Class Descriptions
Susan Shie
TURTLE MOON STUDIOS
Above: Lucky teaches a teacher inservice class at Harrison High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, in October, 2001.
I received the Teacher of the Year 2008 award from Professional Quilter Magazine. You can buy a copy of the Spring, 2008 issue # 103 of Professional Quilter, which contains a cover story about my teaching philosophy from the magazine's website.
My classes focus on nudging students into more intuitive, expressive ways of drawing, painting, and writing. In most of my class offerings, we work daily in sketchbooks and then move to making narrative paintings on cloth with marker, airpen (optional), and fabric paint on whole cloth. I may be the only airpen teacher in the art quilt movement. I also teach airbrush (a very different tool from airpen), but only teach it at Turtle Art Camps in my home studio in Wooster, Ohio, because airbrush has too much equipment to move around the country to teach with, and it's better to teach airbrush to very small groups of students. The emphasis in all of my classes is no non-judgemental and very intuitive art making, on finding ones innocent artist voice, which has been ignored for so long.
Please contact me for scheduling, etc. NOTE: My format works fine for classes that are longer or shorter than five days, but five days is an ideal length. Naturally, I prefer longer classes! But I can teach as short as one day classes and as long as four week ones. I can provide a syllabus and supply list for any length of class you'd like to talk about.
My fees and expenses:
My fees are $700 per day class teaching stipend, $500 per lecture, as well as all expenses, door to door. These expenses include travel, such as mileage for airport trips, airline tickets, baggage fees, shipping any supplies back and forth, taxis if needed, as well as all motel and meal expenses for the trip. If Jimmy has to drive me to your class, our mileage fee is $.55/mile, and either he has to make two round trips, or you'll need to include him in the motel provisions and meals. I need to arrive the day before teaching starts, and leave the day after teaching ends, at the least.
I now offer four classes:
Class #1: Diary Paintings for Art Quilts:
This is described as a five day experience, but can be modified to any number of days. It's my most popular class.
This is described as a five day experience, but can be modified to any number of days. Its end goal is being able to spontaneously draw, paint, and write on whole cloth paintings that become freely machine sewn quilts. There is a syllabus for the class, differing in content , depending on the number of days of the class.
The workshop includes use of markers and airpen for drawing and writing, and brush-on fabric paint for coloring the paintings. The group creates a long list of topics to select one from, via majority vote, for each day of class, so the students all respond to the same idea, but from their own personal viewpoint. Rebels are free to work on a different theme from the group theme each day. The class is very free and open, with much sharing between students, me doing a lot of one-on-one teaching, and us discussing our work each day in show-and-tell format.
Ideally each student will make one fat quarter sized painting on fabric for each day of the class, and select one to machine "crazy grid" quilt, using this simple process to turn their painting into an art quilt. For classes of shorter duration, figure one painting per day. For classes longer than five days, the paintings may be larger, more resolved, and we can get more sewing done.
Emphasis in this class is on letting your intuitive creative energy flow out fresh, right onto the fabric, without judging it as right or wrong. We'll use sketchbooks to develop ideas, but not erasers or tracing paper. Sketches will be set aside, when it's time to draw on the work, so that fresh images are made.
I teach airpen use in classees of three days or more. No one has to use the airpen, if they don't want to! But it's fun and easy, and it makes an incredibly beautiful and rich line for drawing and writing, unmatched by any markers made. Airpen use will be determined by how many students are in the class, and everyone will work some with markers, when not using the airpen. I'll have two airpens there to use. In short classes, such as a one or two day, we won't have time for me to work one-on-one with each student, to get them started in airpen, so the only airpen activity will be me giving a demo at the end of the class. Longer classes are needed for airpen to be taught. But short classes are still good for learning to draw right on the blank fabric, painting freely, etc.
I teach by demonstration, so that I evolve a piece as the class progresses. But I am a very hands on teacher with my students, so that I'm often up and moving around the room, working with each student as much as possible. I ask my students to come find me whenever they need help, to make sure they aren't stuck! I want all my students to learn as much from me as they can and to end the class very happy that they studied with me. I especially want to free up their creativity.
Class #2: Diary Paintings for Quilted Art Books:
This is described as a five day experience, but can be modified to any number of days. It is a more involved project than making diary paintings for quilts (the class above.) So this one really needs to have enough days to get a book going. Even in five days, the book will be only partially assembled. The end goal here is being able to understand how to make soft, hand drawn, painted, written, and machine sewn art books of personal thoughts and images.
The workshop includes use of markers and airpen for drawing and writing, and brush-on fabric paint for coloring the paintings. Themes for each student's artist's book will be worked out in class, so there is no need to come prepared with a book idea. The whole concept is "diary," so the theme will naturally evolve. The class is very free and open, with much sharing between students, me doing a lot of one-on-one teaching, and us discussing our work each day in show-and-tell format.
The students will each make roughly 10 paintings on fabric during the five day class, and select at least four to machine "crazy grid" quilt, using this simple process to turn their painting into an art book. The paintings will be smaller format, 8" x 10", for instance, but each student will decide the shape and size of their own book. We'll work on painted, quilted covers and bindings during the class, but the books will still need a lot of sewing after the workshop, unless the students work very long and hard each day. For classes of shorter duration, figure two paintings per day. For longer classes, more paintings can be made, and they can be larger, more resolved, and we can get more sewing done.
Emphasis in this class is on letting your intuitive creative energy flow out fresh, right onto the fabric, without judging it as right or wrong. We'll use sketchbooks to develop ideas, but not erasers or tracing paper. Sketches will be set aside, when it's time to draw on the work, so that fresh images are made.
I teach airpen in classes of three days or longer. No one has to use the airpen, if they don't want to! But it's fun and easy, and it makes an incredibly beautiful and rich line for drawing and writing, unmatched by any markers made. Airpen use will be determined by how many students are in the class, and everyone will work some with markers, when not using the airpen. I'll have two airpens there to use. In short classes, such as a one or two day, we won't have time for me to work one-on-one with each student, to get them started in airpen, so the only airpen activity will be me giving a demo at the end of the class. Longer classes are needed for airpen to be taught. But short classes are still good for learning to draw right on the blank fabric, painting freely, etc.
I teach by demonstration, so that I evolve a piece as the class progresses. But I am a very hands on teacher with my students, so that I'm often up and moving around the room, working with each student as much as possible. I ask my students to come find me whenever they need help, to make sure they aren't stuck! I want all my students to learn as much from me as they can and to end the class very happy that they studied with me. I especially want to free up their creativity.
Class #3: Narrative Quilt Independent Study.
This is my newest class offering, invented in 2011. It's described as a five day experience, but can be modified to any number of days.
This workshop will explore ways of making pictorial, narrative art quilts, with each student beginning the class working in her current personal imagery style, using the materials she’s been using in her body of work, back in her own home studio. With everyone working on a new group-invented theme each day, what connects us all in our work will be the theme. My “library time” exercise, a brief quiet sketchbook drawing and writing period that begins each day, will help you find your direction and approach to the themes. Lively and frequent group show and tells will lead to us possibly using each other’s supplies and processes, stretching our own methods and styles, maybe even collaborating.
I’ll present some of my own techniques, such as fabric painting, airpen writing, and crazy grid quilting, which you are welcomed to try and merge into what you’re already doing. But the class emphasis will be on how we communicate ideas through personal narrative. During the last day, we’ll each work on sewing one of our narrative tops into a quilt, in our own ways or ways we see happening in the class, or in new ways we think up while being in this creative mix.
Because different techniques take different amounts of time to produce a piece, slower-method artists will work on less of the daily themes, and faster-method artists will work on more. There will be no problem with needing to complete anything, so even if you only work on one piece, it’ll be fine.
Take this class to push and stretch your personal narrative style and to broaden your thinking by seeing how other artists approach the same pictorial theme concept in their own ways. You may take home new processes to weave into your working style.
Note: You may or may not include writing in your narrative art style, or you may use any balance of imagery and writing. It’s all up to your and your own choices.
Supply list: Bring all the supplies you work with in making your own narrative quilts at home. Bring enough of everything to make 1 -4 roughly fat-quarter size (18” x 22”–ish) quilt tops in your current style and to quilt or start to quilt one of them, by the end of the class. (You’ll work on less than 3 tops, if you know you work more slowly, so bring supplies accordingly.) Bring your sewing machine and its threads and tools.
Each piece will have a theme you are unaware of now, but if you are set on pursuing a specific theme you have in mind now, you can bend the group themes to your needs. There will be no rules for sticking with the class-chosen themes. Just intense focus and a lot of fun while working hard.
Class #4: Drawing from Life.
This is described as a five day experience, but can be modified to any number of days. Pick up where you left off, when you stopped drawing. This is a skill you have to develop, like playing the piano, and your dedication to practice will be the key to your success.
The class will help people who think they can't draw now, to begin on their path to becoming comfortable with drawing anything they want to. Exercises will include drawing from live models (students taking turns posing in their clothes) and drawing objects. Self portraits will be done with the assistance of mirrors. I taught Drawing I and II at Kent State University School of Art in the 80s, and this class will reflect the structure of those classes, but will be very abbreviated, and will emphasize a more organic, natural way to learn to draw. Materials will be restricted to black and white, so that basic principles of drawing will be all that the student focuses on. We'll work in sketchbooks and on paper with drawing pencils, pens, and other monochromatic tools.
Susan Shie bio:
Susan Shie (pronounced "shy") lives in Wooster, Ohio with her husband Jimmy Acord. Both have studios in their home and are fulltime artists. Shie, born in 1950, holds a MFA - Master of Fine Arts degree from Kent State University School of Art [1986] and a BA from The College of Wooster (1981, Phi Beta Kappa.) Both degrees are in Painting. Her medium is quilted narrative paintings, a form of art quilts, which are time capsules of current events and her own diary musings, often created within the context of her Kitchen Tarot project.
Shie has received two NEA Grants (1990-1 and 1994-5), four Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grants (most recent in 1998) and Artist in Residences in New York City, China, Ireland, and Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Shie received a $50,000. Major Artist Fellowship from The Ohio Arts Council and NEA in 1990-91. She won the "Best of Show" award in 1987, at the first of her eleven Quilt National exhibitions. Most recently she was given the Teacher of the Year 2008 award by Professional Quilter Magazine.
In her narrative art of diary, current events, and historical commentary and in her teaching, Shie strives to have a positive, uplifting effect on those who see her art around the world. Her work has been in many national and international art exhibitions since 1980, as well as in many articles and books. Along with founding and maintaining the GREEN QUILTS world project (which officially ended in 2004, after 15 years), Shie helps organize and develop local art events and projects. She sees the making of art as an integral and important aspect of healing: balancing, cleansing, and unstressing. "When people learn to really bring their artmaking process from their intuition, unjudged by the rules they've learned, they make their most exciting work. This genuine creativity is very centering and healing." This is the emphasis in her class teaching: showing students the way back to creating from their hearts and souls.
Turtle Moon Studios
Susan Shie
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