Susan Shie
Workshop Description
Draw, Write, Paint, and Crazy-Grid!
Quilts that have a lot to say
I'll be teaching almost entirely about painting (with writing and drawing) in this class, not teaching hand stitching and beading. Lots of people can teach you to sew, and I don't care anymore if anyone remembers at all that I sew. I want them to remember what I paint and say in my work. So take this class to learn how to express yourself in the written content and image composition of your work, and to learn to paint how I do with fabric paints. And to learn airpen, if you want to, though you can use markers during the whole class instead, if you want to leave the airpen alone. I'll show you the way I think when I'm painting and writing on my work, how I try to stay in an intuitive, non-analytical mind set, and let the ideas and images flow onto the cloth. I'll help you learn to stay intuitive and creative, instead of worrying about how the work's coming along.
We'll work together on using themes for our individual paintings, creating our topic list together as a democratic group. Examples of themes are: Kitchen rituals; New Year's resolutions; My family; My hopes for the future; Healing my body and soul. But these are just examples, and each student will be allowed to not follow the theme the group chooses each day, if she prefers to do her own thing! That's really fine!
I have realized over the last few years that I am much more interested in the narrative in my work than the sewing processes. I was always a painter who happened to also sew, and if paintings on stretched canvas weren't so hard to transport, I might be doing them. My work got to be more and more about hand stitching and beading, and now I'm bringing my emphasis back to the images and messages. But I still like to use the quilt format, because quilts are flexible, wonderful to hold and touch, hang well on walls without frames, and really require little sewing. I've found out I can sew a lot or a little, but what matters to me is my imagery and my written messages, and of course, along with these, the processes of making them. Now I'm often doing very simple machine grids, very casually, to quilt my work . I hand sew one row of running stitches around the border of each of my quilts yet. But I prefer to use my time to make the paintings and then “crazy-grid” machine sew them!
I will not be teaching hand sewing in this class. I will demo turning one painting into a Crazy Grid machine sewn quilt, which is the most basic quilt work anyone ever did. Can't even pretend to call this teaching a skill! You'll turn one of your class paintings into a similar machine sewn quilt in class, and maybe sew more than one of your paintings, if you choose.
It doesn't matter if you think you can draw or write or paint, or not. I will help you open up to your ability to let things flow out of your inner self onto the fabric. We'll work with white cotton fabric, fabric paints, markers and airpens (optional), and will each create several paintings during this four day class. You will have one piece turned into a quilt by the time you leave, using my Crazy Grid style (not measured). The sizes of your paintings will vary, but consider 18” x 21” as the basic target size ( a fat quarter.)
Join me in diary and story telling via artmaking and learn to be happy and really excited about your abilities!
Supply List for Susan's workshop
(Supply lists are provided by the instructor and you are encouraged to direct any questions regarding required equipment and supplies to the instructor.) |
I've been an artist all my life, from the time I could hold a pencil, clay, or sewing scissors. My degrees in Painting are from The College of Wooster (BA 1981) and The School of Art of Kent State University (MFA 1986). I taught college drawing courses while in graduate school, and since 1989 have taught workshops of my own art processes.
I began to make art quilts around 1980 and started to exhibit professionally in 1987. I received “Best of Show” at Quilt National '87. My contribution to art quilt styles is the mixed media “outsider” diary quilt, and my work is spontaneous, narrative, and full of diary writing , painted on whole cloth as a first step.
I've received major individual artist fellowships including two NEA grants and some Ohio Arts Council grants, such as the Major Artist Fellowship in 1990 – 91, and a six month artist residency in New York City at PS #1 in 1988. My most recent fellowships were in 1996 and 98.
In 2003 I taught myself to use the airpen on fabric, and enjoy teaching this process as part of my classes, as well as using it in my own studio work. It gives me much more clarity and depth of line in my paintings, and my diary writing is now able to be much smaller. Because the writing is now paint, I no longer need to embroider over all of my writing. So now I can put a LOT more writing onto each piece I make. My diary and social commentary is therefore much more current when I show my work, because the work gets finished much faster.
My current longterm project is The Kitchen Tarot, a deck of 78 art quilts, which will spread from 1998 into the distant future, I assume! In mid 2008 I'm finishing the last of the 22 Major Arcana cards in the deck. It's a long road! I have patience.
Visit Susan's web site!
Equinox #6
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