BirdBrain Designs

Archives for September 2012

and more colours…a visit to London-Wul

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The stunning New Brunswick landscape is echoed in Heidi Wulfraat’s marvellous studio. It was a pouring wet day when I visited, but inside the colours were vibrant and Heidi a total delight, so  welcoming and engaging. The CBC was playing, there were irresistible piles of wool and fleece everywhere you looked and inspiring large hooked and felted pieces on the walls.  Be sure to visit Heidi’s site or her FB page — I particularly loved her sketch book.

This is one of my favourites. 

And I have to show you the socks I got! These are recycled cotton ‘mismatched with care in Vermont”–great gifts.

ahh the colours…deanne fitzpatrick class part 2

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At the end of the course, the class created our Colour Manifesto:

  • colour is a personal language
  • colour is both an art and a science
  • value is crucial, but relative
  • trust and build your instincts
  • absorb the colour around you
  • there is no such thing as a bad colour

As you can see from the trees I began in the class, the interior and exterior landscapes were playing on my mind. The full pink moon, the sparkling trees and water, the fields of wild flowers and the wonderfully open and accepting atmosphere. I was reminded of Keri Smith’s manifesto in her new book How to Be an Explorer of the World.  And what great reminders!

 

east coast inspirings

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I have just returned from a trip to the east coast where I had a chance to absorb the light, the texture and the colours…

and then to participate in a fabulous workshop on colour at Deanne Fitzpatrick’s studio in Amherst Nova Scotia. The workshop combined theory — presented ably by Phyllis Cameron — and an intuitive, experiential, reflective approach led by Deanne.

We considered colour using all our senses–some experiences were delicious as well as beautiful! (Perhaps here I should also mention the locally roasted coffee and oat cakes always on hand in the studio kitchen.)

Deanne has expanded her shop and studio area since I last visited in 2006. The class was held in a lovely room adjacent to the store, a room with high ceilings, white walls and lots of natural light —  a perfect spot for the fourteen students to spread out and hook while absorbing the presentations.

We explored colour as well as alternate fibres like sari silk and hand-dyed fleece and yarn. On the left, a snake comes into life and below a maple leaf bursts in full fall colours. To the right of the leaf is my frame with white pines of silk and yarn–my first landscape and my first hooking with hand-spun yarn. I loved it!

How wonderful to see Deanne’s ‘colour intuition’ up close in the shop. Below are two of her pieces. I’ll have more photos in the next post, as well as a glimpse into another wonderful studio I visited.