Linda & Opie's Burnt Offerings

Happy Thanksgiving!

We have a lot to be thankful for, and we truly are... each other, our family and our furry children, close friends, and a good life... but it's been a very stressful year and this month has been no exception!

here's how our week started... we just wanted to have a little extra insulation blown into our attic.... can you guess what happened...

the sight of just legs hanging from the ceiling is a very surreal image for sure. the sound of the person falling through it ,is unlike any other and will no doubt remain in our memory forever. the plaster dust made it seem more like christmas instead of thanksgiving, but we're thankful no one was physically hurt... and it made for interesting conversation at our thanksgiving table today.

unfortunately the 4 foot gaping hole must remain patched until the ceiling can be properly repaired and repainted in mid december -- but thankfully we'll be in mexico and won't have to look at it.

we're sooo ready for a New Year!

Art and Soul Portland

what a fantastic venue this was. portland is a great city. very artsy and very "green". we fell in love with it!

our classes were a huge success and here's a few examples of student's work.

from collage a' trois (our metal collage class)

from simple metal jewelry: bent beaded and balled

and simple metal jewelry: sawn tabbed and snagged (where the jewelers saw rocked)

our students used a torch to heat things up

but glenny brought our bartender Clifford into class with his accordion. he played a song as opie and glenny did a dance (wish I had that picture) then opie heated things up (sans torch) with his rendition of "Lady of Spain". it was wild! 

 

in the city we actually discovered the horse of a different color

and everyone was ready to lend a helping hand

a visit to Powells book store was nirvana and the icing on the cake!

we can't wait to go back again next year. hope you can join us.
 

 
 
  
 

Fall Publications

we recently returned from teaching at Art and Soul Portland -- it was fantastic and we have lots of student photos from our 4 classes to sort through and blog about in the next week or so.

in the meantime we wanted to share our latest creation and some new publications we're in...

The Mistress of the Garden was created for the sept/oct issue of Cloth Paper Scissors available now. we wrote a really cool Halloween story to go along with it, as Halloween is a favorite holiday. enjoy!

 
here's a copy of the cover of the issue. 

 
we're also very excited to be one of the featured artists in the Fall issue of Studios magazine..... another great publication from Cloth Papaer Scissors. it features 7 pages of our studio. 

this weekend we teach at the SCC in Pittsburgh, but when we get back we'll immediately start preparing our blog post about Art and Soul Portland. The city is so artsy and so green. we fell in love with it.

more to come..............

 

Yay ... Who's Your Dada is here!

tah-dah -- It's here and we couldn't be more excited  

 
Inspired from the Dada notion of making art from materials that would not typically be combined, and written with our sense of irony and humor, this book features the work of 40 artists who define a doll AND share their process with you.

In addition, Opie and I offer step-by-step instructions for working with 5 very different substrates: a wood block - a two-sided canvas - tin - a book - and a box construction - and share our various methods of attachment and joinery and how we work with apoxie sculpt.
There are variation projects from our students AND an inspiring gallery of mixed-media dolls from some of the best artists EVER plus a bonus visual progression project from the amazing Keith Lo Bue.

This book has been described as a "must have" volume for anyone interested in found object art and the human form - but it is also a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the power, symbolism and cultural significance of dolls and representational figures -- and as is our style -- it's chock full of whimsy!

we hope you all love it as much as we do. signed copies are available in our etsy shop.

In Search Of August

wow ... it's pretty sad when typepad greets you with welcome back linda and opie!

our august can only be described as the good - the bad - and the surreal.

the good... 

our summer studio workshops were very successful and everyone wants to return again next year. we created everything from jewelry to dada dolls and shared lots of laughs, techniques, and great food.

it was a summer of publications in Cloth Paper Scissors magazine - including the sept/oct issue

we were invited to teach at the first ever Art and Soul Cruise next aug 2010 that will begin in venice, italy with stops in croatia, turkey, the greek isles, then back to venice ... more info will follow shortly.

we'll also be back at Artfest with new classes as well as Art and Soul Hampton, VA and Portland, OR.

we finally had a fantastic day/evening with Ginny Carter Smallenburg (from the creative block) and her husband John. Ginny moved back to Ohio 2 years ago and after one too many reschedules, we finally had them over to our place for dinner. we had the best time and we just read her super cool blog post about their visit and you can to by going to http://smallstudio.typepad.com (i'm still working on the correct way to create links)

and (tah-dah) we received an advance copy of our new book: Who's Your Dada: Redefining the Doll through Mixed Media (we think it's great and are very excited about it)

the bad...

one night in early aug. quite unexpectedly, my only son, 41 and very fit, had emergency double by-pass surgery. we dropped everything and drove to georgia. thankfully he's on the mend but he has a long road ahead of him. the entire experience has affected me in ways i can't even articulate. the 16 hour drive each way was endless ... so many thoughts -- too many thoughts. it almost broke me.

the surreal...

when my son was very young he was shot in the eye with a BB gun while playing with his friend next door. we lived in a cottage onTybee Island (Savannah Beach) and i was driving home from motor vehicle and runnung late. i was on the phone with him when the screaming started and then my neighbor came on the line and told me she was calling an ambulance and to drive directly to the hospital in Savannah. while they saved his eye, he needed an intra-ocular implant but not for several years since he was too young. seeing him in the hospital and unable to help - i thought it was my worst nightmare - i was wrong - this was worse. i needed this time offline to put it all in perspective and count my blessings. we'd like to thank you all for the emails, prayers, and well-wishes you sent to us throughout this month - each one of them gave me both comfort and strength.  i'm finally back to myself and ready to move forward.

our next post will be about Art and Soul Portland as it's almost here. most of our classes are full with a couple of spaces in 2 classes. we have a great line-up and look forward to seeing you there. 

more to follow shortly -- it's good to be back.

Kittie Convo's

We're convinced our cats speak to each other... here's what happened today.

Angelus: hey... that's my cushion

Angel: was your cushion

Angelus: hey... that's my doll

 

Angel: mmmnn..... tasty

 

Angelus: i'm telling... MOMMMM

 

Angelus: victory is mine!

 

Have you seen July/Aug Cloth Paper Scissors yet...

well if you haven't, and if you're interested in our Collage a' Trois metal collages, then check it out!

we have an article and several of them are featured.

Mixed Vegetable Flakes is one of them:

there's more where this one came from, and metal collage is one of the new workshops that we're teaching at Art & Soul in Portland this fall. there's only a couple of spaces left and we hope you can join us.

and speaking of Art & Soul, we have some VERY exciting news to share with you in our next post... (we're sooooooo excited!!!)

The Ties That Bind Raffle is Open!

we know it's been awhile since our last post and all we can say is "life happens", but now that we're winding down a bit, we wanted to call your attention to this most worthy cause.

this project began about a year ago and all of the information and the completed doll can be found at http://projecttiesthatbind.blogspot.com

but the gist of it all is, if 500 people donated $20 over the next four months, we can raise $10,000.00 - imagine that - $10,000.00!

that breaks down to only 6 people donating $20.00 per contributing artist.

we can do this.

tickets are one for $5.00 or six for $20.00

visit http://www.scrapbookroyalty.com/tiesthatbind.html to purchase yours.

we have until sept. 30th so please spread the word and let's make this happen and thank you.

Art & Soul Hampton

What a fantastic time we had. It's such a great venue where we get to spend time with old friends and are given the opportunity to make new ones. The drive to Hampton is scenic and life is beautiful. Our classes were an endless stream of creative energy and here are some pics of our student's work.

from our Simple Metal Jewelry: Bent Beaded and Balled class 

from our Set in Stone: Concrete & Bezels class

and last but not least , some pics from our Who's Your Dada class:

well i think that's it for now. everytime i upload a picture, i get and error message to stop running scripts or my computer will become unresponsive. while i'm not sure what that even means, if somehow feels as if it's time to stop... for now!

we hope to meet many more of you at Art & Soul  Portland in sept./oct. where we're offering some exciting new classes in addition to a few of our tried and true favs.

Artfest Students Work & Etsy Treasury's

what an exciting month this has been. Artfest was fantastic and our students out did themselves again. in addition, we've been featured in two Etsy Treasury's this week.

here are the links (i hope...lol)

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=52101 

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=52484

one of our jewelry classes was called Set in Stone which combined metal sheet with concrete. the results were nothing short of fantastic. take a peek!

Our Who's Your Dada class was very fun - here's a few:

and our other class: The Dada Diaries - was part doll ... part book:

there you have it, although these are only a very few examples in the interest of space. all of the work was amazing and we'll be teaching two of these classes at Art & Soul Hampton, Va. at the end of the month. Set in Stone and Who's Your Dada.

hope to get another post in before we leave - lots of prep work to do.