JournalFest 2011

Today's mail brought me my registration booklet for JournalFest 2011. I am so excited! (I am always excited to go to JournalFest!) I got the teachers I wanted all three days, which feels rather like winning the lottery, and I got a room on the first floor on the view side of the dorm at Fort Worden. It was a win, win, WIN packet for me today.

The registration packets from Teesha and Co. are always so clever. This one has a beautiful fabric "bellyband" around the paper info. There is the little booklet with all the information you might need, including your classes and dorm assignment (if you are staying on the campus) plus goodies. This year there are three buttons with deer in different configurations, some sticker-like pictures that might be used in your journal spreads and all are beautifully and artistically packaged. It's always rather like Christmas morning when you get your packet in the mail. I always like to sit down with a cup of tea and open it sloooooooooowwwwllllllllyyyyyy and savor all the surprises.

Now I just have to be patient and wait for the end of October. (Easier typed than done.)

Art Journaling Catch-Up

I'm just going to post a few random pages from my journal. I have been enjoying my journal a lot the last few months and find myself doodling away in it or adding to previous postings more than I have ever done before. Any given spread never seems to be totally finished. I like the freedom to go back and add or edit at will. It is, after all, not chiseled in stone!

The leaves in the photo above all are from my garden.

I went to the Picasso Exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum in October and used Picasso's blue period as my inspiration for my pages in a collaborative art journal. We have been doing pages recently in colors, and this was the inspiration for my contribution to "Blue." By the way, it was an incredible exhibit and if you can find some way to go, do so! It's running through most of January, 2011.

Autumn is my favorite season of the year and I find I love working with those colors, which is odd because if you asked me my least favorite color I would immediately announce, "Orange." And yet....

I love Halloween!

These two spreads (above and below) are from journaling work I did at JournalFest in late October in Orly Avineri's class "Mapping Me." I really enjoyed the class and I'm going to take another of Orly's classes next spring at ArtFest.

This is a pastel I did in Carla Sonheim's class at JournalFest. We had only five pastel colors and our fingers and an eraser. It was fun and surprisingly effective.

Scary October Witch!

I know. I know...pretty dreadful. It is the season for dreadful and scary and even frightful! I do believe this witchy portrait fits the bill.

To make it all up to you I'll share my latest favorite Mary Oliver poem. (To be honest, if you ask me tomorrow to name my favorite Mary Oliver poem it would most likely be another. I am a serious Mary Oliver fan and I love so many of her poems.)

Halleluiah

Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I'm not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings



I am still away. Tomorrow is the beginning of JournalFest. I'll be there until Sunday. If any of you Dear Readers cares, I will be posting a piece or two of new art work next week.

Happy Halloween!

Autumn Art Travels

I am off today on another art adventure. My first stop will be a painting retreat with Anna Rhodes, my painting teacher. Anna puts on retreats a few times a year under the name An Artists' Retreat. The retreat is being held at Harmony Hill, a retreat center, on Hoods Canal. I haven't been to the Canal in years and am looking forward to spending some time on the beach. I used to fish the Canal every summer with my Dad and it has a special place in my heart.

Anna is a great teacher and I always learn a lot in her classes. I'm looking forward to doing some work in oils and getting back into my painting 'groove.' I've been away from my easel far too long.

On Sunday, the end of my time with Anna, I'll meet up with Nonie. We are going to spend a few nights at Port Ludlow Inn. We don't have any real plans except to prowl around the area, finding some new parks to visit and maybe going as far afield as Poulsbo. Who knows what devilment me might get up to? It is the right time of year, after all!

Wednesday I say good bye to Nonie and I'm off to JournalFest at Fort Worden in Port Townsend. JournalFest is brought to us by the same great team who bring us ArtFest each spring. I love both of these retreats, but I think JournalFest might just edge out ArtFest for me as I am a long time journaler and love all the classes that are all about journaling or bookmaking or things that pertain specifically to journals. It's a great group of people and I love my time there.

And so, Dear Reader, I'll be back about the first of November. Hopefully I'll have some art to share with you, but I will have a report of my adventure for sure.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!