Complex Cloth Workshop

Earlier this month I was privlaged to attend the Complex Cloth workshop in San Antonio hosted by Jane Dunneworld at her studio. I was really a last minute decision as I came home from the cruise with a couple of dollars in my pocket and my husband was scheduled for a business trip the same week. By the time I made all the arrangements I had less than a week to get everything together. Luckily, I had most of the supplies already, so no problem there.

I anticipated the first part of the week would be devoted to dye, color theory, etc. Since I have my Certificate of Excellence in Dyeing, I figured I would sail through these days and the last days would be the most exciting.

Just goes to show you how anticipation can be so wrong. Of course, Jane did start with dyeing, but we quickly moved on from there. She emphasized making our own tools to create designs on the cloth. We were soon carving soap erasers. Here are some of my shapesThen the real fun began! Using discharge techniques, overdyeing, silkscreens, and other techniques we decorated our samples. For me, this was the part where food and other necessities of life became secondary. Where I look at the clock, and then glance at it a few minutes later only to find that several hours have gone by! Here are some of the samples that I came up with in the class:

This is a close up of one corner of a sample. It has been dyed twice, bleached out with a stamp, stamped with blue paint and hand painted some of the trails made by the stamp.

Some more of my samples. These are not quite done - but this is the last day so I will have to finish them at home.

I should have known what a wonderful, moving experience this week was to be as I walked into Jane's studio:

Beautiful artcloth everywhere!!!! Who couldn't be inspired ? True, they were getting ready for a show / studio walk, but it was quite magical to see this as my first exposure to what lay ahead. Most of this work was produced by other area (lucky) artists who have worked with Jane over the years. And the studio space was wonderful. There were 9 of us in the class and we each got our own table with several tables left over for other needs. There were even 2 tables for lunch!

It really was quite a treat to have all that space!!! She even had a library corner with chairs for the lecture / critique time. The over stuffed chairs were upholstered with hand decorated velveteen!

All in all it was a wonderful week. Jane is an excellent teacher, very encouraging but also is able to lead you to think for yourself. The most suprising thing that came out of the week was the level of mindful thinking that came out of it. Everyone was there for a purpose, mostly because they were searching for a piece of their artistic self (like me) and was very supportive of the others.