The week before Thanksgiving, I attended the annual NYSATA (NY State Art Teachers Association) convention. It's NYSATA's 70th anniversary year, so the convention was held in the city where the organization originated: Buffalo, which is on the opposite side of the state from where I live. There's so much I would have liked to visit in or near Buffalo, including the Albright Knox Art Gallery, Niagara Falls, and more, but with the combo of a busy convention, teaching two workshops, and winter weather, I never left the convention hotel until it was time for the long drive home. Hopefully I'll be able to return in better weather to see everything that I missed!
My first job at the convention was to set up the Bling Your Badge table, that our Region sponsors. This table was my idea about 1/2 dozen years ago, and I've been in charge of it ever since. It's a favorite pit stop for attendees at the convention. I mean, who doesn't like to play with hot glue, rhinestones, pipe cleaners, beads, buttons, sequins, feathers, and more???
I taught two hands-on workshops at the convention. One, Roofing Felt, was a repeat of a workshop I've taught before at both my state convention and at a regional workshop. The topic of the other workshop was Kumihimo, which I'll talk about later in this post.
Forty people attended the Roofing Felt workshop, and it was fast, lively, and fun, and everyone did a great job. I've talked about the roofing felt technique several times before on the blog,
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HERE, so in today's post I'll mostly just share pictures of the creations of my workshop attendees after a quick explanation. Participants drew in either chalk (chalkboard or sidewalk chalk) or soap, and then painted around their lines with acrylic paints, under-painting with white when brilliant color was desired. The final step will be to wash off the chalk lines, so in these photos the lines are still very much visible.
Here's everyone lined up to get their paints!
Look at this roomful of people! I think every seat was full!
This is me, showing samples, and explaining the paint options.
Yup, my hair is sort of flame-colored this year. (It's also been turquoise and purple.)
Thanks to this smiley friend who took many photos for me!
And here's some more images of work-in-progress from participants.
Underpainting with white to make the colors show up more brightly:
On to the next workshop, Kumihimo: Kumihimo is a Japanese braiding technique, that creates a spiral braid. The basic materials are a simple circular loom (we used cardboard cake circles) with a hole in the center, and slits around the side, either 16 or 32, and yarn. Participants learned the simple technique quickly and then dove right in.
One of the workshop attendees looked familiar. It turned out that she was a former elementary student of mine, at least a decade ago, who was attending the convention as one of the college art ed student volunteers. How cool is that?! I saw her later in the convention, and she was still working on her kumihimo. It had grown a lot!!
I also briefly shared a quickie method for making a rope, that can be done WAY faster than kumihimo or a traditional braid. This technique will work great if, for example, your students have worked for weeks making woven pouches, and want to quickly make a handle. The method was taught to me by my mother, who was an avid knitter and crocheter, and used this technique to make drawstrings or ties for sweaters. Use two or more colors of yarn, cut to more than twice the length you need. Have someone hold the other end, and twist the yarn as tightly as possible. Don't let go, or it will un-twist! When it is nice and tight, fold it in half and hold the two ends together. The yarn will twist up into a rope. Knot the ends you are holding so that it doesn't come untwisted. Try it out!
When I wasn't teaching workshops, I was attending workshops! My favorite was an almost 3-hour Intuitive Painting workshop. It was a fabulous way to get rid of the stress from the previous day, and put everything aside to simply create. I found it restorative. If you ever have an opportunity to attend an Intuitive Painting workshop, give it a try!! We painted with acrylics, with no pre-planned outcome, without talking, listening to (and responding to) music, responding to simple prompts, turning our paintings as we worked. Here's my painting at various steps in the process.
I'm not sure of which way to show the final product. Here it is again, below, turned 90 degrees. Actually, I liked it better earlier in the process. I think I might go back into the painting with oil paints and see what happens.
Here's some paintings from other workshop participants.
There's much more I could say about the convention - the Friday Art Party, the student show, the 10x10 Member Show to benefit the scholarship fund, the vendors, the giveaways, and so on. But the best part, of course, is the people, and the camaraderie of interacting with other like-minded art educators. It's worth the energy and stress of a long drive in bad road conditions in a loaner car, and having to clean up the mess of a popular activity. Below, the Bling Your Badge table during cleanup. Thanks to the lovely folks who stepped up to help with the cleanup!
And here's some more images of work-in-progress from participants.
