Building Narrative Workshop

 Sunday evening weariness after a wonderful workshop with four great women, at the amazing Kim Herringe's studio here in Maleny. Kim is a fabulous printmaker, artist, and all round champion of art and is a truly excellent and generous teacher.  I was honoured to be asked to be a guest instructor in her beautiful studio space - and yes there were wallabies hopping through the garden!

Kim had asked me to teach my Building Narrative in Artists' Books workshop and it was a joy to spend time talking about the many ways we can bring our stories to life for people in our artists' books.

As I said at the beginning of the workshop it is a really heavy 'head-day' and far more so than the usual  'hand-day' that we love as makers and creators. However, time to ponder, investigate and explore is also a gift that is welcomed and we went in and down and around and through and back again with our thinking about making.

As ever, I failed to get many photos, but here are a few.

After chopping up papers for my paper sample books, I knew there was a reason I had left the scraps lying around!  There was enough black paper to make 4 name plates for the attendees at my Building Narrative workshop (and enough white paper to make the next ones too!). Winning.

Packed and ready to go - those boxes hold so much books-goodnes!

We talked about books and what they mean to us. We talked about storytelling and art. And we talked about how to bring it all together.

Part of the workshop encourages folk to examine artists' books, discovering how well they tell their story, and what the artists might have done to enhance the storytelling. Here the group is quietly at work interrogating some beautiful artists' book.

Here are just a few of the books we spent time with. Thanks to my friends Susan, Annwyn and Lesley and one from Alice Fox in the UK as well.

It was a big but beautiful day and I am so grateful I had the opportunity to work with these women. So much richness in their thinking and exploring and learning and sharing. I have another workshop set up with Kim in October and then we shall see if there might be more. 

Kim had run a cyanotype workshop yesterday, and how could I not take a photo of these beautiful blue brushes left out to dry???

Ahhh.... the end of a good day.