I’ve been slack about keeping up my blog this week as we have been getting out of the house and taking some day trips. Thus, I haven’t been doing a lot of creative work, but have been gathering creative resources.
Yesterday we took a drive to Alamosa, CO. Our house is only 46 miles from the Colorado border, and then it’s another half hour or so to Alamosa from there. Although it was a pretty overcast day, the mountains and vistas were still spectacular, especially the brilliant white peaks. Because of the light I didn’t get any pictures myself, but I did find that the Alamosa website has a link to a flickr site with San Luis Valley pictures. The pictures by belizeman are especially nice. His January pics show what it looks like right now.
The reason I wanted to go to Alamosa was to to to a quilt shop there called Grey Goose. It’s the closest Bernina store and I needed to get some bobbins for my machine, and I MUST visit every quilt store I can, so we went. (John graciously went with me and said lunch at Back in Thyme located in the back of an antique mall was well worth the trip.)
Grey Goose doesn’t have a website, but it’s a wonderful store. Lots of great fabrics, and best of all, lots of great samples. I love to be able to see other people’s ideas and creations.
I managed to resist buying any fabric, but I did pick up a couple of books for creative resources. The first is fast easy & fun Fabric Boxes by Linda Johansen to go along with her book on fabric bowls that I have. I want to use up a lot of my old fat quarters on bowls, boxes and envelopes this year for practice in machine work and to keep on hand for gifts, etc. It’s my way of creatively de-stashing for 2008.
The next book I purchased is Art Quilt Workbook: Exercises & Techniques to Ignite Your Creativity by Jane Davila and Elin Waterston. The shop owner told me that they have a group of women who are meeting regularly to complete the exercises in this book. How fun would that be? Too bad I’m so far away.
But I’m going to use the book myself over the next year or so. There are exercises in color and perspective, gaining inspiration from images, collaging, innovative piecing, paint, thread work, found objects, embellishing and finishing techniques. There’s even a chapter on the business of being an artist.
One of the things I really like about this book, besides some interesting exercises is that the authors give you a list of artists to study in each chapter. Not having any formal training in art, except for two college-level drawing classes, I’m looking forward to learning more in this area.
Speaking of inspiration, my sister Cindy wrote a comment a few days ago suggesting some websites for nano art images. It made me think of fractal images I have seen before, so I did a little surfing and came up with a website that lists several fractal image sites. As if I didn’t have enough things to look at on the web! Fractal Images by Sharon Webb really has some nice ones, but there are lots of other great sites.
My husband has as one of his goals this year to get all of our (thousands) of 35mm slides converted to CD’s. We’ve just got the second batch finished on-line and there are lots of creative resources there. I’ll be adding to my current mud pictures those taken in the 80′s of mud pots in Yellowstone. I’ll put some on the blog when we get the actual CD’s back.
There are so many sources for fiber and fabric work! I’ll never get to all of them, but it’s sure fun finding and looking at them. Incidentally sharonb noted a source for women botanical illustrators on her January 11 blog posting that looks like another great creative resource. Being especially partial to flowers and all things botanical, I’m bookmarking that one.
