After we arrived in Portland, Susan and I decided to see if there were spaces available in Jill Berry’s Layers and Lines workshop at her studio there. We didn’t expect there to be, since there was a limit of 6, but there were! So on Saturday morning, we got a Blue Star Donut and then called an Uber to take us to Jill’s house.
I had taken a very satisfying three day workshop with Jill at FOBA in 2015, so this made up a little for missing out on our art retreat.
One other student joined us, and we had a lot of fun playing with mark-making and Golden acrylic paints. Jill mixed the heavy body Golden acrylics with methylcellulose to use on Arches text wove paper. This mixture made the paint bond with the paper fibers better, allowing many layers to be painted and best of all, it dried fast without stickiness!
Jill’s renovated house and gardens were filled with artwork, flowers, herbs, vegetables, recycled materials, great style, and a cute little dog named Poppy. She served us a delicious salad with bread, cheese, cookies, and fresh fruit.
Okay, here are the photos of the workshop, then my finished papers.
Here are most of my finished papers. We did three other exercises as well.
The one on the left was stamped with silk flowers and leaves in my gloved hand (until I absentmindedly removed my glove and then got acrylic paint all over my hand). The one on the right had salt sprinkled on it and brushed off.
The one on the left had my original marks in black gesso. The one on the right was a ghost print of the one on the left. Then the paints were added.
My intention for all of these are for collage and book covers and pages, but Sandy wants me to frame the one above. I don’t know. We have a whole stack of artwork on a chair that we need to find places on a wall to hang.
Jill graciously drove us back “home” and we got take out sushi from a place a few blocks away, ate it in the garden, and called it a good day.
slowly she turned 