Sunday

A Gem

 The Internet never ceases to amaze me when it comes to art and the amazing things you "bump" into.  The world wide web is such a perfect nomenclature for this.  I recently stumbled upon a most amazing blog, "Tumble Fish Studio".  Marsha Jorgensen is a wonderful artist that just makes me SMILE.  I find her work refreshing and a little bit of this and a little bit of that and she makes it her own.  Her blog is so refreshing and I got so excited about it that I'm blogging about it to spread the word.  Check it out, I bet it will bring a smile to your face!

Mixed Media Medieval Manuscript Workshop

Last Sunday I had the good fortune to attend Lynne Perrella's Mixed Media Medieval Manuscript Workshop in NYC through "The Ink Pad". It was held at The Westbeth Community Center on the lower East side. The Community Center had wonderful accommodations to spread out and there was an interesting and diverse group of artists in attendance. I enjoyed meeting Lynne who is a lovely woman who loves to share her techniques and amazing artistic talent and a born teacher! I have long been intrigued by medieval life so this workshop sparked my imagination and to top it off, Lynne Perrella was leading the way!

The assignment for this workshop was to come prepared with black and white and some color prints of the medieval period including castles, turrets, ancient calligraphy, illumination, architecture, gothic windows & doors, medieval gardens....you get it.  We also brought our favorite acrylic paint, gesso and a variety of brushes as well as any favorite things we would want to incorporate into this project.  With these, we created a collage that we then turned into a medieval manuscript book.  This is the mostly finished collage, since taking these pictures I did more work on it to embed the pictures into the background better and add glimmer mist and gold highlights:


Lynne encouraged us to add lots of texture using corrugated cardboard, cheese cloth, crumpled tissue paper, stenciling, etc. to create a background.  From there, we slit and folded our collage to create a book.  Here it is closed:



Below is a couple of views of the interior pages:



 
 It was a truly inspiring day and I encourage all who have an opportunity to take a workshop with Lynne to not pass up the opportunity, you will not be disappointed!  This workshop was filled with so many amazing and talented women.  I was so intent on working on my project that I missed the opportunity to take pictures of the workshop itself.   Susan Sager Brown has a wonderful blog entry about Lynne's workshop and I encourage you to visit her blog to read further about it.  I have linked her blog entry - just click on her name!  Susan has pictures of the work she did on her amazing piece and while you are there, check out her artwork!