Colorado Collage Conference

Hey there Friends.....Colorado Collage Conference begins this Friday here in Longmont, Colorado. Skies are bright blue, temps around 80 and snow still shows on the mountaintops on the west side of town.  A last minute cancellation has opened up one spot. So if you were thinking about coming to all or part of this sure-to-be-amazing conference and saw that it had filled up....here's your chance! E-me at lipstickranch@yahoo.com and we can talk particulars.

We will have five days of art workshops, marketing seminars, including a class on Saturday with  The Incomparable Sarah Fishburn!

Sarah is an internationally known artist who describes her work as Mixed-Media Narrative. Recognized for unexpected yet elegant combinations of bright colors, photographic images, spray paint, transparencies, and words, her work has been featured in numerous art magazines as well as in a shelf-full of books, including True Colors, Alphabetica and Transparent Art. Sarah collaborated with fellow artist, Angela Cartwright, to produce In This House and its sequel In This Garden, two books showcasing altered art imagery, and packed with collage techniques and explorations. Fishburn and Cartwright also co-publish (several times a year) Pasticcio, a lavish art zine featuring gorgeous artwork, technical articles, tips, treats, and even art history.

Colorado Collage Conference Five Art and Info packed days that could change your creative life forever. Join Sarah Fishburn and I at the very cool Old Firehouse Art Center in downtown Longmont. Located at 667 4th Avenue...All my favorite eateries are within a block or two. :-)

The small number that the conference is being limited to will allow some one-on-one time with each other. We will be available to answer your personal questions and encourage you directly. I don't know about you...but I like that!

Bring your Significant Compadre and he/she will find that we are surrounded by opportunities to go shopping, golfing, fishing, hiking, visit art galleries, check out Boulder...in other words we can keep them busy while you're at the Conference.

Conference Schedule

Day One....
Opening Presentation..."Hold My Horse My Hair's On Fire!"
My Story. Funny...empowering...full of hope. Storytelling that will make a difference.
then...
Free Form Collage
Learn my techniques for taking your thinking cap off and developing and loving the improvisational skills needed to have your work take on a new and fun "edge." You will use your favorite photo (or one of mine) to create in a whole new way and at a whole new pace.

All of my art instruction classes are perfect for the beginner. No previous sewing skills needed...and you will get plenty of one-on-one with me.

If you have 45 seconds check this out! Should get you excited! http://blip.tv/file/1994328

Day Two...

Sarah Fishburn....Techniques and Transparencies...
A fast-paced and exciting workshop where Sarah will show us her signature style in a sample book that you can take home and incorporate these great techniques into your work.

 

Day Two will end with a group dinner with Sarah and I at one of my favorite restaurants for a great chance for us to talk and laugh and share and question.




Day Three.....
Fabric Collage Book
In this full day workshop we will create a multi-page mixed media book from scratch. Using coffee-stained canvas, new and vintage fabrics, papers and textured collages you will make a book to hold in your hands and tell a story from your heart.

With images of family, a beloved pet, your favorite flowers...whatever....let me show you how I make the books that I love. Here's a cover of one of my favorites.....

And then letting the images speak to us....we will learn to listen. From this will come our journaling, letters or quotes.

Day Four....Finish up our Fabric books in the morning and after lunch...
Day Three....
Works on Paper...Sewing Paper instead of Fabric. What a concept!

I'll show you the papers that will take being coffee-stained, how to iron them, burn them, print on them and sew them together. Mounted on painted canvas it is a whole new approach to paper collage.  And we will create an additional piece of fabric art where I will show you how to hand tint your photo transfers!


Day Five
It's time for finding your Marketing Mindset. We will learn about developing a signature style, selling wholesale, consignment, galleries vs. shops, PR, licensing and making your presence felt on the internet with a stand-out blog. In this session I will work with you on making your blog writing or any writing....fun, inspirational and memorable. Let me show you my concepts, techniques and attitudes for writing words that people want to follow and for developing an attitude of resilience.

We will wrap up our five day Collage Conference with a couple of hours of Q&A and exchanging thoughts and dreams. I will present the end to "My" story that I began Day One in "Hold My Horse My Hair's On Fire" leaving you with thoughts to embolden, empower and energize you to new levels of creative zest.



Registration info is at www.studioretreats.ning.com. One spot left! First come...first coming!



Love you. Mean it.

Lesley Riley and Me....Teaching Together

Just a quick baby blogette to let you know that Lesley Riley and I will be teaching a two-day workshop together at my studio and gallery here in Colorado in May 2011! Needless to say I am very excited about this finally happening. This has been years in the making. The class promises to be filled with laughter, technique, inspiration and info on how to sell you work with the right marketing mindset. Fabulous Fun!

The complete two-day itinerary can be found at www.studioretreats.ning.com.


Art & Attitude :: Marketing & Meaning
KC Willis :: Lesley Riley
A Weekend of Discovery & Direction

Friday and Saturday, May 6-7, 2011
KC Willis Studio and Gallery
Longmont, CO

Thanks for checking it out!  Love you. Mean it.


KC

Journey with Georgia Workshop

Hi All...This is a repeat of a piece I wrote back in March when I first started blogging. I wanted to share it with you again, as many did not see it and it is my way of telling you about an O'Keeffe workshop I have added on KC Willis Studio Retreats. So spend a few minutes with Georgia and then perhaps spend a few days with me in Colorado as we explore The Life of An Artist.





I called Los Angeles home for about a dozen years, from 1981 to 1993, and lived to tell about it. I experienced earthquakes, floods in the canyon, fast-moving fires from Mother Nature and the kind that come from anger and frustration in neighborhoods filled with the same. I made sandwiches for homeless residents of my alley and ate a sandwich next to Elizabeth Taylor. We were not in an alley. I went to jazz clubs, fitness clubs, country clubs and Sam's Club. Living there was a lesson in extremes and I saw way too much. Too much wealth, too much poverty, too much traffic, and too much plastic surgery on people who had too much time on their hands. But even for all of the insanity of such a place, my world was opened up there in a way I wouldn't trade for anything.

On a Sunday afternoon in 1989 I visited the Los Angeles Museum of Art. They were having a Retrospective of the work of Georgia O'Keeffe. Now the only thing I knew about O'Keeffe at that time was that she was an old lady Charles Kuralt had visited at her home in a desert somewhere and the only thing I knew about art was that I didn't know anything about art. But as I entered the first room filled with the art of this remarkable woman, I had a strange sense of recognition. Something about this work seemed familiar; as if was resonating with a part of me I didn't even know existed. In simpler terms...I dug the heck of it.

I left the museum that day with a biography of O'Keeffe in my hot little hands and couldn't wait to get home to read it. The book was called Portrait of An Artist by Laurie Lisle (available at Amazon), and to this day I will occasionally open it up and if I don't have time to read any of it I will at least take a whiff. It smells different from any other book I've ever read. It smells of freedom, of painting to music, of a tiny studio in New York and an old adobe in New Mexico. It smells of possibilities.

I was blown away by this woman's paring down of life to it's barest essentials in order to find more time for art. "I often wished I lived in a tent, so I could pull back the flaps and let the wind blow everything away." At one point in her life her artist statement for a show read..."My name is Georgia O'Keeffe. I like to live in a room as spare as possible."


The dedication that made her sit on the floor of her boarding house room and draw until her back hurt and her hands ached, sending these same drawings to a friend in New York City, who would take them to the famed gallery owner and photographer, Alfred Stieglitz. "At last...a woman on paper!"


She dressed in all black in order to keep it simple and to save the choosing of colors for the studio and the painting she carried in her head. "It's as if my mind creates shapes that I know nothing about."


She dared to paint abstracts at a time when women didn't even have the right to vote. "Oh I was always afraid. but I never let it stop me. Never."

I love that she lived to be nearly 100 years old and continued to make art into her 90's. She took up pottery well past her 90th birthday and upon looking at a picture of her and her dogs standing on a bluff outside her home at Ghost Ranch..."Oh this picture is a prize. It's me and my dogs looking out to the future." She was 88.
I believe any one who lives their life in the studio or who dreams of living that kind of life, should read about the life of Georgia O'Keeffe. In this complicated day and age, it would be hard to emulate the life she led, but it would be worth trying to capture even a little of her attitude. As for me, I certainly lead a life very different from her...but I carry the knowledge of this artistic spirit with me. I make sure every day that my hands touch something in a creative way.


And I love the words that the late Dan Fogelberg wrote in a song dedicated to the artist and her beloved New Mexico desert called "Bones in the Sky."

"And I sing to your spirit where all my dreams dwell.
The vision. The Freedom. A life lived so well."

What an awesome thing to be able to say at the end of your artistic journey...a life lived so well.
Journey through the desert with Georgia. There's nothing barren about it.

Journey with Georgia Workshops at KC Willis Studio Retreats, September 14-15, 2009 and November 2-3, 2009.

Just Another Manic Monday (And Another Giveaway)

When I was writing more or less full time...way back in the 90's...there was one particular year that I set out to write a novel. In that year I wrote three novels. Yep, in one year. Tad bit manic was said by some. And yeah, it was a bit of that, but there was also the very real "thing" I had going on with my characters. I gave them waaaaay too much control over me. Sometimes they would wake me up at 5 in the morning tugging on the shirt sleeve of my mind saying "Hey-hey wake up...I've got an idea...you know what I could do?" Tad bit schzoid was said by some.

Once a story was done, I barely had time to take a deep breath and revel in my accomplishment, before an entire set of new characters would come forward. It was like there were people in my head waiting in line to tell me their story. As soon as I saw them I recognized them, seemed to know everything about them. And we were off and running. Tad bit scary was said by all.

I walked away from writing many years ago. I am a bit hyper...ok a bit manic...and being a novelist with its many months to write the story, many months (even years) to sell the story, and another year or two for good measure before you held a book in your hand...was just too drawn out for me. I need a quicker fix for my creative juices.


Enter fabric collage art. It's still storytelling. I still have characters-the faces on my pieces. I still have dialogue-my quotes. I still have a setting...the fabrics and papers everything sits on. And I still have a happy ending-my pieces hanging on walls all over the world. Oh...and one other thing I still have...waaaay too many ideas.

Now instead of characters standing in line in my head...ideas for new work wake me up at the crack of dawn saying "Helloooo." While I am known for my fabric collage wall hangings, the past nine years have seen my brand of collage art on clothing, jewelry, altars, boxes, paintings, altered books, found objects, crosses, birdhouses, garden decor, papers on papers and one of my favorites, furniture. So it was probably not a far leap to imagine that I might have a few things I wanna share/teach beyond my wall hangings that are near and dear to my heart.

So in a manic moment of workshop ideas roaring down the Autobahn of my mind...I decided to go ahead and let you have it. Thus KC Willis Mixed Media Mania was born. A series of on-line workshops very much in keeping with the spirit of my Collage Camp. Fun, informative and hopefully inspirational workshops based on some of my favorite things.

The first three are open for Early Registration at a discounted rate at the Ning site I have set up for this Manic Menagerie. They are on Altars and Shrines, Works on Paper and Altered Books. Yipee! I for one can't wait. Logan and I are making the videos as we speak (Fiona is helping out again) and they will be up before you know it.

Go to the Main Page and check out the particulars. Man, this is gonna be fun. And while lots and lots of you have recently put up a link on your blogs, or Facebook pages, or been all a-Twitter about Collage Camp, I thought mayhaps (sorry but I love that word) that we might rally around the Manic and do the same. She'll do another Giveaway.......

How about one of my famous The Women-The Flag. Ain't I the generous-type? The first one of these that I ever made is in the permanent collection of the Cowgirl Museum in Fort Worth. (There are 50 women for the 50 stars.) If you live in another country and want in on the drawing...you can select something else if you win.

Just link to www. MixedMediaMania.ning.com on one or all of your social networking situations, drop a comment here telling me you've done that, and if you win...one of my favorite pieces of art will be yours. Let's hold the drawing on June 15th along with the $300 Shopping Spree touted on the previous blog. Be sure your name is in both drawings!

It's time to head off to bed...but wait! I've think I feel an idea coming on.

As Good Excuse As Any

This week I got an e-mail from a stranger on my website. Happens all the time. This one got me to thinking, though. She said that in the hard times we find ourselves going through in our country, she found it rather self-indulgent to do something as frivolous as making art. After all, it wasn't going to add to her family's coffers, she had never really made much money at it, and while she would like to attend my on-line Collage Camp, she just couldn't bring herself to justify such a thing. Now the fact that she was writing me to tell me that, told me that this was more about convincing herself of the validity of her selflessness than it was about explaining her decision to me. I, for one, was not convinced by her argument.

If there was ever a time for mankind and womankind to honor their creative selves it is now. In art we find the obvious...beauty, freedom of expression, a way to take our fears and angst and let it all out. But there is more than that. When I feel overwhelmed by the world I like to look at art for starters, which almost always shoots "artdreneline" through my body, leading me to create something of my own. But it starts with looking at the art others have made. Helen Frankenthaler makes paint dance across canvas, DeKooning's "Women" make me chuckle and be glad I am not one of his girls, Pollock, before he dripped was a Bi-Polar wonder to behold and O'Keeffe makes me fly up through the holes in her desert bones and come back to earth more in love with color than I was before I took flight. Robert Rauschenberg just makes me as joyful looking at his collages as he was making them. He died a couple of months ago, no doubt with a smile on his face and an idea in his head. Most of these artists lived through World Wars and a Great Depression. Thank God they never thought that when times are gloomy they should stop doing something as self-centered as Art. Sometimes looking at art is the thing that fills me with hope and keeps me focused on forward motion.

Not everything I make in my studio is intended to sell and I certainly don't need to validate these things that I do that are for the pure pleasure of doing. I look at an empty fruit crate and feel an obligation to make it into a shrine of color and texture, giving it life beyond what it seemed destined to experience when it lay in a pile of "stuff" on the side of my studio. I am not being self-centered, I am being God-centered. I believe we are created in God's image and therefore we who have been given a vision to make something out of nothing must CREATE. It's what He did. He set the example. I follow. Create. Create. Create. In the first few pages of the Bible it was pretty much what He did. The Ultimate Artist. So how can I possibly think that there is ever a time when I can feel bad about being an Artist. I like to think that on the seventh day he rested...because he had created what he set out to create and from that point on He was turning it over to us.

I've decided to spill my guts.

It's not that I haven't wanted to talk about how I make the art you see on Lipstick Ranch, it's just that I've been too busy making that art to talk about it. And honestly...workshops in far off states always seemed like a logistical nightmare to me, so I just avoided it. But now they've got this newfangled contraption called the "Internets" and I have climbed on board the Info Express.

With the encouragement of my dear friend, the wonderful mixed-media artist, Jane DesRosier I began thinking about doing what she is doing and set up my own video workshop series on the very cool Ning network. I created a Ning site called KC Willis Collage Camp and between Jane and my other super-talented artist buddy, Joanna Pierotti, we got through the set up and I've pitched my creative tent at Collage Camp.

You can check out the particulars at http://collagecamp.ning.com/.

I have the Workshop set up for early registration, so you can go on and read the many words I have put up describing everything. If you're not already a member of the Ning network you can Sign Up for free in the box at the top right. Being a part of the workshop with access to the other Artists and the upcoming workshop videos and yours truly, requires hitting the Buy It Now button and paying the reduced registration fee. It's all explained. Gonna be fun!

And if that wasn't enough....I've decided to give away a piece of my work. Just grab the Camp icon or Badge off of the first page of http://collagecamp.ning.com/. Link back to me, so others can see what we're gonna do. Drop a comment here and tell me you've done that and your name will go in a drawing to be held on April 30th. The winner can go on my site and pick out any one image-one quote piece in any size available and it's theirs! Heck, I'd like to get in on that drawing, but I don't have anymore room on my walls.

Georgia O'Keeffe took a class when she arrived in New Mexico, wanting to know the secrets of capturing the subtle colors of the hills outside her door. "They could teach me how to paint their mountains," she said. "But they couldn't teach me how to paint mine." I just want to share with you some of my techniques and my enthusiasm for what I do, so you will take that info and paint your own mountains.

E-mail me with any questions. Thanks everyone! I look forward to seeing you there!

Journey With Georgia

I called Los Angeles home for about a dozen years, from 1981 to 1993, and lived to tell about it. I experienced earthquakes, floods in the canyon, fast-moving fires from Mother Nature and the kind that come from anger and frustration in neighborhoods filled with the same. I made sandwiches for homeless residents of my alley and ate a sandwich next to Elizabeth Taylor. We were not in an alley. I went to jazz clubs, fitness clubs, country clubs and Sam's Club. Living there was a lesson in extremes and I saw way too much. Too much wealth, too much poverty, too much traffic, and too much plastic surgery on people who had too much time on their hands. But even for all of the insanity of such a place, my world was opened up there in a way I wouldn't trade for anything.

On a Sunday afternoon in 1989 I visited the Los Angeles Museum of Art. They were having a Retrospective of the work of Georgia O'Keeffe. Now the only thing I knew about O'Keeffe at that time was that she was an old lady Charles Kuralt had visited at her home in a desert somewhere and the only thing I knew about art was that I didn't know anything about art. But as I entered the first room filled with the art of this remarkable woman, I had a strange sense of recognition. Something about this work seemed familiar; as if was resonating with a part of me I didn't even know existed. In simpler terms...I dug the heck of it.

I left the museum that day with a biography of O'Keeffe in my hot little hands and couldn't wait to get home to read it. The book was called Portrait of An Artist by Laurie Lisle (available at Amazon), and to this day I will occasionally open it up and if I don't have time to read any of it I will at least take a whiff. It smells different from any other book I've ever read. It smells of freedom, of painting to music, of a tiny studio in New York and an old adobe in New Mexico. It smells of possibilities.

I was blown away by this woman's paring down of life to it's barest essentials in order to find more time for art. "I often wished I lived in a tent, so I could pull back the flaps and let the wind blow everything away." At one point in her life her artist statement for a show read..."My name is Georgia O'Keeffe. I like to live in a room as spare as possible."


The dedication that made her sit on the floor of her boarding house room and draw until her back hurt and her hands ached, sending these same drawings to a friend in New York City, who would take them to the famed gallery owner and photographer, Alfred Stieglitz. "At last...a woman on paper!"


She dressed in all black in order to keep it simple and to save the choosing of colors for the studio and the painting she carried in her head. "It's as if my mind creates shapes that I know nothing about."


She dared to paint abstracts at a time when women didn't even have the right to vote. "Oh I was always afraid. but I never let it stop me. Never."

I love that she lived to be nearly 100 years old and continued to make art into her 90's. She took up pottery well past her 90th birthday and upon looking at a picture of her and her dogs standing on a bluff outside her home at Ghost Ranch..."Oh this picture is a prize. It's me and my dogs looking out to the future." She was 88.
I believe any one who lives their life in the studio or who dreams of living that kind of life, should read about the life of Georgia O'Keeffe. In this complicated day and age, it would be hard to emulate the life she led, but it would be worth trying to capture even a little of her attitude. As for me, I certainly lead a life very different from her...but I carry the knowledge of this artistic spirit with me. I make sure every day that my hands touch something in a creative way.


And I love the words that the late Dan Fogelberg wrote in a song dedicated to the artist and her beloved New Mexico desert called "Bones in the Sky."

"And I sing to your spirit where all my dreams dwell.
The vision. The Freedom. A life lived so well."

What an awesome thing to be able to say at the end of your artistic journey...a life lived so well.
Journey through the desert with Georgia. There's nothing barren about it.

I have a secret weapon...

As a fabric artist who strives to make her work look old, worn and deliciously weathered, I have gotten pretty creative through the years with ways to accomplish said weathering. From burning, to coffee-staining to simply leaving it out in the elements. But I have one trick that I can't really take credit for, but I take advantage of it just the same. I have a dog who loves fabric as much as I do. She's a funny little part Corgi, part terrier (and even a little Lab) named Fiona, "Fi" as we call her. She has spent her life (all 5 years of it) lovingly by my side, which means she's a studio hound.

We got Fiona from my sister when she was 4 months old. The first time we left her alone to go out to dinner she experienced rather extreme separation anxiety and basically ate the slipcovers off the sofa in my studio. If you've watched my HGTV segment in the video section of my website, you have seen this lovely sofa with fabric covers designed by yours truly. The scene below is what we came home to that evening. We called it a Fi-asco. My poor Chocolate Lab, Josie, was traumatized.

Thus began Fiona's love affair with fabric. Whenever she wanted to play tug she would snatch a piece of fabric from by piles. If she needed a nap, her place of preference was usually the cubes in my studio where I stored my fabrics.

Then she got particular and I got my secret weapon. She began selecting, and yes I mean actually looking through the fabrics and choosing the one that caught her eye. The beloved fabric of the hour became the fabric of the month. She took it everywhere with her. Up the stairs, down the stairs, out into the yard. She played with it, slept with it and generally adored it.



At the end of the love affair of threads, she would suddenly abandon it and select another. What she left behind was a tattered, hole-filled, frayed and funky piece of cloth. Now what do you suppose I could do with THAT? Perhaps wash it, coffee-stain it and turn it into art? You betcha! My studio assistant came across one of Fiona's Fabulous Fabrics in my stash one day and said admiringly, "I like this piece. It's so old." I swear Fiona looked at me and winked.