NCSW - 1 of 4

As promised here are some pictures from North Country Studio Workshops (NCSW) These pictures are from Patrick Dougherty's class and since it was right below Bob's class I spent alot of time looking out of the windows down to the class. They made giant sculptures out of branches. You may want to check out his web page Patrick Dougherty! Wow.

Ramblings

Well we are back from Vermont where Bob taught a stitch class at North Country Studio Workshops. It was an amazing experience. I will post pictures soon. Since I recently lost my job (about one month ago) I find that I will have plenty of time to tend to the blog. So here we go.

Have you ever been to a Chiropractor? I have not since my brother, whom I loved dearly, was an MD and really didn't think much of them. Well Bob has had a pain in his neck (not me...really!) for years. Old football injury and he mentioned it to our MD and he took xrays and said Bob had arthritis in his neck. Well duh! End of discussion. So for Valentines day I gave him 4 sessions of acupuncture at The Spine Worx which is near our house to help with the pain. Well Dr. Jim Pucka said sure he was licensed to do acupuncture but why not fix the problem not just the pain. So that is what is going to happen. I certainly will keep you posted.

Bob has a student coming here to the studio from Kentucky next week for a 3 day class. That should be fun.

Well that is all for now. I will post pictures in the next few days of Vermont.

QSDS

For those taking Bob's class at QSDS who are having trouble visualizing what he is asking for, I will post some pictures of the fat quarter sandwich. You can make the sandwich white on one side and black on the other. Then take one sandwich in white and attach 3 inch strips of solid colors and on another sandwich use printed or textured. Then do the same in black. OK I know you are confused. Just look at the pictures and you will see what he wants.

January 2008

So what have I been doing all this time? Working I guess. What has Bob been doing? He has a new series going. I would love to show you pictures but I am not sure what the rules are for some shows. Maybe I can post some works in progress? I will check that out. We did go down to New Albany, Indiana to the Form Not Function show at the Carnegie Art Center. Again a great show. We met up with our friend Carol Pollard from Ohio who also had a piece in the show.

Bob's new series is called "Infrastructure." It is of course mostly discharged pieces. Mostly Thiox and all about grates and manhole covers. He started doing this after years of collecting pictures on our trips of grates of various sizes and shapes. He was asked to be in a three man show at the Visions Art Gallery in San Diego this June and he wanted all new pieces so this series came about. Of course he will end up with much more than he can hang in San Diego.

OK best laid plans. I just went to download a picture and I am at the wrong computer. So that is it for tonight. I will try again in a few days. Sorry

Chequer Mead Work Boards

Ann and her board

Sara

Helja

Effie

Khurshid


Ana


Susan
Mary

Mary's board
Celia

You can click on this picture to made them larger to study them more carefully. Maybe tomorrow I will post some pictures I took in East Grinstead. It's like I'm still there. And believe me I wish that were the case.

Chequer Mead and East Grindstead I

Monday arrives and we set off early as we have a 40 minute drive and we still need to set up tables and "stuff." Claire and Leslie are pros at schlepping things cross country as we really find out the next week when they cart all the tables, irons, and "stuff" including a commercial sink up to Birmingham to build the "Virtual Studio" at the Festival of Quilts. But back to East Grinstead and the Chequer Mead Community Art Center. Bob had a huge room and the weather was so nice that whenever they wanted to work outside they were able. Chequer Mead had a cafe that served wonderful food. I must admit that the food in the UK seems to have improved since our last visit 10 years ago. The first picture is of Chequer Mead. The huge area on the left is Bob's room.










Attentive students while Bob demonstrates and shows examples.








Then at various times during the week the students are hard at work. What a great bunch of students they turned out to be. The majority of them have been students of Claire and Leslies at Committed to Cloth and were so talented.
















The next post will be of the critiques. There you will be able to see what they accomplished during the week and also I hope to throw in some pictures of East Grinstead. I spent a few days walking around town. And as a good Episcopalian, I found the local Anglican church and went to a morning service on Wednesday. So more to come but I have to figure out how to download the pictures so it isn't such a pain. I did discover that if you click on the pictures they become larger and that will be great for the next bunch. Thanks for reading. Later

Committed to Cloth

WOW. Where do I begin. We had a great time in the UK. What's not to like about traveling to a place where they still like us...well most of us. We left Indianapolis Thursday night and flew to Detroit and caught the 9:30 PM to Gatwick. It seemed like 30 planes all landed at the same time and everyone had to go through immigration. The line was long and slow. When we finally made it through, there was Claire Benn waiting for us. What a relief to see her smiling face in the crowd. We were whisked away to Bovey Cottage. What a gorgeous place. The grounds were spectacular. James had fresh vegetables and a wide variety of fruit growing. Fresh figs in the morning and fresh veggies in the evenings.

Since we arrived on Friday we had the weekend to rest up and get over jet lag. We never have jet lag going over the Atlantic...only coming back. But none the less we did such restful things as:

Took a trip to Dorking and walked around, had tea, and went shopping at the local supermarket.

Went into London to tour the Tate Modern. They have a wonderful Rothko collection.

Treated like royalty. James and Claire are great chefs and gracious hosts. We can't thank Claire and Leslie enough for the opportunity to come and teach to their group of talented artists.

A picture from the Tate Modern in London



I suppose a lot of you know of Bob's habit of going to bed early and getting up early. If not he does...or used to. He was in the habit of going to bed around 6:00 PM and getting up around 1:00AM or 2:00 AM. James and Claire were bound to break him of this habit and he was doing very well. So one morning when he got up at the late hour of 5:00 AM he was able to play a little ball with Angus (below) and snap this picture of fog at Bovey. That was the only time the weather was anything but beautiful. The whole week Bob was teaching at Chequer Mead over in East Grinstead was sunny and cool.

My buddy Angus

Well that about covers the weekend. Class started on Monday. Tomorrow I will post about the class and have lots of pictures.

Thanks to Maggie at Stitching with Schnauzer and Siamese for giving me a little kick start to get this posted.