Art & Soul Portland... Make It Work!

Nope, you haven't landed on the wrong blog site! This is what happens when creative people get together for an opening night party and have a fashion (we're using the term very loosely here!) challenge — Project Runway style! Our brave models from left to right were Ty Schultz, Earl Zachery, and Dan Carell who are all winners in our eyes. Oh... our eyes!

The fun and frivolity was not only the final Runway challenge for this competition, but also watching everyone in action getting made up! Do you think Ty's hand is saying, "I surrender" or perhaps it's more like, "help me". Janne Robberstad looks as if she's about to get serious with that hair spray... look out Ty!

One of the fabulous things about how Art & Soul retreats has grown over the years, is the diversity of workshops and instructors that we now have. I mean — we've got practically everything you can think of! And this year we had so much more...

One thing we always have are students who love what they create and are so pleased with themselves! Being surrounded by hand made prints from Liz Kettle's Natural Beauty class — well, it's just too much fun! It's quite common to walk into a classroom and see recently created works of art strewn about all over the place, and the students all abuzz.

And speaking of things strewn about — ummm, uh-oh, wait! Oops you weren't supposed to see that! Pay no attention to the woman behind that door. Okay, since you already peeked... it's my friend Jean... and she's getting all the glorious items together to fill your goodie bags with. Weren't they fabulous?

Sharyn Sowell's Letterpress 101 was an amazing education in an age-old manual printing discipline — and such a lovely one at that. Look at all these cool letters and images — how can you decide what to play with? Isn't it funny how a lot of us mixed-media artists are drawn to the type cases, block letters and images... and now we can take a class where we get to actually use them! Fascinating.

I don't know how she does it, but Susan Schenk's Collage Your Pet class always ends up with amazing pieces. Can't you just see the soulful expression on this yellow lab's face? Adorable!

 And take a look at this radiant beauty created in Jessica Acosta's Doll Collage workshop! Simply stunning and such great detail with the shading and addition of dimensional objects. Lovely, lovely layers!

We even had a class on loom weaving with Kat Allison! Looks theraputic and fun! Another classic American craft kept alive through the mixed media art retreat. Hooray for history!

And what have we here? A wig workshop by Lana Guerra! Students totally got Wigged Out on this one. Check out Greg Clark's cool creation in pink. I bet you could learn a lot in this class and then apply it on a smaller scale for mixed media dolls! Now that's exciting!

And let's not forget about our Vendor Extravaganza — always a blast! All the mixed media art supplies you could dream of (and more) all in one place! Didn't Mary Fisher have some delicious looking fabrics? Yum!!

And now that we're all caught up, I'd really like to say thank you so much to all our instructors for their hard work, support and dedication to Art & Soul. You are a huge part of our succes — and not only that — you are a part of our family!

A big thanks to Patti Haltom of Stamp A Dee Do Da for bringing her store to the Portland event! She did a fabulous job gathering stuff for attendees!

The Embassy Hotel continues to be the best in the world. The staff is incredible and seems to remember every one of us and our individual needs. How lucky we are to have had our event with them for over 10 years!

And Marie. Woman of Steel. We love you!

So I hope to see some of you in Virginia Beach (our rooms have balconies on the water - Wowza!) or perhaps at the Green Valley Ranch in Henderson, NV. Until then my little mixed media mavens....

Glenny
xoxo