I'm Moving -- to a New Blog Address!

Please join me at my newly re-designed website and blog, now integrated into one.

Come on over to www.janedavila.com for all the latest news on products, workshops, books and magazine articles, and events.

This blog will remain live to preserve all of its great content, but all new posts will appear on the new blog.

Please remember to update your blog readers too. Thanks! See you at my new place. :)

Printing on Fabric with Natural Materials starts now!

Does surface design summer camp sound like fun to you? Then join me in my online course Printing on Fabric with Natural Materials on Craft University! Registration is open through August 29.

The supplies needed are simple to find, non-toxic, and mostly inexpensive - and you'll be creating unique and interesting fabrics with everyday materials like artichokes, onions, ferns, lace, even fish!

Treat yourself, sign up with a friend, and work through the lessons. I'll be standing by to answer questions, lend encouragement, and dish even more tips and tricks.

Use coupon code PRINT20 for a 20% discount on the price of the class. See you at camp!

Printing on Fabric with Natural Materials - online course!

Back at the beginning of May I took a trip out to the Denver area and recorded an online video workshop for Craft University called Printing on Fabric with Natural Materials. Working with the team there was a blast and I'm so proud of the content of this workshop.

In the workshop I teach you all about how to sun print with acrylic paints and inks, how to direct print leaves, fruits, and veggies, how to print 3D objects like seashells and bumpy leaves, how to print fish, and even how to print your own photos with UV reactive dyes.

The team put together a preview of the workshop and you can watch it here:

Printing on Fabric with Natural Materials starts on July 25 and runs through Sept 5, but you own it forever, in case your summer gets busy. But! If you want to play along in real time, I'll be around to cheerlead, answer questions and troubleshoot, and share some more fun tips, tricks, and resources. You all are encouraged to post photos from the lessons and ask as many questions as your heart desires. I'll be right there guiding you!

You can use coupon code PRINT20 to save 20% on the course, and I'll be giving away a free gyotaku rubber fish for printing on Facebook and Instagram, so make sure you friend and follow me there too!

Summer is the best time to Nature Print - head out into the backyard to gather some supplies and then come join me in class!

Workshops - Online, In Studio and One-on-One Mentoring!

I'm pleased to announce a new line-up of classes that will be starting in the new year! One fabulous online course plus a number of workshops to be held in my studio in Connecticut. Tell Santa - a workshop makes a great gift!

Jump Start Your Art Career, my intense action-packed, knowledge-rich, six-week online course, will begin on Monday January 13, 2014. This class can help anyone with a creative business - working artists in any medium, art teachers, people wanting to get published in magazines or write a book, anyone wanting to start an art retreat, and so many more. We dig deep into a wide variety of topics and, through worksheets and homework, you'll develop a plan for your own business moving forward. Find more details and a sign-up button for Jump Start Your Art Career here.

The Jump Start class is an online class with extensive written material, informative blog posts every week day for 6 weeks, interaction with your fellow students, focused advice for your creative business, deep thinking exercises, and great resources! I hope you can join me.

Workshops held in my loft studio in Bridgeport Connecticut are of both the learn-new-art-techniques, make-cool-stuff variety and the nurture-your-creative-business variety. You can find classes in gyotaku (fish) printed collages, creative stamp making, spirit flags, and a sampler of all of the fun surface design supplies. Plus workshops in building a website, creating and editing videos, making art connections with social media, and as a special bonus - I will be offering one-on-one creative mentoring in 2014!

If you'd like a chance to work directly with me on your art business, either online and over the phone or in person, this is your opportunity. There are only a limited number of mentorships slots available for the first quarter and I'd love to work with you.

If you have any questions about the online or studio workshops, or about the one-on-one mentoring, please contact me at info @ janedavila dot com

The store is now open!

At long last, and after some much appreciated nagging from my daughter Sam, my etsy store is once again fully stocked and ready for shopping. I added some gyotaku fish prints (which come matted and ready to frame) and some collage jewelry. I have a few more items to add this week and then I can cross something big off my ToDo list.

Please head over to Etsy and check me out!

Sisters Oregon & A Quilter's Affair

This summer I will once again be teaching at the phenomenal Quilter's Affair conference in Sisters, Oregon. I am so looking forward to it! This event is really well-organized and the week is topped off by the most amazing outdoor quilt show.

This year I'll be teaching two sessions of my workshop, Project Patchwork. I love this class and I get to be Tim Gunn to all of the designers in the room. I issue three challenges throughout the day and participants create 3 small quilts using their favorite techniques. It's a tremendous amount of fun and very inspiring for all!

I'll also be teaching a Nature Printing workshop (with, among other goodies, rubber fishies!) and a nifty Stampmaking for Quilters workshop, plus an intense day I call Outer Limits where you'll learn more than 20 non-traditional ways to finish off the edges of your art quilts. Look Ma, No Binding!

I hope you can join me - the setting is glorious and the entire week is delightful.

Art on Exhibit!

I spent the morning hanging my solo show. I have been working all summer to get ready for this exhibit -- making new work, and matting, framing and mounting existing work. It was fantastic to see it all hanging together on big white walls!

The opening reception is tomorrow night, Thursday September 23rd from 7 - 8:30 pm. The exhibition is held at the Edward J Duffy Art Gallery at the Canterbury School in New Milford CT. The show runs through October 14 and the gallery is open to the public weekdays from 8 -3 and Saturdays from 8-12 or by appt (860-210-3800).


On exhibit are over 50 pieces, including the first public showing of the first half of the Loteria series and many other new works. I've discovered one drawback to working on a small scale - it takes a LOT of work to fill a gallery!

Many of the Loteria series are on display, as well as an assortment of gyotaku fiber and paper collages, insect work in a variety of formats, some new pieces inspired by cell phone photography and a few three-dimensional fiber houses.

I hope you can stop by!

Printmaking Workshop - July

Friday and Saturday, July 17 & 18, is the next session of my Printmaking for Art Quilters workshop. There are still a couple of spaces if you hurry!


collagraph with acrylic paint on pfd cotton

More details can be found on my website. We'll be working on a variety of printmaking techniques, adapted for printing on fabric with acrylic paints and mediums, with a good mix of hand and press printing processes. Come join us!

Art Quilts at Play

Here's the big, exciting news! I've been living this project for the last 18 months and I can finally share. Elin Waterston and I have written a new book, Art Quilts at Play, for C&T Publishing, to be released in January 2009.

This new book is a perfect complement to our first book, Art Quilt Workbook, and covers a plethora of surface design techniques and special effects on fabric. The book is full of illustrated how-tos, many, many samples from the different processes and oodles of finished art. Once we've shown you how to create and alter some beautiful fabric, we give you scads of ideas of what to do with it, from challenges and trades to collaborations and more. Our first book was based on an in-depth, comprehensive class that we'd been teaching. This new one also draws on workshops plus the techniques we each use in our own art.

Over a year ago we asked a small number of very talented women in the art quilt and mixed-media world to contribute some pieces to our book and they very generously agreed. Their work enriches the material and shows you how different artists with different voices and different techniques approach the same themes or materials with exciting, original and unique results. We're so grateful to each of them for their contributions.

Natalya Aikens
Woodie Anderson
Liz Berg
Gail Ellspermann
Janet Ghio
Rayna Gillman
Terry Grant
Kathryn Hunter
Andrea Jenkins
Jane LaFazio
Mati McDonough
Tricia McKellar
Kim Rae Nugent
Karen Stiehl Osborn
Virginia Spiegel
Beryl Taylor

A few of our students were also asked and graciously agreed to share their work with us. We are so thankful to them for their generosity (and in a couple of cases, their bravery as well!)

There will be a big release party, book signing and art quilt exhibition at the Country Quilter in Somers NY on Saturday, February 21st and we hope you can join us!

You can pre-order an autographed copy of the book now by contacting me. We're so pleased with the response to our first book and hope that you'll like this one just as much.

Quilt Festival

A belated post from Houston's Quilt Festival - I had nothing but problems with blogger while away, but I can finally post this one. I gave up even taking pictures after two frustrating days trying to upload photos.

A whirlwind couple of days have resulted in a complete switcheroo to our booth and now we have all of the art quilting goodies out.



We're directly across the aisle from Judy Gula's booth (Artistic Artifacts), where Liz Kettle and Laura Cater Woods are too. Look at all the pretty colors!



Diagonally across is the Make It U workshop area. Yesterday I taught an ink class there and had great fun, tomorrow I'll be teaching stampmaking and then demonstrating fish printing in the Open Studios area. Pokey had a couple of Make It U classes today. She's so enthusiastic and high-energy.



Terry White stopped by from her booth around the corner for a visit.



After the show closed Natalya and I headed across the street into the park for an outdoor meal overlooking a small lake. Looking back at the convention center we could see the lights and their reflection in the water. There was an outdoor concert to entertain us and we bopped along to a lot of great 80s songs. A lot of those songs took me right back to high school and my roller disco days - does anyone else remember that? How weird does that seem now? Rolling in circles around a rink for hours to (now cheesy) music under a disco ball. It was fun, it's just hard to explain the appeal now.

Fiber Book in Denver

Do you remember the fiber house I built back in May? Well, I took it apart and turned it into a fiber book and entered into the Interweavings show at the Abecedarian Gallery in Denver, Colorado.



I had intended to assemble the book accordion-style so that it could still be assembled as a four-square house, but discovered that the sides and the front and back needed to have been exactly the same width for that to have worked. Another lesson learned. I am really pleased with it as a book however.



The artists reception is tonight, to coincide with the beginning of the Democratic National Convention. Hopefully the conventioneers will be out wandering the arts district during the week and get a chance to see all of the great exhibits in Denver.



INTERWEAVINGS
August 1 - September 13, 2008

Abecedarian Gallery
910 Santa Fe Drive • Unit #101 • Denver, CO • 80204 • 303.534.1038

Teaching in Ohio

I'm back from a teaching gig in Ohio for the North Coast Needlers Quilt Guild in Cleveland. What a nice group of people! Midwesterners really deserve their reputation for friendliness. And luck was on my side - their August meeting is an ice cream social. Life is good.

On Wednesday I taught a class in making Fiber Postcards and Artist Trading Cards. Jean and her daughter Liz were my hosts at the guild and they took great care of me - and had fun in both classes!



Everyone made a few ATCs in the morning and then we switched to postcards after lunch.



What a creative bunch, don't you think?















One of the women in class is really into bee imagery and knew that I was too. She wore this fantastic pin to class and of course, I had to take a picture of it. Now I need to track down the artist if I can - really, the combination of insect and typewriter key is perfect. If anyone knows who made this, drop me a note please.



Yesterday I taught a Nature Printing workshop. We started off with sunprinting and we had a beautiful day despite a few sprinkles in the morning and predictions of thunderstorms.





After lunch we printed vegetables, fruit and lots of leaves. The lady's mantle leaves were gorgeous and the Japanese maples and ferns made such delicate prints. And lastly, we printed fish! My favorite!! We were really into the whole Zen aspect of printing when we got to the fish. Ohm.





It was a great couple of days with enthusiastic, creative women. Now I'll be home for a while working on new projects. Yay, studio time!

Nature Printing

Yesterday I taught a Nature Printing class at the Country Quilter. I totally forgot to take out my camera when we got to the fish printing (gyotaku). I got distracted because that's my favorite part!

We sunprinted with transparent paints using sea salt and masks and scrunching and folding and flinging (technical term for going all Jackson Pollock). The weather was glorious -- perfect for getting good, crisp prints.



We also printed leaves and ferns and then moved on to produce (fruits and veggies). The orange, apple and lemon prints came out particularly well.





I'll be teaching the same workshop in Ohio next week for a guild near Cleveland. I'll try to remember to take pictures of the fish printing this time.

More Living with Art

Come on in -- the hallway renovation is nearly complete! In between working on a big web design job, I've been taking breaks to rest my eyes and nibbling at the hall reno. I just have a couple of switch plates/outlets left to replace, the ceiling to paint, one more tracklight fixture to install and it'll be done.


While I'd love to paint the walls a color, a creamy white shows off the artwork so well. It also helps to keep our small house, surrounded by towering trees, as light and bright as possible inside.


This big painting of Carlos' is still waiting for a frame. Honey? Sweetie? Soon?


Last night I cut mats and framed the two pieces I purchased from Karen Stiehl Osborn. They are gorgeous collages from her Urban Landscape series and I'm absolutely in love with them.


I also framed the gyotaku collage I made last week. These two walls were unusable for hanging art until recently. I removed an (ugly) wall sconce from the far wall and moved the thermostat on the near wall and so have put both walls to better use - as well as improving the view!