Carol Wiebe

I have learned some surprising things from making at least one new digital image every day for 437 days. 1) I really like making digital images. That may sound obvious, but I didn’t really believe digital art could be as satisfying to create as it has proven to be. And, as you can see, it is pretty hard to be that prolific using physical materials instead of pixels. 2) I like to think that making digital art is like taking a LOT of photographs. You have to wind up with a few

Amazon sent me a notice for a book called Handmade Books for a Healthy Planet: Sixteen Earth-Friendly Projects From Around The World. This part of the author’s bio really caught my eye: Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord has been a practicing visual artist for thirty years and a passionate promoter of making handmade books for over twenty years. Her art, ranging from calligraphy to book arts to digital compositions, has been exhibited across the country and around the world. Articles

Whether we paint, draw, or dance, we are all artists and have much to teach each other. Maria Benitez is a legendary dancer, choreographer and director. She is internationally recognized as a leader in Spanish dance and flamenco, and has performed through most of the Americas and Europe since the early sixties. Today, Maria tells her students that what is most important, in dance and life, is fire and passion. A student adds: She says she can’t teach us that: you have to find

“Sometimes the world speaks to us unbidden, if we have the ears to hear it.” I heard that line on a show called Recreating Eden, on  July 30, 2008. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the name of the person to attribute it to. But I agree with the gist: it’s all about surprise, being open to surprise and joy, cultivating a willingness to experience them, fully. I am always listening for the messages that the world, or life, is speaking. I will not pretend that I receive full blown

What I CAN reveal is that I will have an article published in an upcoming issue of Quilting Arts Magazine! How exciting is THAT! I have had great fun relating the wonderfully serendipitous story of how this opportunity came about. So you will understand why I am hovering a few inches above the ground, these days, in a kind of haze of euphoria. QA is, after all, my favorite magazine, with Cloth Paper Scissors a close second. So keep your eyes peeled for me, and send your comm

It’s wonderful, really, how if you let the work guide you, it just keeps going and going. Virginia Cobb, whom I wrote about in the entry before this one, is a master of process. She simply starts a painting, with basic shapes and few colors. After randomly painting marks on the paper, and establishing several shapes, (done, she says, with as little thinking as possible–this is an intuitive phase), she then steps back and analyzes what she has done. She looks for a next step.

I went to a local art ‘n craft sale this weekend, and found some beautiful painting/collage work by an artist named Laurie Skantzos. I also was quite taken with Rosa Murillo‘s sirens, another artist who uses collage and painting (to mention just a few) techniques in her work. Rosa is into found art . . . an intriguing concept whereby “artists all over the world are contributing to leave art to be found by someone who just happened to stop and see it unexpectedly, and to make