Eek! you guys! I am SO excited! After long wishing to take a workshop from Kelly Kilmer, I worked out all the logistics last fall and went to San Francisco to take workshops from her. They were, in short, everything I was hoping they would be and I had such a wonderful time. There was, however, a tiny part of me throwing a toddler temper tantrum because my dear friend and collage buddy was in Milwaukee and could not be with me. I started scheming then about what it would take to fly her to San Fran, arrange child care, get her time off work, all so that we could take a workshop together. But then Kelly started talking about driving to New York.... and, hey! Madison is on the way. Sort of. Well, we are close to Chicago where she wanted to go so I just begged.... and, lo and behold, she's coming to Madison. I cannot be more thrilled. As soon as I have more details I will share them everywhere.
So far this year, I've been working a lot in one of the books that I started in her workshop in October. I still had some blank pages so I've been trying to fill those in. I find it helps me to have a bit of a theme/story in mind and because I enjoyed being a part of the tarot card exhibit, I decided to make one of my books a tarot book. I had some images picked out already so I went through the various cards and tried to find ones that spoke to me and to the pages I had started. My pages are: the moon, the empress, the star, the three of wands, the chariot, the world, the wheel of fortune, death, the hermit, the high priestess, the magician. I don't know what that whole collection means. I am not really practicing what Kelly preaches as I should have a much smaller pile of collage papers so I've been spending a lot of time just shuffling through those. But that's part of the process for me. Now that I know she's coming to Madison, I will have to start sorting in earnest and set aside my pile for her workshop. I have a little bit more painting to do and then will move onto the final step which is adding text. Much of these early steps are a little more mass production oriented, just playing with color, trying to get something down on the pages. For the text, I need to quiet my mind a bit more and figuring out what to write. Good luck with that.
I have been feeling this last year that I have been working so hard. It's not bad. But I liken it to being a parent - being so wrapped up in infanthood (diaper-changing) that it is hard to see beyond that and then suddenly, the children are 10 and, yay! you don't have to change their diapers anymore, but it turns out that even though what was all-consuming 9 years ago has gone away, there are new and other aspects that still require parenting and work. So, too, as Anthology has grown. There are some aspects that don't quite seem as hard-scrabble anymore - in general, people know who and what we are; we have part-timers so it isn't just Sachi and me covering all the evening shifts... but now there are things like supervising part-timers (not one of my strong points), and the ongoing work of who and what we are, not to mention what is ahead for the next 10 years. "Good things come to those who hustle," runs through my head a lot. So, anyway, it feels like a lot of hustle, but also some of that 10 years of hustle coming to fruition. Hosting a Kelly Kilmer workshop, being accepted to exhibit at the Central Library, these are big things that have happened in the last couple months but there has been a lot of hustle leading up to them. But, yay for being rewarded!
Now I have to go and make some Blurb magazines so we have collage material for our workshop!
I am SO excited about this! Thanks, Laura! :)
Posted by: Kelly | May 15, 2017 at 02:07 PM