Where have I been??? I am asking that of myself lately too!

I have been really really really really busy with my Apprentice II semester at the university - they have me taking 18 credits and also teaching 2 days a week in a second grade classroom. It is just a lot of work. I will do my student teaching in January which is 5 days a week, but no college courses (YAY!) and graduate in May, the day before mothers day!

I wanted to share Dan's new tattoo - its all four of our kids - from oldest to youngest, and each one really fits their personality ;-)

I'm jealous - I want another one!

My grandson

So here are some new pictures of my little grandson Michael.

Nature at Peters Valley

Here are some nature shots I took. Use them as inspiration if you like.

This is a real spider web that I stubbled across at 8 am in the morning. Just dew is on this - it was so amazing watching it move and not fall apart. Wonderful craftsmanship.

Peters Valley pics

Here are some more peters valley pictures. Enjoy!

This is our workshop room... It really was very roomy, and extremely well lit. There were 11 of us in the workshop.

There is Susan Shie as she is unpacking all her fun stuff - like the Airpen!

Our workstations were huge... much more space than i thought we would get, and I was very happy about that.

This piece is my Wall - the theme for the day was Women - as we all get to choose, by democracy, what will be the theme for each days work, and you do not have to follow it if you are really going somewhere else. So after thinking about women, and realizing that the writing was a hard part for me, I am doing this wall piece. More like therapy than art lol. The bricks represent all the fears that I have that stop me from doing the things I want to do in my life. The valley beyond is where you can see me and my husband (we are really tiny) doing all the things we want to because I was able to break free from my wall (the green coming through the center). I will put more of the things I want to do in the background as time goes on.

This is me and my mom. We love to scrap book and do things. She has been saying lately that I am the apple and she is the tree... So here I made a quilt based on that ;-) It is filled up in the yellow area with all kinds of momisms - like "because I said so" and things like that.

This was the first one. I have added more doodles, which i love to do, and more words about my children and husband and me! The theme was fish ;-)

I definately plan to incorporate more words in my work now. I dont know how much I will do of pieces that are just painted and not layered in fabric.. we will have to see. My new toys are going to be an airpen and possibly an airbrush. The airpen was really easy to learn, and I think that was because Susan was such a great teacher. Thank you Susan!

Here at Peters Valley

What an amazing place! I would say if you can get the opportunity to take a workshop at http://www.petersvalley.org/ then you really should jump at it. Here is some of the stuff I have been working on in Susan Shie's workshop of Diary Painting.

The first one we did, the theme was "fish". So my thought was all my family is a school of fish, but Im the odd man out - not in a bad way, just different. So I am the center fish.

This one below is the second piece I started. The theme was "Apron" so I came up with the idea to do me and my mom at a scrapbooking convention and we are wearing aprons!

Susan is a great teacher. I am putting an airpen on my christmas list. I am having a blast in her class! Thank you Shoshana for the opportunity!

Definately will post more pics in the morning when I dont have to blow dry my hair! Gotta run, time to get to day 3~~~~

Photography Journal

My favorite photographers - This is a collection I put together for a homework assignment in Photography class... enjoy the show.

Photography Journal

View more OpenOffice presentations from tmrey.

These are three new pieces I have been working on. I had a really nice collection of african textiles, some are very heavy mudcloth and others are really nice hand stamped and batiked. I love them all, but I had no idea what to do with them. I have had them for quite a number of years and so I decided just to do something that for me was brainless. I just used fusibles and went to town making strips for the first two. Then I got daring and thought what if I tried shaping them into circular motifs? And that gave rise to the third one.

Would love comments and critiques, and yes, I know my picture taking skills are lacking, but it is the best I can do. I have a professional photographer who will hopefully be taking images of all my works this fall as an early holiday gift to myself. But if you click on the pictures, then you can see really how it is constructed up close, and that seems to come out pretty clear.

My plan with these pieces is to stretch them over some pre-stretched canvas before displaying them. I really like to see my work stretched, I almost feel like I can then call it finished. Who knows, maybe that is my "thing".

What do I do?

~ Some choose clay = I tried that, but I couldn't wash it off fast enough.

~ Some choose watercolors = I tried that, but I couldn't wait to be finished.

~ Some choose oil paints = I tried that, but couldn't get it to dry fast enough.

~ Some choose wood = I tried that, but it took forever to get the splinters out.

~ Some choose drawing = I tried that, but I am too much of a perfectionist.

~ Some choose quilting = I tried that, but I hate having to make my seams line up.

~ Some choose Art = I like that. Art = no labels, misconcieved notions about what it is made of, what its construction should be or what your supposed to know about it when you see it.

Ok, so that is it - I choose Art.