June Meeting Recap

Hello Everyone,

Here's a recap of our last meeting on June 14th:

The meeting turned out to be a great Show-and-Tell day for the curiosity boxes, thanks to Betsy Rasmussen and Kathleen Kelly who both brought in wonderful finished pieces. 

Betsy Rasmussen

Kathleen Kelly

Here is some of the other work that was shared.  

Betsy Rasmussen

                                                     ABC Book

Nancy Lohmiller

Diane Judd

We also had an opportunity to look at the curiosity boxes that have been pinned to our Pinterest board. 

Nancy lead a great discussion with some helpful advice on creating your own Artist Statement about your work.  Starting with find three specific words that you or other people would use to describe your style and then building your story of why you create what you create.  You want to let people know what the ideas are behind your work, as well as, your motivation for making art.

We also reminded ourselves the importance of taking several photos of each piece we create.  

To that end, please remember our show is coming up soon (end of October).  We would like everyone to submit

1.  An ABC Book  

2.  A Curiosity Box and  

3. The 12" x 12" Canvas Piece.

Nancy is checking to see if it would be cost effective to buy the canvases in bulk and how much it will cost.

Just to review, our canvas piece will be a 12" x 12" gallery wrapped canvas.  The theme is "story-telling", but there are no limitations on materials or techniques.

Our next meeting is July 12th.

The "summer" page to our Seasons book will be due at the August meeting, August 9th.

Quote of the Week:  "Sometime, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie." - Henry David Thoreau

Tab and Slot Book Demo

Hello Everyone,

I am finally able to catch up on our blog.  So sorry for the delay.

Here are the instructions for the Tab and Slot Book Demo that Dina was gracious enough to demonstrate at our April 12th meeting.

Tab and Slot Book

Materials

6 pieces of paper (the paper we used was 8 1/2" x 11" sheets, 3 were decorative paper, 3 solid color)

Paper Knife

Ruler

Pencil

Fold each paper in half, hamburger fold.  For 3 of the sheets, mark and cut approximately an inch from the top and bottom of the center fold.  For 3 of the sheets, mark an inch from the top and bottom of the center fold and cut a slot in between the two marks.

                                                       Slot cut 3                        Tab cut 3

Then insert a tab pages into a slot pages to the fold.

After that you can join the signatures together by inserting a tab page into a slot page until they are all joined.

And that's it!


Kathleen did a variation of this book at the May meeting.

Same technique but instead to make just slots the slots were made into shapes.

May Meeting Recap

A wonderful opportunity from Nancy:  the Door County Book Show.  Everyone is invited to contribute.  There is no fee to enter.  You can enter as many books as you would like.  The only requirement is that all work must be sellable.  You will also need to provide an artist bio-statment and contact information. Nancy has graciously volunteered to send the books the up north.  The drop off time is June 7th from 11 to 1pm in our meeting room, 4th floor NDH, Mount Mary University.  The pieces will be in Door County till about October/November, you should bring any older books or any books that you will not need for our show.  This is a wonderful opportunity to clear some inventory and make a little money.

For our June 14th meeting we will be working on our Curiosity Box projects.  We will also be doing a gallery walk-through to help plan for our show in October/November.  It is coming up quickly, so it will be nice to see the space and talk about what we will need to do for the show.

For the summer, we will continue to meet the second Saturday of the month.  So are meetings will be June 14th, July 12th and August 9th.

For the August 9th meeting, we will hold a Completion and Critique Workshop.  It will run a bit longer 10am-3pm.  It will be a chance for you to complete some of the books you've started or get feed back on books already done.  (It is not mandatory to stay the whole time.  Stay for as long as you can.)

Also for the August 9th meeting, the next page for our Seasons book will be due.  It is the Summer page.  8 1/2" x 11", both sides.  (Just a reminder, this book will be bound after the new year, it will not be in the show.)