) has been on various shelves or the coffee table--it is  large enough (10 inches by 25 inches) that we have had a hard time finding it a permanent "home" in our home..