Inactive but not forgotten

The randomly altered Divas is no longer active, however, I am going to keep the pictures of some of our projects on this site for inspiration.
Jane

Randomly Altered Divas

We are on a short break from our regular meetings and have seriously been thinking
of returning to a regular schedule. Stay tuned for more updates as we move through the
winter.
Jane

Book Art Exhibit a Great Success

The Hendersonville Times News billed this event like this:
There is a local book arts guild of sorts. This group numbers fewer than a dozen, primarily people who studied or shopped at Jane Powell's Random Arts store in Saluda. That store is a magnet for all people in the area who deal with mixed media art, and taking a clue from the stores name, the book artists themselves "randomly altered divas". They meet together to learn techniques, have a "show and tell" of their latest book and art projects and discuss serious issues of artistic goals and practices.
Penny Baugh is a good example of a book artist. She has always stitched and sewn. While living in Georgia eight years ago and concentrating on primitive dolls, she noticed that the same craft magazines that covered art dolls also covered artists books. By the time she moved to Hendersonville 4 years ago, she was thoroughly engrossed in the new field.

That was his promo to our book show that was held Feb 1-15th last month and nothing but rave reviews were heard during and after the show. We are all so pleased with the amount of visitors who came to enjoy and discover what book arts is all about. About 15 past and present members submitted over 50 books which were on display. Penny sold 5 of her books and was as happy as could be about that. Good for you Penny!

ho ho ho

Penny's fabric book
Sharon's handpainted fabric goodie bag
Jane's 12 x 12 painted board book
It was a Sunday filled with fun, food and handcrafted gifts of all kinds as 8 of us gathered together for our annual holiday celebration. From top to bottom are projects created by Linda, Marney, Dawn, Betsy & Meg. Linda created a felted purse which is perfect for me... I got it!
Marney created a woodland piece of art from her nature walks and Dawn took a vintage suitcase and painted it so cute and added a "suitcase" full of surprises for Linda.
After taking a workshop this past summer Betsy created this awesome fabric bowl that's perfect for holding christmas cards. Now Marney will proudly display it in her beautiful home.
Penny received Meg's handmade accordion book which is shown at the bottom.
I re-created a 12 x 12 board book and turned it into a handpainted journal thats ready to go for all of Dawn's journalling adventures. Meg received a handpainted fabric pouch filled with precious stones, soaps and earrings from Sharon and last but not least the lucky recipient of Penny's sewn book was Sharon.

A house is a house is a house

We all created our version of a "formica" house using a large formica chip sample. This one was done by Meg. She stitched a tree using free motion on super solvey, photo transfers and organdy fabric to create this work of art... her interpretation of a "formica house". Love it!

Added bonuses

Our new divas brought along some of the things that they have created although this.... is not the end of their story.
Linda Hartzig shows off her torn diva
project and Marney McClung shares her
hand crafted dolls.

Self Portaits? See for yourself...

Sunday was a great day at the
Randomly Altered Divas meeting
as we followed Meg's lead on this
torn paper project. Meg saw this
in an past issue of Somerset Studio,
tried it. loved it and showed us
how to do it. Wow! Talk about
NO RULES!
We all admired Meg's finished face and
got to take a peek at a
bird that she is now creating. Her large
geography book is filling up with her
drawings, journalling, torn paper collage
and much much more.
We are inspired.
At work is Betsy Libbey,Linda Hartzig
and Penny Baugh doing there best at
following "no rules". Sometimes that
is so much tougher than someone
telling you exactly what to do and how.
We persevered glued hands and all to
complete our piece; well almost. I think
mine needs a necklace and earrings.
What do you think? A little bling?

Fast forward.....

It begins for all intensive purposes.... today, as we start the "posting" of our events, shows, work, play and activities for the Randomly Altered Divas mixed up media group at Random Arts in Saluda, NC.
Members include Penny Baugh, Meg Fowler, Betsy Libbey, Jane Powell, Linda Hartzig and soon to be joining us is Sharon Kolbye. Cool group, huh?
Without making this sound like "minutes" of a meeting, which it is not, a short explanation and some photos of what we are doing will suffice.
Betsy Libbey shows off her Feminine Icon piece that she created as part of a workshop here with Katie Kendrick back in June of this year.

Penny has worked with the Hendersonville Arts Council to set up a showing of Book Art in February 2008 and all of here will have at least 2 books on display for the length of the show.
So, now for us the pressure is on to create some bodies of work before that date. In the meantime we experiment with a variety of techniques and show what we have done. Penny brought in 2 beaded fabric books that she had recently created and told us about some of her work that will be featured in Somerset Sew due out this fall. Hurray for Penny!!!
We re-visited altered book pages that Meg created in Penny's book entitled " fly me to the moon".

We start our group meeting with some journaling led by Betsy Libbey of Saluda, NC. She prompts us with short exercises to stimulate our creative thoughts and get us
into "action" for the afternoon. Today with the help of Penny and a book by Sherrill Kahn entitled "Creative Embellishments for Fabric, Paper and more" we created our own fabulous embellishments by exploring one of Sherrill's techniques.
Here is photo of some of the beads and fabric pieces created in this mini workshop.