The Workshop Dynamic.

​It’s a bit clichéd to say “Where has the year gone?”,but it’s a bit surreal to see that we are in the second week of April.
The week before last, just before the deceptively early Easter, I attended a 3 day workshop with Cas Holmes.  Cas, from the UK, travels to Australia regularly to run workshops.
It’s really interesting being a student, who is also a teacher, having run countless workshops over the decades.
This one was multimedia, stitch, collage, hand stitch, dye and mark making, where work was ripped into, layered and pieced back together as the composition emerged.  Surrounded by a room full of quilters, it was interesting to see precision sew-ers embrace the challenges.
For me, it was 3 days of what if’s, those moments when while arranging and rearranging, my mind was sifting through my studio at home for cloth, paper, prints, and found objects to incorporate in the process.
There are really two main ways of delivering a workshop.  There is the “recipe” and the “what if”.  Each way has its true believers, and some people do better at one than they would do at another.
One example would be school children.  When I teach felting to school children, they need to have the steps spelt out, and I give latitude in the choice of colour and pre-felts to embellish their work. When mentoring High School Students, particularly year 11 and 12, it’s more about process, leading to what if’s.
However for me, in the now, it’s about embracing the gift of tuition and diffusing elements of it through my practice.
I came home with my mind full of further investigations and samples to consider and themes to explore.  With T.arts on the move and my Solo Exhibition opening this week, I will have to let some mindful stitching, with a notebook close by, be the progression for the moment, while I carve out some time to develop ideas.
Depending on the outcome of Applications, May/June looks good.
I prefer this line up of ideas and investigations to the void of the Artistic Block.  Maybe I will address this in the next post.
Enjoy the last bit of Summer folks, and pray for rain.  It’s hard to get excited by Autumn colour, when the trees are covered in dust.