Creative Link Saturday

Two themes came together happily today–Tammy G’s Daisy Yellow Link Love and the class I’m taking in Sedona from Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson.

Tammy’s idea is simple: “Link. Write something nice. Spread happiness.
I believe that linking will inspire community. Let’s go retro and spread the love. They say that everything comes back in style. Maybe even pastel orange countertops.”

Sounds like a good idea to me. Since I post new links every Saturday (and often throughout the week), it’s easy for me to participate.

If you want to participate, grab a badge and link to at least five new sites in the month of April. You can leave a link to your site on Tammy’s blog, too.

Meanwhile, the Sedona Art Center is hosting Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson this weekend. The class is on collage, and Elizabeth is a peripatetic, fascinating workshop leader. Class started with a talk and slide show in which Elizabeth detailed her artwork techniques and how they help bring a collage alive with depth and personality.

She then demo’d a number of techniques, in a rapid-fire way, constantly moving, constantly changing papers. She moves fast and creates fast, and while I thought it was just me, when I looked at the photo, her hands really were a blur!

Here’s a technique  (above) in which she paints a piece of paper with two colors, one on top of the other (dried in between), then drops alcohol onto the paint. The difference in the surface tension and evaporation rate of the paint and alcohol causes the paint to recede in circles as the alcohol drops onto the page.

When she adds a spray of soap water, the detergent adds a different surface-tension design to the paper. Once the soap was sprayed, she added turquoise spatters. The effect is amazing.

Here’s a page (above)  she made using her hotel room key as a paint scraper to apply paint on paper laid over a patterned texture sheet. She sees patterns in shelf liners, stencils, imprint plates, doilies–anything with a texture.

We then got down to painting our own pages and sheets. Tomorrow we start with gluing–something that requires a lot of planning to get the direction and sequencing right.

Meanwhile, if you are looking for more books for your wish list, Seth Apter (one of my book contributors) posted his list of current favorite art books. I’ve pre-ordered the wabi-sabi book. When I first began to post about wabi-sabi (here’s an article from 2006), I was told that no one really was interested in the concept. Seeing this book come out now makes me smile–the world is ready for an appreciate of the old, the worn and the natural.

Have a creatively exciting weekend!

—Quinn McDonald is typing with paint-stained hands and is ready to continue the class tomorrow.