Patti Edmon Artist

My friend, aka art angel Debbie Westerfield , invited me to join her on a trek to Louisville for a polymer clay class, with Cassie Harpel, one of the most fabulous, sparkly women I've ever met. So incredibly in need of fun, companionship with kindred spirits, adventure and creative play, I jumped at the chance. After the hour and a half drive we started at Hotel 21C , recently in the news for being voted number one hotel in the country by Conde Naste readers (November issue). Click on the link and check out the MSNBC video with Matt Lauer. It's not hard to imagine why, though Kentucky doesn't generally top the list when it comes to vacation destinations. The first clue that you're there is the red penguin on the roof, one of the many that appear in random - often changing - locations throughout the hotel. We considered a spin in the hotel's limo, covered in red shiny dots, but got busted. Cassie is so gorgeous and charming, we were off with a warning and went in fo...

wheeee. what better way to usher in a new week (read monday, first day of spring forward, like I had an extra hour to begin with), than to receive an email notifying me that I won the complimentary slot! yes! starting march 15th, I'll be a happy participant in the Vision Board workshop, so I'll get the hands-on I need to unearth my deepest desires, artistic longings, painterly passion.  I've never been one to look to the future, to dream, to plan even. that's not a good thing. it comes with fear of change which stems from... well, I won't go into all that here; suffice it to say, it's about time I started! my daughter is the wind dancer on the far right - this photo doesn't relate, except for the part about wind, freedom to grow and become... gratitude.  

I did this page the other day. It was the end of a long day spent iced in and I was really tired, and in a hurry. But so far, it's my favorite, though I haven't ventured very far from the yellow/gold base color that I've used on most all the pages. There doesn't seem to be any way to predict this process, whether the images will be cohesive, if I'll like the way the pages look... I suppose that is the real beauty of doing this in the first place. To loosen up and let go, freedom from the over-thinking that rules most every area of my life. So, now it's time to start the actual journaling part - writing on these pages? They seem sacrosanct, like doing a collage and then writing all over it. Obviously, after having struggled through this entire reverse process, I still have miles to go. Being a writer, this should be the easiest part. We'll see.

The second week of the Visual Journaling workshop was about adding visual elements to our backgrounds - still without an idea or concept of the finished piece.  This feels like collage to me, though this process is more fluid, less planned. More spontaneous. It certainly is uncovering my difficulty in altering my approach to a project or process.  I started off by sifting through images for elements that looked 'right' together because of color or theme, without giving much thought to how they relate to each other. Then a theme of sorts started to emerge and I felt a bit more comfortable. I haven't begun to think about actually writing on these pages. Aack. All of this work only to mess it up with words? I didn't realize that I had a comfort zone when it came to art, since it's relatively new in my creative career; I can see that my trepidation at stepping outside the box, my rigidity is in place, and that's why I love this workshop. All the time I've been e...

After years of writing in journals, a lifetime actually, I've finally started a visual journal. I'm in good company. Somerset has a publication dedicated to art journaling and there are plenty of books and workshops to help those of us who are trying to convert. I'm taking a workshop that started this week, in fact, taught by the fabulous Pam Carriker. Her background pages look more like art pieces than anything I've ever considered journal.  It has been a fun first week; I've made several background pages and I'm anxious to see what we'll do next. I have to admit, this still feels a bit out of order to me; I've always started with a thought, emotion or situation, in other words, knowing what I wanted to express. I don't sketch, so aside from an occasional quote or clipping, it has been confined to words. My first efforts at keeping an art journal several weeks ago involved staring at a blank page, followed by a search through my 'paper piles...