I have to say that this was my favorite class of the week at artfest. It was LK Ludwig’s class called Tales from the Woods. I really love her work a lot. I remember the first time I saw her work several years ago, I think it was in a book on making books. Anyway, I remember a shiver going through my body when I saw her work for the first time. Sounds weird, but those of you who have ever looked at someones artwork and felt that electricity will know exactly what I mean.
As a teacher, she was extremely organized and explained things very well and gave us lots of goodies in our kits. She read to us too from a Pippi Longstocking story. I remembered just loving Pippi when I was little. I think I wanted to be her for halloween once. She also talked to us about the meaning of fairy tales and why so many different cultures have tales that are so similar. These stories speak to the deeper psyche of the human mind. What do these stories tell us about ourselves? What can we learn from them? What is it about these tales that speaks to us?
Listening to her talk about fairy tales I remembered back to when I first learned how to read-kindergarten/1st grade. When I was finally at the level where I could check out books that were thicker than just one short picture story, all the books I checked out were fairy tales from around the world. I remember each book was from a different country. Then in 4th grade I couldn’t get enough of Greek mythology. These stories that have been passed down through the ages have always fascinated me.
We learned how to make different types of nature transfers. One method was using bleach and black paper. Another method was with copper mesh and liver of sulphur. I had trouble with my transfers. I think I was a little heavy with the spraying of both the bleach and the sulphur. My image tansfers using my photos didn’t work either because I printed my photos on the wrong type of paper. That sucked. We also did imprints with spackle.
She gave us these cool old phonograph books that we took apart to make our pages. I didn’t get to finish, but that was ok. It was all about soaking up the process and the techniques. I only got to complete 2 pages in class.
This photo is of how the two pages will be seen when they will be bound together in the book. The words read “a whisper turned whimper turned into a howl” which is a snippet from a poem I wrote a while ago.
photos of the pages separate
I used a transparency of a photo that I took in Ketchikan, Alaska of a totem pole. I tucked it into the sleeve pocket intended for a record.
And this one, of course is the photo of my favorite tree on Orcas Island. I had printed out the 4×4 encaustic painting that I had done with this tree. And then I dipped it in wax to make it a thin transparent sheet. Attached it with eyelets to the bleach transfer paper. But ripped out the back so that light can be seen through the transparent wax.
I worked on some more pages that night on the floor in my dorm room. I stayed up until 2:00! I didn’t even realize the time. I will take photos of those later when the book is finished.
Here is a photo of my pages and Tara Finlay’s pages sitting on the wall out of the way while we worked on our cramped tables. All of those pages are Tara’s. She was just churning them out!
It was neat to sit next to Tara and Melissa McCobb Hubbel creating. I thought about how I had both of their sites bookmarked on my computer about the time when I was just setting up my Web site to sell my journals. They were both among the first mixed media websites that I had found back then when I was just realizing there were other people out there who did “weird” mixed media art like I did! The wonders of the internet…
And a photo of me and Tara!