Turtle Art Camp with Susan Shie
at Turtle Moon Studios 2612 Armstrong Drive, Wooster, Ohio, 44691-1806.
Turtle Art Camp is a five day fine arts painting workshop and retreat for adult students to study with me, artist and instructor Susan Shie, in a Biosphere-like living and working arrangement at Turtle Moon Studios in Wooster, Ohio. These camps have been helping people find their instinctive and joyful aritist's voices since 1994.
Students with all levels of art skill, from NONE to very developed, will find this experience useful in improving their abilities and attitudes about art making. You will feel more free and accepting of the creativity that's wanting so much to come flowing out of you!
Above: Flox Den Hartog Jager-Malten works passionately on her painting on cloth with regular brush and fabric paints.
All day we interact in a kind and relaxed way, to help each other blossom more creatively. And in the flexible studio schedule format, after trying or at least watching me demo all my painting processes, students work with the ones they like best. We start each day with a quiet time of drawing and writing in our sketchbooks, to get centered and inspired for the day's work.
Each student can learn to machine quilt in my Lucky School of Quilting way, choosing one of their 3-5 paintings made during the camp week and turning it into an art quilt with these unique sewing techniques. If you don't want to sew, or you don't want to try any of the things I offer, you can work with whatever you want to. I just want to help you open up more to your inner creativity. You can draw or watercolor all week, if you like, and I'll be happy. :)
Above: Pattie Sly takes to working with the airpen really well. Every student at Turtle Art Camp gets an optional one on one airpen lesson, as well as an optional one on one airbrush lesson. Lots of one on one here, but you don't have to do any processes you think you won't like working with. You can draw or watercolor or express your artist's voice in any way you like here, as long as you join in the creative process in one way or another. We are about letting it all flow in glorious experssion!
Turtle Art Camp 2013 schedule:
The camp dates listed here show the days you travel in and out, and the days in between are the five class days here.
This 2013 schedule is subject to changes, if needed. But once I have one student for a camp, that camp's dates are locked in.
March 6 - 12. (Last camp with Wednesday and Tuesday travel days) I have 3 students signed up for this camp.
April 14 - 20 (Sunday and Saturday travel days) I have 2 students signed up for this camp.
May 3 - 9 (Friday and Thrusday travel days. And this one includes an exciting El Cinco de Mayo celebration at Turtle Art Camp!) I have 4 students signed up for this camp. This camp is full.
NEWLY ADDED: June 2 - 8 (Sunday and Saturday travel days.) I am giving this camp a theme of Healing Art. Everyone who comes to this camp can share in teaching each other ideas on how to use our artmaking to heal anything we need it for. It can be for anything from a broken heart to a medical condition. I'm not going to play guru, but rather facilitator in our explorations. If it gets a good response, I will consider having themes for more of the camps. I'm looking at Wellness, Eco-Art, and back to more Healing Art camps. You are welcomed to suggest a week's theme to me, too. Like you could say "I want to come in the July camp, so can we do Healing then, too? Or can we do Aging with Joy?" Let's shake it up! The actual work we do will still be my usual drawing, painting, writing, optional airpen and optional airbrush, and optional quilting, and you can work on paper or fabric, but this will be a themed week, and we'll still pick daily themes for each project, which you can use or not in what you do that day.
July 7 - 13 (Sunday and Saturday travel days)
July 28 - August 3 (Sunday and Saturday travel days)
August 25 - 31 (Sunday and Saturday travel days)
September 22 - 28 (Sunday and Saturday travel days)
Above: Jeanette Thompson made some incredibly complex paintings during her camp experience here!
You are also welcomed to inquire about making a special camp time period of as many days as you want, for your needs that don't fit this schedule. This could be a full 7 day camp (two travel days and five class days) or more or less days, as you need.
The regular weeklong Turtle Art Camp fee is $1,000. The fee for a shorter camp is $200. per day. Students for short canps may stay here for $20 per night, or stay in hotel.
Special this year: f you bring another student with you to a weeklong Turtle Art Camp in 2013, you each get a $50 discount.
Above: Louise Harrington starts working on her first painting here, while Libby takes a snooze behind her.
Camp size is up to 4 students per camp. Students must be at least 18 years old to study here. 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.
Above: Our cats love having students here. Ome on the left and Otis are sister and brother. Otis and Ome say take your Benadryl, if you need it. They hardly shed.
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. All bedrooms and bathrooms are on the main floor of the house. But the workshop studios are in the basement, so you must be able to go up and down stairs comfortably. The stairs are sturdy and have a solid handrail.
We have wifi for your internet use, so please bring your laptop, iPad, or other device, if you want to stay connectred.
We run the air conditioner when everyone agrees that it's time, but we won't freeze you out. And this is definitely a smoke free place.
Above: If the weather's good, we have a picnic on our patio during camp. If not, we try to make a big meal together inside one night instead. Judybeth Greene, Grace Tai, Deborah Rose-Milavec, and Jancy McClellan relax around the table here with Jimmy.
The basic study plan is to work with all of my processes, with pens, markers, and optional airpen; painting with brush and optional airbrush; and also optionally turning a painting into an art quilt you'll assemble and sew in my unique way. You'll notice a lot of opetions here! I want you to make art in any way that keeps you stimulated and working.
Students not interested in fiber are welcomed to choose to draw, watercolor, or do other techniques on paper or canvas, etc, since the big idea here is to become more open about creating and therefore, more excited about what you make. I can help you with alternative drawing and painting processes, of course.
This is the only place where I teach airbrush painting, so that is the "specialty of the house." I use Aztek double action airbrushes (supplied), which are extremely user friendly. And I use SilkPaint basic airpens, from the company which invented this amazing tool: Silkpaint.com.
The workday schedule at Turtle Art Camp is pretty simple: You get up and make your own breakfast when you feel like it and clean up after yourself. We start actual studio class at 10 AM. We break to make lunch together at noon, and we all clean up the kitchen. Then we get back to the studio again to work from 2 to 6 PM. That gives us six hours of real teacher-student studio time, and we will probably see a lot of each other in the studio in the evenings, but not as class instructional time.
Above: I work with each student one on one with all my processes, but especially with airpen and airbrush. Here Flox is making her first airbrush marks and we're going over how to hold the brush and use its lever and wheel. She got it really well!
Each day we'll invent a theme together for the painting we'll each make that day. but everyone has the option to do work about a different subject from what the group cooks up. And you don't have to use the materials and processes we're using that day. Just get busy and make some art! In my basic plan, we'll each sketch on paper and start one fat-quarter sized painting on fabric (about 18" x 22"). You'll machine quilt one of the fabric paintings into a finished art quilt by the end of the camp. Or maybe you'll have a bunch of watercolors or pen drawings on paper.
Come here to learn to open up to your very intuitive inner self, the self you were coonected to quite well, when you were a small child. Within a six-hours-per day, structured but flexible class schedule, you'll learn spontaneous drawing and painting techniques for making intuitive diary work on fabric, but these same ideas apply to work on paper, etc. You'll hopefully find that child's playful creative abandon again, and you'll be able to assimilate that into the path you were already on with your adult artmaking.
Above: Louise and I worked on sandwiching our quilts, after I showed her my funky Lucky School of Quilting methods I'd cooked up many years ago.
We began teaching here in this format of having live-in students in 1994, and although in the beginning Jimmy taught with me, I've now taught by myself for many years. 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. They just have small images, because the Diary was back when we all had dialup modems.
Jimmy brings the flying students from the airport and takes them back at the end of the week. You'll fly into Cleveland Hopkins Airport by 4:30 pm on the first day of camp, and fly out any time after 12:00 noon on the last day. We'll coordinate one pick-up and one return airport trip per class week. 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, and leave by 10 AM on the travel-out day.
Above: Cheryl Ruth Green gets ready to stitch her painting into an art quilt, using the methods I've just demonstrated with my own painting from camp. Libby supervises.
There's a little optional machine sewing near the end of the camp, when we each pick one of our paintings to quilt in my unusal style. I have a Janome 6600, a Pfaff 1473, and a little Hello Kitty sewing machine in the studio. :) I demonstrate how I fit my batting to my painting to allow for a border, then create a backing of fabric that will fold over the batting and tuck under the raw edge of the painting, with flat folded corners. After pinning the sandwich together, I sew the border edge first, then begin sewing free form lines all the way across and up and down the piece. I decide the closeness of my quilted grid lines, depending on how they look with the painting I'm turning into a quilt.
Costs of Turtle Art Camp:
The full time camp fee is $1,000. per person for a regular weeklong camp, which is five days of class, between the two listed travel days, and $200 per day per person for mini camps made to special order.
Expenses included in your fee are: tuition; private room; food for breakfasts and lunches; art supplies for the basic projects; and rides from and to Cleveland Hopkins Airport (for full time camp students only). Students’ personal expenses, beyond the fee, are: flights or driving expenses, personal incidentals, personal snacks and special beverages, and five evening dinners eaten out together at restaurants.
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 and lunch are included in your fee, along with your lodging and basic art supplies.
Before you sign up, be sure you read all the camp information here, please. Then call me or email, to register for your camp. I don't do texting. Sorry. After talking with me, please send your half deposit of $500. Please make all checks payable to Susan Shie, and send it to Susan Shie, 2612 Armstrong Drive, Wooster, Ohio 44691. Be sure to include DRIVE, because there's also an Armstrong Road, So the PO needs clarity. Rescheduling or refund of deposit will be made in cases of emergency.
Above: Jancy McClellan focuses on her airbrush work here at Turtle Art Camp.
Some people want to work in the studio around the clock, while others like to just work during class hours. And there's every attitude in between. Possible evening activities here 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, as late as you want. We often pick a movie to watch together over a couple of evenings.
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 eat supper here and work in the studio in the evening, with me teaching, so we can make up the studio time we lost in the morning in town.) I really love our downtown, with its food co-op, cool privately owned bookstores, bead store, and antique shops. Also I'll do an astrology lecture after class hours, if you like, and can set up students' birth charts, if you send ahead your birth date, time, and location. I'm not as good with Tarot cards, but we can still play with my own deck, the Kitchen Tarot.
Above, I'm getting ready to use a paint marker on this painting, but usually I use an airbrush for big letters and an airpen for my smaller writing. The lines and words you see here were done with airbrush, as were the colors.
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 I.S. (Independent Study) project at The College of Wooster, And by 1989, Jimmy started helping me in making what I called Outsider Art Quilts. He stopped adding his leather objects to my work aroune 2003, when I was again working more flat, less 3-D on my quilted paintings. Together 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, a 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. Since 2003 or so, Jimmy hasn't been 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: our daughter Gretchen, her husband Michael, and our granddaughter Eva 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, from late 2004 and into 2006, I didn't teach anywhere, since I lived in Lakewood most 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 that period, along with acquiring numbness in my fingertips, helped push me toward emphasizing my painting and writing again 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 being eight years old now and in second grade! It's a very exciting time to be grandparents!
Above: Here's our doodle dog, Libby Spooler, wishing she could go roaming around that garden, where the bunnies live!
In my life, my work has evolved from big paintings on canvas, to 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 in 2003 (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, which I think of as quilted paintings, or soft paintings, the term I invented for my senior I.S. at the College of Wooster in 1980. I expect this current format to be my focus for many years to come, but you never know...! I call what I make now Diary Time Capsules, because each one has journal musings and current events writing on it from a very specific time period.
Jimmy is very involved in his leather fly fishing case making. There is no one in the whole world doing what Jimmy does with leather. His cases are made from scratch, with him doing every step of their making (though I still help him on painting and making up drawings and lettering.) He's known as the world's foremost maker of fine heirloom, 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 unique rod cases, flasks, fly cases, reel cases, or other custom work.
Above: Our home and studios at Turtle Moon, in the bright morning sunlight on October 11, 2012, in the Autumn colors.
We're located one hour south of Cleveland, in a quiet, wooded part of the suburban north end of Wooster, a pretty special little town of 27,000 or so. We have about an acre of our own land, with lots of flowerbeds, a big garden, and wooded ravines. The neighborhood has lots of wildlife, like woodpeckers, bunnies, and squirrels, and some nice friendly neighbors, too.
Our town has 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 Wayne County and below us, Holmes County, include the largest Amish settlement in the world, so the scenery and cultural mix are fascinating! Wooster has a beautiful downtown with a very active restaurant and shopping scene of its very own. We have plenty of places to eat at, that are not chains, all within short drives. And we'll pick a different one of them to have dinner at each night during a Turtle Art Camp!
Above: "Learn Chinese," a large painting made by Elke and her friend Flox Den Hartog Jager-Malten, and me, using airbrush and airpen, during the August, 2012 Turtle Art Camp.
SO WHEN CAN YOU COME??
After reading the information above, call or email to set up your camp experience. I don't do texting. Sorry. After talking with me, please send your half deposit of $500. Please make all checks payable to Susan Shie, and send it to Susan Shie, 2612 Armstrong Drive, Wooster, Ohio 44691. Be sure to include DRIVE, because there's also an Armstrong Road, So the PO needs clarity.
Let's do it soon! Hope you can come!
Above: Japanese Irises bloom in our backyard at Turtle Moon. That clothesline comes in really handy, if you get your painting too dark or murky and want to wash it out fast! :)
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Web site created by Susan Shie and Jan Cabral ©1997. All subsequent website work done by Susan Shie ©1997 - 2013.
This page updated by Susan Shie, April 25, 2013.
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