Make Mine Mossy!

JoAnnA Pierotti of Moss Hill Studio....a few of my favorite words.

Well now I can say that it's official...JoAnnA is going to teach an awesome workshop in May 2010 at KC Willis Studio Retreats. Her "Sacred Pockets" class will be a two-day workshop here in Colorado where she will unearth the Art-chaeologist in you. She has never taught this class before, so 10 very lucky students will be in for an incredible treat.

Take a peek at the details on Studio Retreats and if you blog about JoAnnA's class and link to it (and I will be having a 2-day class right after JoAnnA's so you can get 2 workshops in one trip if you want to) and leave a comment here....that will get you in on the drawing September 5th for the $300 Lipstick Ranch art giveaway mentioned in the blog just before this one.

How's that?

$300 Lipstick Ranch Shopping Spree...Again!

OK, so you didn't win the first $300 shopping spree...doesn't mean you can't be the name drawn in this one! I'm pretty serious when I do giveaways and this one is no exception. On September 5th I will draw a name and I hope it's yours. $300 worth of art of your choice from Lipstick Ranch. Fun.

I'm gonna keep it short and sweet....write a line or two in your blog about my 2009 and 2010 workshop schedule being up and running and link to the Studio Retreats page. If you want to mention that the likes of Joanna Pierotti and Sarah Fishburn (to name just a couple) will be teaching here...go ahead. Oh and if you can't help but tell them workshops paid in full up front get 20% off and until the drawing is held September 5th those same paid workshops get one night of their hotel free here in lovely Longmont, CO....well I'll forgive you. And all of you who have already booked a workshop, here's your chance to blab incessantly about it and get in on the drawing. You can pick out your $300 worth of art in person! Very fun.

If you are one of my international friends and know that your followers probably won't make the trek to the US to attend a retreat...tell them about the on-line version at Collage Camp and you can get in the drawing too.

Drop a comment here telling me you've done that and you are in the drawing. Logan and I plan on recording a short video of the drawing and posting the winner that way.

Added 8/28/09...please take a moment and re-read the above carefully...the drawing is for $300 worth of my art...and you must Blog/Facebook/Twitter or something to get in on the drawing. Leave a comment after you have posted one or all of the above in order to get your name in the drawing. Your name will not be put in the drawing for leaving a comment. The $300 is for art not workshops or anything else. Okey dokey?

Thanks all...and good luck!

Rebecca Crowell is Coming to Colorado

Anyone who knows me...really knows me...knows that while I make my living in mixed media collage...I was brought into the world of art by my love of abstract paintings. At the first art retrospective that I ever attended in my life I stood in front of the abstract paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. And if you've been following my blog even a little you know what a live-changer that was! From that moment I became so hungry for the abstract. When Kandinsky painted the first abstract I wonder if he knew how he had changed the art world forever. Probably. I love the simple lines of Franz Kline, the rich wildness of DeKooning's work, the rivers of paint that were Helen Frankenthaler's large color fields and Joan Mitchell rock my world., the bright give and take of Hans Hofmann and the wonderful textures of Pollock. Gillian Ayres is a wonder. A moment with Google will bring any of these painters into your world.

My eye knows what it likes and doesn't like in an abstract immediately. And I have to tell you I was immediately transfixed on the elegant textures of Rebecca Crowell's paintings. I have been a fan ever since the first painting that I saw several years ago. Her unique layering of oil paint and cold wax medium and her use of multi-panels to create a complete work of art using smaller works of art is fantastic.

And I am soooo excited to announce that Rebecca will be teaching a 3-day workshop at KC Willis Studio Retreats April 16-18, 2010! This is so cool and will be an amazing class with an amazing painter. In the class Rebecca will reveal the techniques in layering with cold wax medium, tube paint, pigment sticks and powdered pigments...and discover new ways to create textures, lines, and color fields using a wide variety of tools and techniques. Yum.

For all the info needed to reserve your spot in the limited seating at this class, take a look at KC Willis Studio Retreats.

Is it April yet?

Sing with Mixed Media At The Top Of Your Lungs

I have discovered that I love to teach. I assumed that I would enjoy showing others my techniques and exactly what I do to make my fabric collage pieces, but I didn't know how exciting it would be to turn a creative light on in someone. I am addicted to that. I aspire to inspire. If I can encourage one person who had walked away from art to walk back to it. ("Walk toward the light!") Or if someone who had never dared to be creative in the first place dares to sew two pieces of fabric together and it makes them smile...then I am a happy girl. In a world where we hear so many words of fear and despair everyday, I believe that we need the joy of art more than ever. To create is to make the world different, more exciting and beautiful, than it was a few moments earlier.

I have discovered that I love to teach. The in-person workshops that I am gearing up for big-time are about showing technique, sure...but they are intended to be so much more than that. Like I say on the workshop site...we're gonna

• Sit around the old "campfire" (ok so it's just the backyard of the studio) and exchange ideas and goals with your Studio Retreat posse.

• Let me guide you to open up your creative vision and discover your voice

• Fill you with the possibilities of all that combining art and life can be

• Help you discover or recover the "O'Keeffe" in you.

• Embrace the awesomeness of mistakes and see them for the gift they are.

•Learn to sing with mixed media at the top of your lungs.


I would love for you to join me at my beautiful new studio in Longmont, Colorado (just outside of Boulder.) I promise you all the how-to you can handle, but I also promise to inspire you...and you in turn will inspire me.

The schedule for Fall 2009 and all of 2010 is up at www.studioretreats.ning.com.

Grab a friend. Come hang out with me in my studio...because I've discovered that I love to teach.

The Little House That Could

This could very well be the studio of my dreams. A Victorian not so sweet that it's syrupy, just enough to be charming...with a touch of elegance, not so much that it's stuffy. A girl's place. An artist's place. An anything-is-possible-place. A place where amazing things could happen.


For the past few months I have had the wonderful opportunity to interact everyday with the incredibly talented and generous people at my Collage Camp workshop and my Mixed Media Mania workshop. Over 150 open hearts and minds from 7 different countries. A blessing, I tell you. We covered all the ins and outs of making fabric collage art based on my techniques with amazing results from the "Campers." If you don't believe me go to Collage Camp and check out the Photos section where many have posted their work.

Back in June I started getting e-mails asking if I ever taught in-person workshops...which I never really have. If you saw how much stuff I rely on to make my work you would laugh at the thought of my schlepping that around the country. But what I could do...maybe...just maybe...is teach right here in the lovely little town I have called home for 6 years, Longmont, Colorado. But where would I do that? My studio now barely accommodates me and my dog. So I started rolling it around in my head.

One day, I was walking Fiona along the creek near our house and very clearly I saw a backyard with a group of women sitting around a table. It was so vivid, I could almost make out their faces. I literally spoke out loud to my dog-daughter..."What I need is a house!" There I said it. Threw it right out there. And the God that I know and love snatched it up and began to move things around like He tends to do.

A couple of days later I am driving down Main Street and I see a sign in a store window..."Coming Soon Cayenne Kitchen." Didn't think much of it. A couple of days later, seeing there was way too much traffic on Main Street, I headed one block over to a quieter street that would get me where I was going. A street lined with lovely Victorian bungalows that were mostly small businesses. This gorgeous little red and cream house caught my eye and I glanced over at it as I drove by. The sign in the front yard said Cayenne Kitchen. I got all of two houses past it when it hit me. If the sign on Main said Cayenne Kitchen was coming soon, then Cayenne Kitchen was moving out of that house. Could it be? Naaahhhh.

Nonetheless, I parked my car and walked back to the house. The couple who owned the business was there and they said the house wasn't for rent yet, but it would be soon. They gave me the name of the couple who owned it. Wendell and Eula. I liked them already. I went back to my car and called them right away. They said they were just around the corner and could I wait? Could I? You bet. And that was that. We worked things out over the next few weeks and right around the time of birthday number 53, I was given the keys to a house whose number is 530. Could it be? I think so. I prayed everyday about this fabulous little place. I told God to slam the doors right in my face if this wasn't the place he wanted me to be.

Instead he opened them one by one and told me all this could be.

Two of the beautiful rooms could be a great spread-out-you-stuff-and create-all day-long studio.

The two main rooms could be a Gallery for my work and other artists I love and admire.

The empty kitchen with it's very cool linoleum could be a paint studio in the cold months.

The 400 sq. ft. Carriage House out back could be a paint studio in the warm months.

The Sunroom could be filled with geraniums (my favorite flower) and say welcome to all who walked in the front door.

The front yard could be filled with flowers and the backyard could be filled with those women I envisioned that day.

Best of all this house could join me in hosting workshops that would bring me face to face with the wonderful artists and soon-to-be artists that I have met through cyberspace these past months.

I am so excited about teaching here...sharing here...inspiring here...making friends here. Thinking about joining me and hanging out in this little house filled with art. You wanna come?

You could.

xxoo