Workshop Week 3 classes announced; registration is open!
Thanks to Covid, a new type of “camp” was born last year, one that lets folks from all over come together without worrying about the high costs (in money and germs!) of travel and hotels. Those of us involved in In the Studio – brought together by Karen Miller – had such success and fun, that we did it all over again in Februaryand even invited a couple of other artists to join us. We’ve come full circle and are now planning WW3 for the last week of October, 2021. But this time we’ve got FOUR NEW TEACHERS!
Again, all Workshop Week 3 classes will be conducted on Zoom. I know, I know, it’s not the same as being there in person, but how else could you be part of this fabulous line-up? And we’ll have the two bonus sessions again during the week – an evening gathering and a panel discussion.
There’s a wide array of workshops available; some having to do with just rug hooking, others not so much. Scroll through the document below to find your favorite(s). Feel free to take more than one. Email individual instructors for registration and more info. Don’t tarry, as classes filled up pretty quickly last time.
BTW: If you see a workshop that you’d love to take with your guild or other social group, most of us are happy to run our classes again.
WORKSHOP WEEK 3 – Enlarge image by clicking on bottom right symbol.
Courtney Turner’s art as a means of healing and coping
Join Canadian Artist Courtney Turner on In the Studio as she discusses her artistic journey thus far as an emerging artist. She’ll give the audience a glimpse into what her creative process looks like and will share how she uses her art practice as means of healing and coping while living with chronic illness.
Courtney Turner is an emerging contemporary artist currently residing in Canning, Nova Scotia. Her unique combination of abstract rug hooking and representational self-portraiture painting is a direct representation of the connections between her current self and her child self, her healing journey of living with chronic illness, and memories of significant familial textiles that have brought her comfort throughout her life. Courtney graduated from NSCAD University in 2020, majoring in Textiles & Fashion.
The Zoom link for this presentation will be emailed to you the day before the talk (or after you purchase your ticket, if you purchase on the day of the event). If you don’t receive it, you can contact the organizer at info@karendmillerstudio.com.
Tickets will be on sale until 10:00 am Eastern the day of the event. After that time you will no longer be able to purchase tickets.
Please note that the time of the talk is 1:00 pm EASTERN.
Unfortunately, no. Due to the logistics involved, we decided some time ago to keep these events live. Hopefully if you can’t make it to this talk, you’ll be able to make it to a future talk.
* It’s the day of the talk and I’m having trouble finding or using the link for the talk. How can I find help?
It is very advisable to LOG INTO THE EVENT A FEW MINUTES EARLY to be sure that you have no trouble with the link, and if you are having trouble the organizer can help you out. You can email or message the event organizer up until one hour before the talk on the day of the talk for help. ONCE THE EVENT STARTS, however, messages and emails are not able to be monitored.
* I’m finding it distracting during the talk seeing all of the other participants on my screen. What can I do?
During the event the organizer will put the screen setting on “spotlight view” so that the presenter is the focus on your screen. Depending on your device, you may still see audience members on your screen and changing your setting from “gallery view” to “speaker view” should help with that.
* What Time Zone is the time of the talk in?
The time indicated on all ‘In the Studio’ talks is the EASTERN (EST) time zone. If you live in a different time zone, be sure to check what time you should tune in to ensure you don’t miss the talk.
*I can no longer make it to the talk. Or, I missed the talk. Can I get a refund?
Unfortunately no- the price of the ticket is so low that it is not cost-effective to refund those amounts. If you are unable to make it to the talk and you already have a ticket, or you forget to attend, please do contact me at info@karendmillerstudio.com. I always offer a ticket to the next talk to make up for it. All of the artist speakers receive a portion of the ticket proceeds so we very much appreciate your contribution to supporting artists!
You know that old saying “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away”? Well, indeed He does. Just ten or so days ago, I wrote about how excited I was to be finally attending an in-person fiber festival up at El Rancho de las Golondrinas near Santa Fe. Then, last week, Cathy and I got word that, due to state or county Covid guidelines, they had to cancel it. Not sure why, as that county is opened as much as anything can be here in NM. And I’d gone to a couple of farmers’ markets that were pretty crowded down here in Albuquerque where we aren’t quite as open. I was so anticipating the festival and chatting folks up about hooking and all things fiber…
But there is some good news. Because, I’m fully vaccinated, I taught a lovely 80-year old to punch last Friday. In person! She’s quite the pistol too. I hope to have pics when the yarn I ordered for her comes in, and I can get over to her house again. And I have a student coming this Friday as well! I’m looking forward to spreading the fiber gospel some more. In person! Thank goodness for the vaccines!
Then there’s even better news. I’d alluded earlier to the fact that I was planning to teach at a “special” venue. It’s finally up online so I can spill it. June 27 – July 2, I’ll be teaching at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiúnorth of here in New Mexico. Having only driven by and never stopped, I can’t wait to spend the better part of a week there. We’ll be working on both hooking and punching, stressing all the while the use of recycled and reclaimed materials in our work. Think old t-shirts, bed sheets, plastic bags, and so on. The workshop is titled HOOK A RUG SAVE THE PLANET! (Click on the link for more info.) There will be plenty of downtime to hike and explore the Ranch and surrounding area.
Georgia O’Keeffe is indelibly and colorfully linked to the Ranch though she only owned seven acres of it. More info on that HERE. The actual owners gifted it to the Presbyterian Church who created the Ghost Ranch Education & Retreat Center. The Center “fosters well-being and spiritual health through this historic, inspiring southwest landscape.” They do that by offering various activities on the land like hiking, camping, and horseback riding as well retreats and workshops. And that, my friends, is where my class comes in. The Ranch values good stewardship of the earth. An art workshop stressing re-use of materials to make something beautiful and maybe even useful falls right in their wheelhouse. And I couldn’t be any happier. I’m thinking of what it can mean for my own art and then just to have that time away from “home” stuff. Time to talk fiber, time to hike and sketch.
“The Ripening” is all New Mexico. (Old t-shirts; 9.5″x9.5″)
If you’re thinking about traveling this summer, maybe a peaceful, fiber retreat in northern New Mexico, a place filled with our special light and color, is the place for you. Chile peppers always available!
In-person events. Can you imagine it after over a year of hiding out from each other? But it’s starting to happen!
High on Hooking and friend Catherine Kelly will be vending our first in-person show since November of 2019! We’ll be at the SPRING & FIBER FESTIVAL at EL RANCHO DE LAS GOLONDRINAS June 5/6. It’s an outdoor venue, so if you’re vaccinated, you probably won’t even need a mask! If you’re in the area then, please stop by to chat and fondle the rugs. Mention this blog post and get a 5% discount on anything you purchase from High on Hooking. (See our other events in the Calendar.)
Spring’s just busting out all over! It’s been a big week here in the HoH house. We entered the modern age when we traded our 2003 Honda Accord in for a much newer “old” car, a 2019 CR-V. All those freaking electronics! Fortunately, I still have my little Fit to tool about town in and keep my gas usage and emissions to a minimum.
Wednesday, Cathy (above) and I took the new vehicle for a spin up to Santa Fe’s Museum of International Folk Art. Other than the need for a mask, it was like pre-Covid times! An in-person museum visit! I was so excited early last year when the museum announced that they’d be having an exhibit of the Afghan War Rugs from summer through the fall. And then the Coronacootie struck! No fears – they were able to extend the exhibit through September of this year. Since I had my second Moderna vaccine last week, it was finally time. And the carpets did not disappoint. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take any pics, so I stole the one below from the museum’s website.
Photograph from Museum of International Folk Art
For those who aren’t familiar with the Afghan War Rugs, at first glance some of them look like typical, traditional rugs woven in Afghan and other areas of the Middle East, but when you take a second look, you realize that the Cypress tree motif is a…missile. A “boteh” (paisley) is really a helicopter. Look a little harder and you’ll find pistols, machine guns and grenades. In some of the rugs, though, the artisans went full on war-rug. You can’t miss the tanks.
Afghanistan is known for its rugs, though many of these rugs were created by Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran after Russia and then the US waged war in the country. They offer, certainly, an artistic commentary on what’s happened in (primarily) the last 40 or so years. (Russia invaded in 1979.) But they also demonstrate a commercial response to war in Afghanistan and the effect on its people. The carpets have proven popular with journalists, military personnel, foreign aid workers, and such.
The emergence of war-related imagery in Afghan rug design has clearly aided the economic survival of area weavers and displaced craftspeople through years of armed conflict and cultural disruption. What war rugs mean to individual weavers is less understood. Are war rugs a celebration of modernity or a rejection of war? Are they a witness to shared trauma or a commercialization of violence? Are they testaments to ingenuity and a spirit of survival? Perhaps they are all of these things at once.
(Museum of International Folk Art)
Over 40 rugs hang in the exhibit. Some look brand new; others have clearly been used as…rugs. All are fascinating to view. And, of course, being textiles, we desperately wanted to touch them. To turn them over and examine them. Yeah, that would’ve gotten us booted out. Unfortunately, too, there’s no real info about individual rugs or artists. Though this isn’t surprising.
If you ever get a chance to see this exhibit, make sure that you do. If you’d like to read more about the War Rugs, there’s a great article here. The Museum of International Folk Art has a virtual exhibit available here.
This is what happens when you try to take the WHAT’S ON THE FRAME pic too close to the boys’ dinner hour. Just getting them both in the frame was tough enough, then they kept looking over their shoulders as if Daddy was about to make and eat their meals. Still working on the newest in the happy rug series. Her name will be “Abundance.”
What events are you excited to get back to in-person this year?
Example of automatic drawing done by moi during Sketchbook Revival.
Automatic hooking – it sounds like a machine is involved. Or worse! Wink, wink! But when I typed automatic hooking, I was actually referencing the art technique developed by the Surrealists. For a quick idea of what I’m talking about, the following comes from Wikipedia:
Automatic drawing was developed by the surrealists, as a means of expressing the subconscious. In automatic drawing, the hand is allowed to move “randomly” across the paper… Hence the drawing produced may be attributed in part to the subconscious and may reveal something of the psyche, which would otherwise be repressed…
Most of the surrealists’ automatic drawings were illusionistic, or more precisely, they developed into such drawings when representational forms seemed to suggest themselves. In the 1940s and 1950s the French-Canadian group called Les Automatistes pursued creative work (chiefly painting) based on surrealist principles. They abandoned any trace of representation in their use of automatic drawing. This is perhaps a more pure form of automatic drawing since it can be almost entirely involuntary – to develop a representational form requires the conscious mind to take over the process of drawing…
You’re probably wondering why I might be providing this art history lesson when I am in no possible way an authority on art or art techniques (except, perhaps rug hooking, of course, and then only certain aspects of rug hooking). It’s because, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been participating in Sketchbook Revival 2021, and one of the workshops was about automatic drawing.
Shelley Klammer is an online therapist who supports creative women to heal “unfinished emotional business” from the past. She is also an educator with the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association. Shelley supports women to authentically self-express through spontaneous art and writing practices as a way to anchor self-safety, self-confidence and self-love. -Karen Abend of Sketchbook Revival
To be honest, I wondered how much my drawings were really made without conscious thought. Wikipedia mentioned that too when I was exploring more about automatism..
…surrealist artists often found that their use of “automatic drawing” was not entirely automatic, rather it involved some form of conscious intervention to make the image or painting visually acceptable or comprehensible…”
This is an automatic drawing by a “professional.” It’s “Untitled” by Morton Schamberg (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1881–1918 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) circa 1916. Graphite on paper; 5 3/8 x 4 1/2 in. (13.7 x 11.4 cm). (Info from the Metropolitan Museum of Art; in the public domain.)
Artist Stephen Berry was also a bit skeptical, but he could appreciate it regardless:
It was very liberating and thoughtful. It was also an interesting way to explore different shapes, to watch myself as an artist from “the outside” and see what shapes I’m predisposed to, where I’m reverting to certain habits that are lazy, what was exciting and interesting to explore that surprised me, etc.
He had more interesting stuff to say about the technique. Click on his name above.
Close-up of my current happy rug, “Abundance.” Lots of recycled textiles. I think I like my automatic hooking better than my automatic drawing.
Scintillating as all this is, you’re undoubtedly wondering how it relates to hooking. In that aforementioned post of mine, which I wrote before I started Sketchbook Revival, I mentioned my night-hooking project, the one the boys are pictured with. It’s part of my “happy rug” series in which I’m trying to focus on the brighter aspects of life after such a crappy last year. And I wrote:
For this one, I’m trying to really just go with the flow; there’s little advance planning in it. Other than the holes, which the rug dictated to me as I sewed on his tape.
See the SYNCHRONICITYthat’s happened?!!? I was already kind of doing automatic hooking before I even learned about the drawing technique. Each evening I sit down and hook whatever comes to mind at that moment with whatever I have in the two big bag and one laundry baskets of fibers I have next to me. (Yes, there’s a LOT of hooking stuff in my family room at the moment.)
Both the automatic hooking and drawing efforts are fun to try if you’re so inclined to experiment. For the latter, just Google “automatic drawing,” and a slew of options will come up in your feed. As far as rug hooking goes, just throw some hooking materials into a bag and go to town. I’m using all kinds of fibers: wool strips, wool yarns, novelty yarns, a plethora of fabrics, ribbons, and so on. There’s lots of textile recycling going on!
Tynan and Bowyn bring you another view of “What’s on the frame.” Obviously, someone is not completely clear on the concept of his job. It should’ve been an overview of the newest happy rug, “Abundance,” an example of automatic hooking. (Let’s imagine Tynan’s thoughts for a moment…)
What have you done lately to spice up your regular practices be it hooking, painting, writing, or even working out?
Again, all Workshop Week 3 classes will be conducted on Zoom. I know, I know, it’s not the same as being there in person, but how else could you be part of this fabulous line-up? And we’ll have the two bonus sessions again during the week – an evening gathering and a panel discussion.
Then there’s 
