Artfest 2008

The first thought that comes to mind when thinking about my experience this past weekend at Artfest is: amazing.  It was friendship (old + new) and fresh air and art and expansion and laughter and getting messy and learning a bunch of new techniques and ways to think about how I create and being a student.

Artfest is an annual event held at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington hosted by Teesha and Tracy Moore. It's pretty much like going to art camp with much better food. The setting definitely adds to the feeling of the event. Here's a shot I took in front of our house on the first morning:

I embarked on this journey with Jill and Dona, driving from here to there over the course of two days last Tuesday. We had many little side adventures including stopping at the Goodwill Outlet store, staying overnight at the house I grew up in, visiting Daniel Smith art supply store, riding the ferry from Seattle to Bambridge Island, lunch + shopping in Poulsbo, and an abundance of laughing.

I took three day-long classes.

My first day was a class called Radical Artist with Sas Colby. I loved this class. It was all about "getting out of your head" when drawing. We used no brushes - it was all with natural elements like sticks in a variety of different widths, seed pods, etc (all found objects) dipped in black ink. She had us do things like draw with our non-dominant hand, draw with a blindfold, dripping water onto our pages, etc. We all hung up our drawings on the wall as we went along and talked about them - it was so cool to see each of our interpretations of our objects. I especially loved when we placed our non-dominant hand drawings next to the dominant hand drawings. In just about every case the non-dominant drawings were much more "alive" and dynamic.

These are two of the drawings I did in class. They are each 15 inches x
22 inches and were created using a waterproof india ink.

Here's some of the tools:

And a shot of some of the work up on the walls:

My second class was Just In Case with Pamela Huntington. One of my favorite techniques I took home from this class was diluting PVA glue with water and actually immersing the fabric into the glue and then placing it around the case. I used linen for my case and loved the result. The other technique I thought was so cool was creating fabric collage paper using muslin (or fabric) + the same diluted PVA glue + tissue paper or old patterns on top (you can see that on the outside + inside of my case). I really like how this turned out and will use it to hold paper odds and ends.

And an in-progress shot:

My third class was Butterfly Boxes with Stephanie Rubiano. In this class we created shadow boxes using images, text, found objects, and real butterfly wings. The photo is mounted onto wood and was cut using a jeweler's saw (that was quite an experience). 

I learned a lot about adhesives this weekend and had the chance to experiment with a bunch of different things I have not used before like Liquid Nails, The Ultimate by Crafter's Pick, Golden E6000 - lots of things that will really make something stick. Every instructor has their favorite and I liked being able to try each of them within the projects.   

Other highlights included getting to see everyone's creations on the last night (especially some of the assemblage and jewelry pieces), hanging out with Emily, and getting to meet Kelly Rae Roberts, Jennifer Louden, Liz Lamoreux, Desiree Tanner, Traci Bautista, and others.

It was such a cool experience for my personally. I was hoping for a weekend that would expand my horizons and challenge me in lots of different ways and I found that at Artfest. I feel freed up creatively and more willing to experiment. I really needed the opportunity to be a student.

I will definitely go again next year.