geraldine newfry

synergy collaboration

the polymer world is gearing up for a big event.  synergy 2 is a conference to be held in baltimore in february 2010, put on by the international polymer clay association.

laurie mika came up with a collaborative idea to display at synergy.  known for her mosaics, she asked polymer artists to participate in a mosaic for the event.  each artist was to make a 2 x 2 inch square.  laurie will be putting them all together.

here's my square:

 

i wanted to create a square in the ancient artifact style, because i think that style best represents me.  also, i wanted to use different media embellishments.  i'm happy with how it came out.  i'd really like to see the whole thing, but i can't go to synergy this year.  hopefully there will be good pictures.

ipca retreat, the work of ponsawan silapiruti

i had the pleasure of meeting ponsawan silapiruti at the ipca retreat.  she had lovely mosaics for display.

each tile was made with a different polymer clay cane.  such work!  but beautiful results.

 

this was ponsawan's first retreat.  and a big step for her to spend some time creating for herself.  her daughter was hit by a drunk driver last year and sustained a traumatic brain injury.  ponsawan writes about her daughter's progress here.  and you can see her write up about the retreat here.

ipca retreat, the work of debbie jackson

debbie jackson is the author of polymer clay jewelry.  She was also one of the attendees at the ipca retreat.

i really like some of the cane work in the pieces she had on display.  my pictures aren't the best here because i had to use the flash.  but i think you'll get a sense of what i mean.

 

 

 

the canes have a more organic feel than i usually see with swirls and bulls eyes.  and i like the monochromatic nature of the pieces.

here are some pictures from debbie's website.  they demonstrate more of the ethnic nature of her jewelry, as described in her bio:

"Her work has an 'ethnic energy' that shows when using cowrie shells, feathers, African brass and glass beads, Japanese papers, fabrics and cord."

 

i really like these cane elements too.  the grouping is called "mud cloth trio."

there was a lot of inspiration at the retreat!

ipca retreat, the work of leslie blackford

at the retreat, i was absolutely blown away by the work of leslie blackford.  you must visit her deviant art gallery.  you will be blown away as well.  she has a website too, but it looks like it's under construction at the moment.

i took some shots of her work space.

 

 

isn't her work amazing?  here's a gem from her deviant art.  "can't see forest 4 the trees."

 

i had bookmarked this as a favorite inspiration piece, and had completely forgotten about it until i saw it on the deviant art site.  now i wish i had told leslie how much i had liked her work even before i met her at the retreat.

ipca retreat, the people

i met a lot of great people at the retreat.  very creative and fun.  you really get to know people when you're with them 3 days, all day.  but still, there were plenty of people i would have liked to get to know better.  i took a smattering of pictures of the attendees.

here's angela mabray, aka craftygoat.  she's working on some ATCs.

this is ann hlavach.  she creates polymer roses.

cathy ciarico, from chicago, was working on that white dot technique that iris showed her (and that i mentioned in yesterday's post).

the chicago contingent participates in a impromptu demo by christi friesen.  marlaine mcvisk, iris weiss, wilda kemp, cathy ciarico and christi.





here i am with kathi just before my gall bladder attack.  i'm very unsuspecting.  barb took this photo.

iris weiss reaches for one of her many cool rubber stamps.

jill palumbo plays with her obama cane.  now he's fat, now he's skinny, now his forehead is big!  she was really fun to get to know.

judy belcher and marla frankenberg.  i love this photo.

kathi, yonat and barb.  yonat travelled all the way from israel for the retreat.  barb was responsible for all the details of the retreat, and she did an excellent job!

welcome reception: wilda kemp, nadine buck, becky preston and karen cowles.

the retreat was fantastic.  i'd highly recommend it for the next time they do it.  i can only hope it's near chicago again!!

papermaking and paste paper

during the first four days of PBI, a student takes two classes.  one is offered in the mornings for four days, and the other in the afternoon.  the first week I took "the nature of the surface" with Ann Marie Kennedy, and paste papers with Michael Burke.

for some reason, every morning i found myself making paper.  it was like that talking heads song: how did i end up here?  people kept calling the class "papermaking" and i wondered what i was thinking when i signed up.  after two days we got to the surface design part, and then i remembered why i was there.  i wanted to work on the surface, i just didn't realize we'd have to make paper from scratch to begin.  in the end, i dyed a lot of my own paper and bought some unsized paper to continue doing it at home.

paste papers was in the afternoon, and i really enjoyed that.  michael was really great to work with.  here he is making some precisely lined paper.  we didn't use measurements for any of  our papers, but he wanted to show us how to do it if we wanted.

very straight lines:

he has decided he doesn't like it and is just about to crmple it up and pitch it to eileen.  at the time we had no idea why she was standing there with the bat.

uncrumpling:

the classes paste papers drying.  there was also a cool drying rack, but we filled it to capacity.

someone made a book on the paste papers for the auction at the end of PBI.  the auction creates an endowment for scholarships and supplies.

my classmates paper:

andrew:

caitlin:

eileen:

and julia:

i didn't photograph mine yet.  i was thinking of scanning it, but the scanner is not working.  we began making paste papers by trying to duplicate the work of 17c nuns.  at first we weren't too keen on the restrictions, but by the end everyone wanted to make even more historical papers.  the last couple of days we did whatever we wanted.  for the historical papers, a few of us carved wallpaper seam brayers (wooden) to create a repeating design.  i was one of the two people that did it for the afternoon class.  i was really happy with how it turned out, so i should photograph that too.  as it is, i've been editing this post for days, so i should just publish it already!

paper and book intensive

i've been away at the paper and book intensive at oxbow in saugatuck michigan.

it was a really nice location in the country.  i stayed in the old inn, which was close to all my classes.  these chairs outside the old inn caught my eye with their bright colors.

oxbow has a little lagoon, next to which is the fire pit.

i spent a lot of time here because it was the designated smoking area.

i'm thoroughly exhausted after taking 4 mornings of papermaking, 4 afternoons of paste paper and then 4 full days of an egyptian codex.  there are a lot of pictures on my flickr site.  i'm trying to work up the energy to post about it all.

i have to leave in a few days to teach in wisconsin.  so, i have another brief interlude of being home and then another long trip.  that should be the last one for a while, though.  at least i hope it is.

art & soul

i didn't take nearly as many pictures once i arrived in virginia for art & soul. it's easier to write with illustrations! our first night in virginia we drove around looking for groceries.  the embassy suites are really nice, with a microwave, refrigerator, wet bar and the works.  but we couldn't find a grocery store and ended up going to walmart at dinner time.  that is not an experience i want to repeat.  i don't like walmart in the first place, and at dinner time there was quite a crowd.  but there was really amusing wine there.  i didn't have a corkscrew, so decided to have a wee box of wine.  good packaging.  you can click for details.  they are amusing.

   

on thursday and friday i bound books and bound books and bound books.  i had prepared a bunch of covers and cut all the paper to size before leaving home.  i wanted to get them ready for vendor night.  i also had to finish printing out my handouts.  yay for the laptop!  the printer at the hotel was black and white laser, so they didn't come out as nicely as i would have liked.

on saturday i taught the coptic assemblage.

it was a bit of an over-ambitious project.  to say the least!  but most people seemed to enjoy themselves and my evaluations were pretty good.  now i have some more ideas to make it move more quickly in portland.  but in the future i'd rather teach it as a 2 day class.  the schedule for portland is already set though.

a couple of my students were free the next day and they came over to my room to learn more about the binding.  we had such a great time!  it was relaxing and we all got to know each other better.  here are joyce and penny in my room.

penny put a lot of thought into her book before the class.  i was surprised when she emailed me and said she had bought a book.  i thought everyone would just pull an old book off the shelf.  but she had a grand plan to create a reliquary of her art & soul experience.  we were delighted when we realized that the cover attachment and the binding thread would fit into her cover design perfectly.  see the  horizontal line in the A of art?  that's the cover attachment.  perfect.

after class i had to rush to get ready for vendor night.  it was so exhausting to do class and then vending!  i had my little box of wine which helped.  i was frantically putting necklaces together for those that wanted one that wasn't already assembled.  it all worked out well.

here's a book that i wasn't even sure i could part with.  but when joyce said she wanted it, i knew it would have a good home.  it's the giving buddha.  it's 4 x 3 x 1 inches  and sewn with the paired needle coptic stitch.  within the red bottle cap are an image of buddha and the word "give".

 

i had to take these quick pictures of the book in my bathroom at the hotel.  i like to have pictures of all my work, but i did sell some without being able to photograph them first.  there's just only so much time in the day.

i got to go out to dinner with nina on sunday night.  we had great vietnamese food and i learned that i love vietnamese coffee.  we were both so tired,  but really enjoyed each other.  i was glad we had set a date ahead of time, because then i didn't feel like i had to rush over and monopolize her every time i saw her.  :)

monday i taught the preserved relic long stitch journal.  it was a smaller class, which was good since we were all so tired!  fay told me that it was her favorite class, and then i realized that there weren't any evalutation forms!  poo.  i didn't get any photos that day.

monday night i had to get pictures of some stuff in the hotel room.  i was really intrigued by the couch pattern.  i don't really make too many polymer canes, but this fabric inspired me.

the rug was cool too.

there was this weird plastic grass in the hotel.  it made a nice setting for the egg i picked up at jefferson florist.  not nearly as lovely as nina's vignettes...

and we had to set off for home on tuesday.  we took a more direct route home.  somewhere east of cleveland we remembered the wonderful paper store that we had visited when we went to art continuum years ago.  the conversation went something like this:

me: it's a good thing we don't know where hollo's is

catherine: i think i know the address

me: it's a good thing there's no room in the car

catherine: right

me: they have cut book board there

catherine: oh dear.  call francine and find out how to get there.

so we stayed near cleveland.  we stayed in an icky howard johnson with no internet.  but they did have hbo so we could see the sopranos repeat.  we got to cleveland just before hollo's was closing, so we had to wait to go the next morning.  we were a little over-anxious.  here we are waiting for the store to open.

 

i think we were in the parking lot for about 45 minutes!

there was a really cool church across the street.

we happily enjoyed shopping when hollo's finally opened.  cut paper was $1 per pound.  so i'm all stocked up now.  and then we headed home for good.  i was settled in by dinner, but catherine lives a ways from here so she had a bit longer for her trip.  we were both happy to see our gardens (previously dormant for me) blooming.

traveling to art & soul

here i am at art & soul....i wrote this entry soon after i arrived.  more to come....

my friend, catherine, and i took off into indiana last monday.  we stayed near indy because it is the home of dolphin papers.  on the way we tried to use the wifi at mcdonald's.  my friend's brother, frank, set that program up.  we were totally disappointed because none of the employees knew how to make it work.  they suggested we hop onto the free econolodge network.  jeez.  so frank needs a talking to.  we stayed at a la quinta which was quite nice, and had free wireless. tuesday morning we wanted to eat at a local place.  to our dismay, they were hard to find.  but then we came upon evalee's diner.

oddly, this bible was hanging out of the back of a pickup.  i didn't open the back of the truck, it was opened already.  weird.

breakfast was wonderful!  they did make my sandwich wrong and had to make another.  i told catherine to start eating, and apparently that turned into the theme of the day. after breakfast, we headed over to dophin papers.  wow!  much better than any paper store i've ever been in.  they have a great catalog that explains a lot about different papers.  i was good and only bought 3 pieces of paper, but my bill ran up because i got a waterproof portfolio for my remaining drawings (because my basement just flooded and i lost a bunch of stuff).  i also got a nice hake brush for encaustic and a brush holder which i'm going to use as a display.
dolphin papers is in the murphy art center.

besides all the wonderful stuff in the store, there were artist studios in the remainder of the murphy art center.  they were closed for the most part, but i will go back for sure.  there was a cool floor/wall on the way from dophin to the rest of the building.

we really liked the manager. the neighborhood was artsy too.

try us:

after some driving, we stopped at a resale store called treasures.

we found a couple of small things.  they had great hardware around the corner.

then we had more driving and more driving.  we had lunch in ohio.  catherine got her meal about 45 minutes before mine came.  i thought i'd have to kill someone as we waited and waited.  and they still charged me.  i didn't put up a fight because there was only the waitress to talk to and it wasn't her fault.

then we had more driving and more driving, through to west virginia.  we got off at the wrong exit on the search for food, which was totally my fault.  by the time we found the food spot i felt quite a bit crazed and hungry.  once again, i had to wait for my food after catherine got hers.  finally we ate and felt much better.

we stayed at a comfort inn, next to a cemetery, on the night before the full moon.  there were a bunch of rednecks hanging out drinking beer, and we thought it would be quite noisy but i was too tired to go anywhere else.  in the end it was just fine and there was internet there for free too.  that was good, because there was absolutely no phone service.  i didn't think verizon would lose coverage anywhere, and i've never seen "no signal" before.  catherine was able to get roaming. 

it was odd. the food situation greatly improved wednesday.  we went to ihop because there weren't any local places.  our meal was great, the waitress (cat) was great, and it was a good start to our day.  more mountains and turns....we did get to go to a scenic overlook.

i thought this motel looked abandoned, but catherine said that it was recommended to her.  nice rust on the watertower.

we were trying to find a visitor's center so catherine could get some postcards.  finally we got off in lexington, va.  we went by VMI and a long, circuitous route probably designed so that we could go by all their little shops.    the visitor center was disappointing.  probably good for tourists in lexington, but not what we needed.  on the way there i saw a really interesting shop, but i was tired and wanted to get to the visitor's center.  on the way back i asked catherine if we could stop.  what a great idea!  there was a little antique store, going out of business; and a great plant shop, the Jefferson.  i couldn't resist a wee bird house.

and both of us walked out of there with sedum.

finally, after much more driving, we ended up at the embassy suites.  babo got comfortable right away.