Re-Entry

Back to real life after a wonderful week with Debbi and Lori at Arrowmont. In addition to checking myself in to self-imposed food rehab (we were spoiled with homemade hummus, farm fresh tomatoes and various fabulous baked goods and desserts including Chocolate Macaroons! Y'all know how I feel about macaroons) I have to get back in the habit of doing things like going to work and wearing a bra and making eye contact with my kids.

I borrowed these pix of the campus from Lynette Andreasen, a lovely young woman who is blogging about her experiences at our favorite oasis in the Smokies. Above you see the Red Barn, we stayed in what used to be the hayloft.

Here's the Staff House where we took our fantastic meals, made all the better because I didn't have to plan them, cook them or do the dishes. Did I mention the Chocolate Buttermilk Cake? Oh yeah, and we made artsy stuff in between feasts.

Our instructor and world-class storyteller, Diane Fine, led us in collaborative printmaking and bookbinding. The "opus magnum" was our Roy G Biv Accordion Book. There were four of us in the class and each was assigned a part of the color spectrum. We printed a whole bunch of monotypes in various shades of our color and then swapped them with each other so each of us had a rainbow of prints when the book was unfurled.

I had the reds.

Debbi had Orange/Yellow.

Jane had Greens.

Emma had Blue/Violet.

So after the swap, I had four of each to put in my book. Aren't they beautiful?

Here's a detail of a completed book.

You can open these accordion books and arrange them into sculptures.

We also made collaborative pamphlet books with the linos we cut.

Jill Greene, photog extraordinaire, was kind enough to take our picture for The Book, which reminds me, you can look inside and get the flavor of Mixed Mania due out Nov 2008 here. Look, there are the authors now! Unretouched photo, we're really that adorable. Debbi is wearing a glass pendant necklace she purchased at Arrowcraft.

Be sure to virtually check out Vintage Cate's book too, Mixed Media Self Portraits.

And finally, here's my weekly art

Dead Bird in Blue Sweater
It's a long story.