Turtle Art Camp with Susan Shie
Five day fine arts painting workshop / retreat for
adult students, with artist / instructor Susan Shie,
in a Biosphere-like living and working situation. Helping people find their instinctive and joyful aritist's voice since 1994. Specializing in making narrative paintings with regular brushes, airbrush, and airpen. Among these tools, students work with the ones they want. Each student learns to machine quilt in my Lucky School of Quilting way, by choosing one of their five paintings made in their camp week and turning it into a quilt with my crazy grid sewing techniques.
TURTLE MOON STUDIOS
2612 Armstrong Drive, Wooster, Ohio, 44691-1806 .
Read what Wikipedia says about Wooster.
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Above right: Jimmy guides Nancy Matthews through working on a fabric doll with leather.
NEW - Turtle Art Camp 2012 schedule:
Note: I've just decided to give a $50. discount to each person who comes to camp with someone they know, whether it's a friend or a relative.
The exact dates listed here are the Wednesday when you travel here and the next Tuesday, when you travel home. The five days in between these travel days are the actual camp class days.
March 14 - 20 (includes a glorious St Patrick's Day party and dance contest!)
April 11 - 17
May 2 - 8 (includes an exciting El Cinco de Mayo celebration at Turtle Moon!)
June 6 - 12
July 4 - 10 (includes a special Fourth of July barbecue picnic here and going to watch the Fireworks from our special intersection down the street.)
August 8 - 14
September 5 - 11
October 3 - 9
These camps all have a Wednesday travel-in day, followed by five days of class, then a Tuesday travel-out day. Turtle Art Camp is in Wooster, Ohio. You will fly into and out of Cleveland Hopkins Airport, unless you drive here.
Each camp can have from 2 to 5 students, living for a week here at Turtle Moon Studios in Wooster, Ohio, and studying my processes of working with pens, markers, and optional airpen; painting with brush and optional airbrush; and turning a painting into a quilt you'll assemble and sew in my unique way. This is the only place where I teach airbrush painting.
The camp fee is $1,000. per person for a regular weeklong camp, which is five days of class and two travel days, and $200 per day per person for mini camps made when two or more people who know each other decide to create a special camp here, outside of the scheduled weeklong camps. All prices include art supplies for the projects in the class plan, breakfasts and lunches, and your bedroom.
Camps can have from 2 to 5 students, five only if two students know each other well enought to be willing to share the bedroom that has two twin beds in it. Otherwise, we can have four students max, with each one having her own bedroom. I can also teach a camp for your group at your location. Let's talk.
The fee for Turtle Art Camp is $1000 per person, with a half payment made to reserve a space. Please make all checks payable to Turtle Moon Studios. The fee for part time students and students in mini camps scheduled to people's needs is $200. per day. All part time students who fly in must pay for land transportation, when not flying on our regular travel days. So they may need to rent a car.
Expenses included in your fee are: tuition; room; food for breakfasts, lunches, and snacks; art supplies; and rides from and to Cleveland Hopkins Airport. Students’ personal expenses, beyond the fee, are: flights or driving expenses, personal incidentals, and five evening dinners eaten out together.
Before you sign up, be sure you read all the camp information here, please. Then call me or email, to make sure I have space for you in the camp you want. After that, send your deposit of $500. in a check made out to Turtle Moon Studios, and I'll sign you up and start sending more information, including how to schedule flights, driving directions, etc. Thank you!
Come here to learn to open up to your very intuitive inner self, the self you were coonected to well, when you were a child. Within a six-hours-per day, structured class schedule, you'll learn spontaneous drawing and painting techniques for making intuitive diary work on fabric. You'll make one fat-quarter sized painting on fabric a day and machine quilt at least one of the fabric paintings into a finished art quilt by the end of your camp. You'll use marker, airpen, brush painting, and airbrush, but you don't have to try all of these processes if you don't want to.
Students must be at least 18 years old. All bedrooms and bathrooms are on the main floor of the house. The workshop studios are in the basement, so you must be able to go up and down stairs comfortably. If only one person signs up for a given camp, they will have the choice of moving to another camp or getting a refund of their deposit. This is the only reason that a deposit will be returned.
We have four student bedrooms and one student bathroom which is shared by all students. There are two other bathrooms that can be used when needed. Our home and studios are smoke-free. We have a dog and three cats, but keep the house and studios very clean. Students with pet allergies seem to function well, if they take their allergy medication.
Thank you! I hope you can find time in your schedule to come study with me in Wooster.
Come here to study and open up to be a lot more free in your art making, to be able to bring your inner creative instincts out into your work.
Work with my techniques for: drawing, writing, painting on fabric, airpen, airbrush, and crazy grid machine sewing. I used to teach a lot of hand sewing techniques, as well, but the focus now is on painting and writing on the fabric, to make paintings for diary art quilts. I teach most of my painting methods when I teach at other places, but I only teach airbrush here at home. I use Aztek double action airbrushes (supplied), which are extremely user friendly. And I use Aztek basic airpens, purchased from the company which invented this amazing tool: Silkpaint.com.
Camps are held at Turtle Moon Studios, in Wooster, Ohio, for both living and studio work, making this a very holistic experience. You will be part of our family for a week! . References are available from former campers.
Come and take a five day diary painting class in a warm and friendly setting. We began teaching at home this way in 1994, and although Jimmy used to teach a little during each camp with me, I now teach by myself. If you want to know more about us and our home, browse through my blog and my older online Turtle Trax Diary, which I began in 1997, and for which all pages are still here on the site, with lots of pix and stories, some from Turtle Art Camps.
Costs of Turtle Art Camp:
You pay $1000 tuition for the class. For that you get me teaching for six hours a day, every day of the main five day class. During the class time and evenings, you can always take a break for your own quiet time and space. Art supplies for the basic projects are provided in your fee, but you can still shop in town for special things you want, like specific fabrics for your dream project (or for stashing.) If you want to do more than the basic projects of five fat-quarter paintings and quilting one of them, then you can buy extra supplies from me or shop locally.
You pay for your own evening meals, and we eat suppers out together, like a big family. We'll eat breakfast and lunches here, with you making your own breakfast, when you're ready, and us making lunch together. Students help with kitchen cleanup. Thanks in advance!!!! Breakfast, lunch, and snacks are included in your fee, along with your lodging.
I ask for a $500. (one half) deposit, sent as soon as possible, to hold your place in camp. This is not refundable, unless you have a health or family emergency. But if you have to cancel for other reasons, your deposit will apply toward your rescheduled camp, or toward buying some of my art. (I will also refund your deposit if you're the only person signed up for a camp that I'm cancelling, and you are unable to switch to another scheduled camp, so I can have at least two students.) When I receive the deposit, I'll send you more information about camp, including flight time planning, driving directions, etc. The second $500. will be due at the end of your camp. Please make all checks payable to Turtle Moon Studios.
Possible evening activities include: local shopping, such as going to Pat Catan's for art supplies you may "need," JoAnn Fabrics for adding to your stash, walking in the neighborhood, and of course, working in the studio after hours, as late as you want. We take one morning to go downtown and have breakfast there, before touring some special stores that only Wooster has to offer! (That evening we work in the studio late, with me teaching, so we can make up the time we spent in town.) I really love our downtown, with its food co-op, cool bookstores, bead store, and antique mall. Also, for full time camps, not mini camps, I'll do an astrology lecture during class if you like, and can set up students' birth charts, if you send ahead your birth date, time, and location. I'm as good with Tarot cards, but we can work with my own deck, the Kitchen Tarot.
At left, students Jane Roberson and Jan
Cabral with Jimmy and our sweet old dog who's gone now, Hattie Spooler, at our
Turtle Art Camp, August, 1997
Fly into Cleveland Hopkins Airport by 4:30 pm on the first day of camp, and fly out shortly after 12:00 noon on the last day. We'll coordinate one pick-up and one return airport trip per class. Jimmy meets you at the baggage claim. Or drive yourself to camp and arrive at 6:00 PM on the travel-in, first day of camp.
Bio:
I've been making art in many media all my life, but mostly drawing, painting, and writing, since early childhood. All I ever really planned to be was an artist, since art was what I was totally passionate about. Jimmy and I met in 1976, and I used to help him in his leather shop, besides making my paintings. I made my first art quilt in 1981, as part of my senior project at The College of Wooster, And by 1989, Jimmy started helping me in making what I call Outsider Art Quilts. We've received two NEA Individual Artist Grants as well as many Ohio Arts Council grants. I have an MFA from Kent State University School of Art, BA from The College of Wooster, and received the Quilt National "Best of Show" award in 1987. We've taught at many national schools and workshops, including Q/SDS, Haystack, Arrowmont, Worcester, Penland, CraftSummer, Peters Valley, in China and Ireland, as well as doing residencies in museums and universities around the US. We've also taught a lot with school children. Now Jimmy's not teaching with me at all, but I teach many workshops "out," as well as my Turtle Art Camps here at home. In 2008 I received the "Teacher of the Year" award from Professional Quilter Magazine.
Our kids: Gretchen, Mike, and Eva (our granddaughter) live in Lakewood, a suburb of Cleveland, an hour north of us. I took care of Eva when she was a baby, til she was one and a half, and during that time, I didn't teach anywhere, since I lived in Lakewood part of each week. But I kept my artmaking going at night and continued to show my work throughout my nanny time. The time constraints of this period, along with acquiring numbness in my fingertips, helped push me toward emphasizing my painting and writing and moving from hand sewing to machine work for my quilting. GEM is the acronym I use to reference my kids, and they continue to show up in my art, with Eva now going on four years old. It's a very exciting time to be grandparents!
In my life, my work has evolved from me working alone with mixed media painted quilts, to adding Jimmy as a collaborator and co-teacher, to going back to me making art by myself and teaching solo. And with the addition of airpen to my processes (along with the time and hand issues I mentioned above), I've shifted my work style to much more written-on, unembellished, painted and machine sewn diary quilts. I expect this current format to be my focus for many years to come, but you never know...!
Jimmy is very involved in his fly fishing case making. There is no one in the whole world doing what Jimmy is doing with leather. His cases are made from scratch, all by one artist (though I still consult on painting and help make up drawings and lettering.) He's known as the world's foremost maker of fine status-symbol, collectible fly fishing cases, custom ordered by devotees of fine workmanship. Each case is signed, numbered, and dated, and there is a long waiting list for getting one of Jimmy's rod cases, flasks, fly cases, reel cases, or other custom work. We still help each other with our work, but Jimmy stopped teaching out with me some years ago, and now, with the revival of Turtle Art Camps, he is not doing any teaching.
TURTLE MOON STUDIOS:
We're located one hour south of Cleveland, in the wooded suburban north end of Wooster, a pretty nice and safe city of 27,000 or so. We have The College of Wooster and a branch of Ohio State University, The Agricultural Technical Institute. There's a lot of rolling farmland and a really good Art Center here. Our community includes the largest Amish settlement in the world, so the scenery and cultural mix are fascinating! Wooster has Matsos - the best Greek restaurant we know of! We have plenty of places to eat that are not chains, all within short drives. Yea! And we'll pick a different one of them to have dinner at each night!
This is my Medicine
Wheel out in the backyard. Peaceful
place to meditate.
Our home and studios are nestled in a large Jetsons style 60's brick ranch with five bedrooms and three full baths, fully air conditioned, when needed. The studios are in the basement. We don't allow smoking in the house. If you have cat allergies, let's talk, because we have cats. Some cat-allergic students have come anyhow and survived well, taking their allergy meds.
SO WHEN CAN YOU COME??
After reading the information above, call or email to set up your camp experience. A one-half deposit locks in your spot and starts our communication.
Let's do it soon! Hope you can come!
Turtle Moon Studios
Susan Shie
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Web site created by Susan Shie and Jan Cabral ©1997. All subsequent website work done by Susan Shie ©1997 - 2011.
This page updated by Susan Shie, November 16, 2011.
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