I'm trying to live an 'artsie life'

I can't remember how young I was when I first discovered that I enjoyed art more than anything else. However, I know I've always chosen to be involved in some form of art. In my case it has been like collecting things, I never learned to specialize. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I considered myself a dabbler (not an expert) in photography, watercolor, oil and acrylic painting, collage and other mixed media, paper making, wood working, miniaturist, jewelry making and design, quilter, book maker, faux painting, furniture painting, tole painting, rock collecting and gemology, garden art, metal work and the list goes on.
The problem with dabbling in so many forms of art, and in some cases crafts, is that you really don't excel in any of them.
I've always felt that I put my artsy side on the back burner while I chose something else as the more important thing in my life at the time. I always took an art class in high school, but the other classes tended to get priority. In college, I really wanted to go in to art but was discouraged by what I thought that a 'commercial' artist had to do. I ended up in accounting. Hmmm, quite a stretch. Husband and family were first place next, in fact while the kids were small I did decorate their baby books with original art and sew a bit, but I don't remember much else. I remember promising myself, as I put unfinished projects away, that once the kids were grown up I would be more involved with my arts. As the kids grew up I did get back in to art, a watercolor class now and then, a bit of experimentation in acrylics, and several years as an active amateur photographer with the local camera club. I loved the competitive photography and got involved in home computers because of the creative side of photography and eventually, digital photography. I was still working, however, and that definitely took up the most of my time. Once again, I promised myself that once I retired I would have plenty of time for arts.

Now I'm retired from earning a living, but not from anything else. I had planned at this stage to be able to dedicate myself to living the artsy life. I haven't updated the blog for quite a few years, shame on me, but I have been busy with a variety of art projects. 

Card Making and Altered Books

I have been busy preparing for a class I'm co-teaching to a local crafting group next week. The class is on making Valentines Day cards, as well as other occasion cards as well. I've been busy creating & assembling sample cards. It's lots of fun to be able to make fussy, lacy cards. The regular crafting leader is off to Arizona for a couple of months, so I volunteered to 'teach' the classes while she is gone. It's harder than I thought it would be to come up with a project that can be completed in one session and that will be interesting to several people with varied interests, plus not involve buying expensive supplies.

Next month we'll be altering a children's board book. I think that they should be able to finish covering the pages with various methods at least and probably have time to embellish a few pages as well. I'm hoping to do the books on a life journey theme, with a little journaling thrown in. As usual, I searched Ebay first and was pleased to find that I could buy good quality new board books cheaper than buying used at Goodwill. I'm get a bit silly about altering certain books and sure enough, some of them sounded just too nice to alter. I do that all the time. I go to Goodwill to the vintage book section. I buy three or four old books intending to alter them. I bring them home and really start looking at them and decide they are too interesting, too lovely or too unusual to alter. LOL More books on the book shelf, thus more book shelves. Making that first alteration to a book is the hardest part.

I participated in an altered book round robin swap group for about a year. The group fell apart as a few people dropped out without bothering to send on other people's books. That seemed just terrible to me. Not only did the owner of the book never get it back, but they never got to see anything from the people that had contributed their artistic talent to the book. I know that I worked very hard to make the pages I altered special in some unique way in each book I worked on. For a while it looked like one of my books was 'lost' but it finally showed up and completed the circuit (reduced by a drop out here and there). If you sign up to participate in something like that, I feel that you are obliged to follow through. If the cost of mailing a book a month is going to be too much for you, don't sign up. Enough of a soap box lecture. It was a lot of fun to work on the various books with their different themes and try and come up with creative artistic ideas for each book. One thing about me I'm never short of supplies. I would like to join another similar group, but this first experience was not a completely positive one.

ATC Book and ATC trading

I just got an email reminding me that I signed up to participate in the ATC book this year at ArtFest. The idea is to make 35 ATC's that relate to ArtFest in some way and send them in to the book 'editor'. They will then sort them with all the other contributors cards and I will receive a fantastic art memento in book form that includes 35 different ATC's from various individuals. I've done this for the last 3 years and the resulting little books are so creative and colorful. ATC stands for Artist Trading Card. There are only a few rules about these cards; they are always the same size as a regular playing card and they can only be traded or given away. They can not be sold.

Making ATC's is a way to be creative in a mini-way. They are art collages in a 2 1/2 X 3 1/2" format. They can be completely hand done, include art stamps and emphemera, photography and even computer generated art. No boundaries on the creativity.

At ArtFest they are a major trade item. I have a binder full of pages (those clear plastic sleeves they put sports trading cards in) from prior years' trades. I also belonged to an online ATC group that had themed trades for a year or so. Then they started including children and that's not the age group I wanted to trade with. I have a few of my ATC's scanned in from when I sent in trades to the ATC group so I've included a couple of them. I'm sure that there are still groups on line that trade ATC's. Stampington, they publish Somerset Studio Magazine, has a nice little softcover book on ATC's, called Artist Trading Cards, that include work from several of the artists who attend and/or teach at ArtFest, Art and Soul and many other venues. It's fun to look through my personal collection and find cards from these same artists.

You don't see much in Somerset Studio Magazine , my favorite magazine, these days about ATC's but there is still a lot on journaling as an art form. I keep promising myself that I'll get back to my art journal. I don't find it hard to decorate and prepare the pages. I just can't make myself write down my inner most thoughts in the book. Perhaps what I need to do is print out these blogs and use them as a starting point. By the way, in looking through the Stampington Co. Web site today, I noticed they have a new publication on "Artful Blogging". I guess I need than one to make my own blog more interesting.

ArtFest 2008 and Port Townsend, Washington

As I was looking through my picture files for images from past ArtFests I've attended, I came across a photo I took at Fort Worden in Port Townsend, WA that I liked. It was one of those moments of serendipity when a rainbow glowed above the dorm buildings where I was staying during Art Fest. Finding a group of people that shares your passion for art is a fantastic thing. Meeting and taking classed from artists that are well known in the mixed media art world is inspiring, almost like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That is what ArtFest is. This photo was taken from the Commons area, where the dining hall, deli and various meeting rooms are. You can get your latte up until the afternoon at the deli and later than that during the Summer months.

Port Townsend is a colorful, Victorian seaport town along the Washington coast. I've added a link, if you've never visited the Olympic Peninsula make sure you add it to your 'places to see before you die' list. Fly in to Seattle, rent a car and spend a week going around the peninsula. Make sure you have reservations though, as it's not the kind of destination with Holiday Inns at every interstate crossing. There are no interstates and four lane roads are rare (only between Sequim and Port Angeles and even that goes back to two lanes in the middle for about 5 miles). Oh, and no Holiday Inns either. The Port Townsend web site is excellent as to what they have to offer in accommodations. More on the Peninsula some other time.

The Port Townsend Lighthouse is located on Fort Worden and is a short drive from the campus. You can park right in front of it and walk around it from the beach side at any time. The lighthouse itself is only open to visitors on certain days. There are many spots to get a nice picture of it and on most days with Mt. Baker in the background behind Whitbey Island. So today my journey for artistic self expression took me on a memory trip to Port Townsend. It's a favorite destination of mine at any time and I feel fortunate to live so close to it.