Libzoid Blog

Anyone who knows me personally, knows that I am a workshop junkie. I love taking classes. Learning the intricacies of a technique fascinates me. Just spending time with artists I admire is a pleasure. Listening to an artist talk about their work, and explain the process over the course of one or two days is interesting on many levels. First, there’s the simple exchange of information, but there’s also a lot being said by the instructor about how he or she approaches the design process, what elements are most important, problem solving techniques etc. You can get a real sense of what part of this artist’s work is most personal. In many of the workshops I have taken, there’s also an “Aha!” moment when the instructor makes an aside comment, some seemingly small tip, that is just so useful. By itself, that tip makes the whole workshop worthwhile.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Craftcast lately, catching up with episodes I hadn’t heard yet. One thing that struck home with me was hearing several artists who also teach, talk about telling some students to stop taking workshops. That it was time to go home, and refine the techniques they’d learned into their own style, their own work. That really resonated with me. Actually, it was more like a cringing feeling, that they could be talking about me.

It may be hubris speaking, but by and large, I don’t feel that I take a given workshop and go right out and use the specific techniques. Often, workshops reveal how incredibly complex really good art is. The finished product looks so elegant and pure, but the process to get there is convoluted. There are many techniques that I cannot or would not even want to incorporate into my work unchanged. But there have been a couple of workshops that have had a big impact on me, where the techniques just filled a need I had. Kathleen Dustin’s Translucent Techniques Workshop at North Country Studio Workshops in 2005 was one. Judy Kuskin’s Bezel Workshop at Ravensdale this summer was another.

My personal challenge is how to distill these very distinctive techniques into something that speaks of me. Both techniques are very recognizable. It’s nearly impossible to change them to a point where they’d be unrecognizable. Ultimately, I’d like people looking at my work to feel that I have been influenced by these exceptional artists, but not to feel my work was mimicking theirs. This is a common challenge for many of us, how take take visual or instructional influences and make them our own. It’s okay to be influenced by our teachers. As long as we are conscious of trying to reveal our own “voice”, I think we’re on the right path.

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