Ukuleles and Kaleidoscope Quilts

We have just spent our second week at the John C Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. The fall colors continue to inspire me creatively!

Blacksmith barn at the folk school

frosty morning walk

 I took a kaleidoscope quilt class. I spent the week "fussy cutting" fabric, piecing small squares and sewing over 10 hours a day and that was heaven to me! Our instructor, Karen Tunnell, is a very accomplished textile artist. She inspired me to get into fabric design again, which I did a small bit of in the 1970's in my textile class at Drake High School.

Sewing the Kaleidoscope square

First Kaleidoscope

Petal Kaleidoscope

Moth Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope skirt!

Peter taught a beginning ukulele class this week. I think they had the most fun of any class here. They sang and played great music together. Two of the students had never played an instrument before and most were complete beginners, but that did not stop them from having fun. They even played a gig at the Daily Grind and Wine in Murphy. Dave Peters assisted teaching the class and is in the process of making a music video from footage taken at the gig. When that is done you will hear some more about the class. All week long the uke players kept coming up to me and saying how much fun they were having with Peter and the class, and Peter kept saying how much fun he was having. It must have been fun.

On Thursday, the class performed at a coffee shop in town!

Beginning ukulele class performing at the school 

Will you join us at the John C Campbell Folk School next time we teach there? It would be so fun to share this great place with you.

P.S. The gypsy caravan made an appearance next to the Craft Shop here on Thursday, all who toured our home on wheels marveled and dreamed, just like they always do! The school has a facebook page and here is the post featuring Paloma, (which is the name I gave to our wagon.)

The wandering book artists sing behind the plow

We just spent the first of three weeks at the John C Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. This week we both took classes ("ongoing education" is what they call it when you are a wandering book artists telling the IRS why we were here). The folk school is an awesome place to take craft classes. Donna took a copper enameling class and Peter took a class making stuff out of tin cans. We encourage you all check out their web site and consider taking a class. The school was founded in 1925 to nurture and preserve the folk arts of the Appalachian Mountains. It offers year round week-long and weekend classes in traditional and contemporary arts, including blacksmithing, music, dance, cooking, gardening, nature studies, photography, storytelling and writing. The school also holds a regular concert series and community contra dances.

A cousin to our gypsy wagon lives in the entry circle of the JCC Craft School

Tin Can Art turned out to be the perfect class for me. I had total freedom to do what I wanted. When I make an artists’ book I am always striving for perfection, but with tin can art there is no such thing as perfection, so I just had fun making things. As you can see, the classroom was a pile of tools and I made some fun things out of old Christmas cookie tins and olive oil cans.

Donna took enameling and as the final project each class member made a book. Hers is the middle one.

On Friday night I went to join in the music jam at the general store in Brasstown. I had to run the gauntlet of older locals, blocking the way, sitting in a semi circle around a pot belly stove shooting the breeze in the entry while the music played inside. One of them was Clay of "Clay’s Corner", the establishment that hosts the jam (famous for its New Year’s Eve possum drop…don’t ask..they really do drop a possum) and he was a character. He told me that Brasstown’s population was 200 when it was founded some 150 years ago, and today when one gal gets pregnant one guy leaves town so the population is still only 200…

Waltz across Ohio with wood engraving on my mind..

We last wrote from Cleveland, then we went from Pittsburg to Athens to Cincinnati to Monterey, Kentucky. Sometimes, as we zigzagged across Ohio last week, we felt a bit like a band whose booking agent did not pay much attention to the map. But we don’t have a booking agent, so there was no one to blame but ourselves. We probably got the most beautiful fall photo of our gypsy wagon camping between Pittsburg and Athens:

In Athens we gave a lecture to the book arts class at the university, gave a open gypsy wagon show and tell to a local home school group at the public library, and visited the community based paper mill called Paper Circle.

Athens Public Library, Ohio

Daniella at Paper Circle near Athens

The hunt for painted tin to use in a class at John C Campbell Folk School led us to this rural scrap metal yard. We both scrounged around the pile and picked up a bunch.

Waltzing across Ohio we visited the Serpent Mound and the Appalachian Highlands Nature Preserve. “The most singular sensation of awe and admiration overwhelmed me…for here before me was the mysterious work of an unknown people…I mused on the probabilities of the past; and there seemed to come to me a picture as of a distant time…” F. W. Putham at the Serpent Mound in 1883.

Peter in a cave at Highlands Nature Preserve, Ohio

an old drawing of the Serpent Mound

Donna meditating at the head of the serpent, Serpent Mound, Ohio

In Monterey, Kentucky, we took a wood engraving class from Wesley Bates at Gray Zeitz’s Larkspur Press. Wood engraving is similar to the linoleum cutting that Donna has done to make illustrations for many of our books, but it works the endgrain, and can achieve variations of shading, line and light in a manner impossible to achieve in a linoleum cut. Donna’s future work will reflect some of the new skills she gained in this workshop.

Donna's engraving for upcoming book, "Sierra High Route"

Finally, walking to the library at UK I watched lines of students leaving their classes staring at their phones, typing madly, and I mused on how society was changing so rapidly. Soon after, ironically, I was sitting at a lunchtime concert by a folksinger, Si Kahn, scanning his web site on my iphone (learning about his current protests against privatization) rather than listening carefully to what he was singing. Oh well …

 

Barbed Wire and Locks

Barbed wire topped chain link fences that are padlocked shut between you and your gypsy wagon is not a good thing. Especially at 11:30 pm. And especially if you have had a couple of glasses of wine and you are wearing a floor length skirt. It has happened to me. So what did I do? Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve scaled a 8ft. chain-linked fenced topped with two rows of barbed wire, but that option sounded better than bothering our hosts in the middle of the night to come bring a key. I took of the skirt, took off the nice long coat and muffler, (oh, did I mention it was 40 degrees and windy too?) and climbed up in my underwear and t-shirt. Bed never felt so good.

The caravan is back there in the yard. The morning after the fence-scaling in my underwear....

The caravan has been a magical and welcome home. Our days have been full of new and long-time friends, miles and miles of driving, a workshop taught here, a talk given there, and now a conference attended. The Friends of Dard Hunter conference, “Watermarks” took place this week in Cleveland, Ohio.

Artist friends Ladislav Hanka and Jana Hanka looking at our books at the Dard Hunter Conference Trade Fair

At the conference there was a show called "Jerry Rigged"with vintage and home made and curious Hollander beaters . I've never seen so many beaters in one place, I don't think anyone in the world has.  Lee Macdonald was there with 2 of the beaters he made for the Combat Paper folks, David Reina was there with his own Reina beaters and the plywood beater made at a class he taught for FDH conference at Arrowmont. The Morgan Conservatory had 2 built by Douglas Howell in the 1960s and about 10 others that the run regularly. Peter showed his second mini "Cocktail beater" that had been built by Jim Yarnell. This Cocktail Beater runs on a car battery, so we decided that since it was on a 12 volt program it should be filled with wine instead of water.

Yarnell "Cocktail Beater" beating pulp at the Morgan Conservatory

Dipping the micro mini mould into the pulp made in the micro beater


Couching the micro mini paper onto the felt

In between the scheduled events, I found time to play. I toured the Cleveland Botanical Gardens with Diane Tomosso, our friend from Denver. After finding the farmer's market in town closed, we all went back to the caravan for a gypsy like meal of sausages and "Whitlock Red," the wandering book artists' favorite wine, made by friends in Mariposa, California.

Nothing better than eating and drinking in the caravan with good friends,   Friday night with Ray and Diane Tomosso

We also had a chance to visit Case Western's Library to see the retrospective show for Jan Sabota, a world renoun binder (and a good friend) who passed away earlier this year. When there they saw our pencil book and showed us their own famous pencil.....

Our book, "The Pencil" and an original Thoreau pencil, at Case Western University library, Cleveland

The Wandering Book Artists become Roycrofters

About a week ago now, we taught a book arts workshop in East Aurora New York at the Roycroft Campus. It was an honor to work in this place that was the home to so much creativity and art at the turn of the twentieth century.

The Power House building where our workshop was held

Here is a bit about the Roycroft Campus: Dard Hunter, the father of the revival of hand papermaking in America started his artistic career as a Roycrofter. Elbert Hubbard founded Roycroft, an Arts and Crafts movement community, in 1895. Inspired by a visit with William Morris who had founded the Kelmscott Press in 1891, as a way to produce books by traditional methods using printing technology and styles of the 15th century. Morris and his fellow artists went on to design and produce products such as wallpaper, textiles, furniture and glassware. Hubbard started his own private press, the Roycroft Press, and then developed the Roycroft community. The "Roycrofters" produced handsome and sometimes eccentric books printed on handmade paper, and operated a fine bindery, two magazines (The Philistine was bound in brown butcher paper and full of satire. Hubbard claimed the cover was butcher paper because: "There is meat inside."), and shops producing furniture, stained glass, limp suede and hammered copper goods in the uniquely American "Arts and Crafts" style, a decorative arts design that emphasizes spare, clean lines and simplicity of design.

Our class in the Power House building

Peter posing as a Roycroft printer

As we were leaving town I stopped for gas. A woman came up to me asking, “Are you the gypsies? Three wagons are supposed to be arriving. Where are the others?” I am not sure what that was about. Still pumping gas a fellow came up to admire the wagon. He said he had lived on boats in San Francisco, and painted school busses in Vermont at Bread and Puppet, and it turned out he was Daniel Roelofs, a great grandson of Elbert Hubbard and he ran an organic farm called Arden Farm located outside of town. I gave him a tour of the wagon and he gave me a beautiful bunch of kale for the road.