Don't waste any more time...

I just read an email from a list mate over at BookArtz and the last line was the title of my post. Don't waste any more time. What a good reminder. I have needed to post here for days, but I keep not having time to get the pictures out of my camera and onto the lap top so that I could post here. Guess what? I don't HAVE to have pictures, right? I am a visual person so I typically fill my posts with photos, but not today... at least not right now... maybe I'll come back and edit the post to include photos... maybe.

What I'd like to share is the experiences I had last week. I took 4 classes in a row from Michael deMeng. He was already one of my favorite artists - I can relate to his way of making the mundane into something of a relic. I love that! I am totally sentimental so I have a knick knack shelf filled with things mundane that once belonged to someone in my family... an old drill bits box that was my great grandfather's, a little sculpture of a horse sculpted by my G-Grandfather, my grandmother's childhood books with tiny records, a rusty thing that was part of one of the old out buildings on our family property in CO. Rocks, nails, a jar full of bits and bobs, really just stuff, but because they're all tucked away and made to be something special - they are. Something in his work cracks me up... and yet something else tears me a apart. That, in my humble opinion, is art - evocative and moving.

But now, he's pretty much cemented his spot as favorite artist and best teacher... Michael is so generous with his time and energy. I watched him really pour himself into his students. Everyone is getting tips on creating his techniques that he's no doubt spent years figuring out. Everyone is creating little deMengian pieces right before my very eyes, but not in a way that washes out their own style. And you can see him also open to learning from the ways people interpret his techniques. And this may be my favorite thing about his teaching style... he's silly. I mean the name of one of his classes is "I can see clearly now..." its about making art using transparencies which is UBER cool, by the way, but that sort of sense of humor is present in much of his teaching.

Lastly, I pelted him with questions off and on about teaching and learning the "secret handshake" so that I can get into ArtFest or ArtUnravelled - of which he assured me there is none! ;) He very sincerely answered my questions and seemed genuinely interested in helping if he could... I mean, talk about good Karma!

My task to get from here to teaching at big art shows is to start from the start... teach at the little shops around the Bay Area like Stamper's Warehouse in Danville, Scrapbook Territory in Berkeley and Luna's Memories in Halfmoon Bay plus my own studio - where we have a class tomorrow.

Class 1 - Personal Feng Shui Shrines... check for the post on that later...

Ciao for Now!
Carpe Diem
xoxo
jul