Friday dawned bright and sunny, if a bit cool, and rather blustery. We began the day with a lovely breakfast spread and another round of Your Creative Connection SWAG: this year’s bag (a lovely little cross-body number in navy, sporting our kaleidoscope of butterflies.
Coffee in hand, we turned our attention to our day’s Studio Session with yours truly. We wiled away the morning exploring the myriad ways in which one can imitate Shibori* and what we have come to call the “scrunchy ombre” techniques. Normally performed to create elaborately designed cloth, we worked exclusively on various weights/textures of rice paper – to delightful affect! Essentially, after manipulating our paper substrate by folding it up or securing it to a cylindrical form and “scrunched up” tightly, we added color using Sharpie markers (any alcohol based marker will work) and sprayed our papers with alcohol. After allowing them to dry, we flattened them to marvel at the color and texture realized through the use of these techniques. From there we moved on to liquid watercolors and various types and sizes of salt - the ooohs and ahhhs were plentiful and we explored that and additional ways to shift the path of the paints.
After taking a break for lunch (aka: Day 2 of Salad-Palooza) wherein we added Couscous Salad, Scandinavian (lovingly referred to as Pea) Salad, and Pimento Cheese to our original line-up along with sliced turkey, lettuce, tomato, and assorted wraps and crackers. As we were finishing up our lunch, there was a bit of hub-bub on the deck. On first glance, it appeared that there was an early group of dolphins. Other than the time of day, nothing about that would be of significant notice. Closer observation revealed that it wasn’t dolphins at all! We gathered on the deck to watch a lone Orca cavorting in the very calm sea: rolling in the water and “standing” head first with its tail high in the air. It was amazing. In spite of it being somewhat far away (almost halfway to the horizon line), it was a wondrous thing to see. I grew up along the NC coast and in all of my 56 years I have never seen one. According to a news article we saw later, apparently it has been 5 years since one was last seen off the NC coast.
Still aglow after our beautiful encounter with nature, we reentered the work area afresh and spent our afternoon making cool things together. Throughout the afternoon, we played around with different ways to use used tea bags to add texture, contain found objects, and obscure details in previous layers of mixed media painting and collage. *thankfully, the grackles hadn’t made off with the ones I had drying on the deck – lol!* I also gave everyone a small “fish can” that had been painted with a hammered finish spray paint. I provided an example of a nifty way to highlight a collection of their brightly colored papers as a component of their Canvas of Curiosities or as a small, stand-alone piece of art.
Ideas were beginning to gel and compositions take shape; the time had come for everyone to embark of the journey of completion for their canvas wall hangings. After a delicious dinner of Beyond Beef meatless chili and gluten free Cheddar Biscuits, our Creative Explorers took full advantage of an evening of Open Studio time. While they worked, they received a surprise invitation: to join us on the following evening for a Special Event in the downstairs living room – our very first Gallery Hang-Out! As music wafted through the evening air, our intrepid creators worked into the evening. Thankfully, we had a delicious pick-me-up for the evenings labors: Michelle’s [in]Famous Fudgy Brownies (gluten free, natch) accompanied by decadent homemade chocolate ice cream.
Needless to say, it was a rather full day! Soon enough, all were ready to turn in so as to be bright eyed and bushy tailed on Saturday morning. We still had Saturday Salon to look forward to, as well as seeing everyone’s finished pieces the following evening.
Join us again tomorrow as we continue our loving look back at a magical time!
* (しぼり/絞り, from the verb root shiboru – "to wring, squeeze or press"[1]: 7 ) is a Japanese manual tie-dyeing technique, which produces a number of different patterns on fabric. (from Wikipedia, a wealth of information on the form can be found under this title: Shibori.
