There are many beautiful mountain towns in Colorado, and then there’s Telluride, CO. Perched at 8750 feet above sea level in a box canyon with mountains all around, Telluride has to be one of the most beautiful (and cleanest) places on earth. Spending a week there, teaching an art cloth workshop was heavenly. Words and even pictures really can’t describe it. Every morning, I was filled with quiet appreciation as my eyes tried to absorb all the surrounding glory.
And in this most beautiful place, I was gifted with working with a wonderful group of artists, in an amazing facility – the Old Stone building, which houses the American Academy of Bookbinding / Aha School for the Arts classes.
 Old Stone Building in Telluride, CO  Students at work making hand-printed art cloth. For 3 days we played, making art cloth using various impermanent silkscreen techniques. My students were off and running after the very first technique demo – no fear here, just wind them up and watch them go – they dove right in and achieved incredible results. I think it’s safe to say that the discharge/color removal techniques were a group favorite!
 Michele applying a discharge paste design to her cloth.  Suzette using a bleach pen to draw her design.  Kathy got some great results printing with stencils on this piece.  Cindy enjoyed the monoprint technique, printing multiple leaves she gathered during the lunch break one day. By the end of the 3 days, my students were all rockstar printmakers and every one of them had a good variety of unique art cloth pieces to take home and incorporate into their art projects. Here’s some more photos of the great cloth pieces they made:
 Kathy working with the bleach pen.  Cindy made this piece using 2 techniques, glue screen and flour paste screen prints.  Suzette is going to use this cloth in a quilt that's already in progress.  Michele made several pieces of art cloth which she will be incorporating into her art quilts. It really was a special week, visiting a beautiful new place, teaching at a great school and meeting and working with some new artist friends. Thanks to all for a great time – Can’t wait to go back again next year and play some more!
Thanks to my brother Paul, here is a video virtual tour of my studio as it was set up for the Fort Collins Studio Tour in June:
In the part of the studio where my long arm quilting machine lives, I hung several newly completed textile paintings, including several small kitschy cowgirl pieces on one wall. I also devoted one entire wall to work in progress. Since we were asked to provide demos of how we make our work, I thought it would be fun for visitors to see some of the pieces I’m working on, in their various stages of completion, which revealed a bit of my working process.
On the printmaking side of the studio where my etching press lives, I included a “demo” area with some of the tools used for the various kinds of prints such as linocuts, woodcuts, and etchings as well as examples of different printmaking blocks/plates and the prints that were made from each, so visitors could see the range of mark-making possibilities in hand-pulled prints.
I also had my artist book of etchings displayed accordian-style, with the actual copper plates the prints were made from lined up in front of it, again so visitors could see both the prints and the plates they were made from.
My Process
I like to work on multiple pieces at a time, moving back and forth between the several pieces in progress. This allows me most efficient use of my time and endless variety, as depending on what I’m interested in doing during a creative session (dyeing, drawing, stitching, composing, etc), or if I only have a small window of time to work with, I have lots of options of how to spend my time.
There is also a downside to working this way as well; at times I get too many new things started (because of new ideas being spawned from a piece I’m working on, or answers not appearing for resolving some of the existing pieces in progress) and then I get overwhelmed with all of the work I’ve got started.
It’s a kind of expansion and contraction process, the exploration of beginning a new idea/new work, expanding into new territory, and then needing to have the discipline to to resolve and complete the work, a sort of contraction, bringing it to a close.
This is why artists make good project managers! Artists have to be able to come up with an idea worth doing, and then plan/figure out how best to do it, and then implement/deliver the goods, hopefully achieving a great result in the finished piece.
Anyway, back to the tour…. There were 36 studios participating in this year’s tour and visitors had 2 days to get around to as many as they could. For my first time participating, I think the event was a success. My goal was to introduce my studio and artwork to the local public and meet more people involved in local art scene. I achieved that and I also sold some work. And, best of all, I got some great feedback about my studio, hearing that some visitors thought it was the highlight of their tour – and in the end, that made it all worthwhile.
Eco dyeing with natural plant materials!
 Eco Dyeing supplies: plant material, string, cotton and silk fabric, metal pieces. My friend Diedre Adams attended an India Flint workshop at this year’s SDA conference in Minneapolis, and shared her experience in 2 great blog posts. Who knew you could make cool art cloth by picking up stuff on the ground in your environment, wrapping it in fabric, and boiling it in water? No toxic chemicals involved, and no special supplies to buy. After reading her first post, I was off and running – I just had to try this.
Really having no idea what I was doing (other than having read Diedre’s first blog post and having previously done some dyeing with procion MX dyes), yet trusting my process-intensive background in printmaking, I dove in. We had had a pretty intense hail storm and I have lots of trees/plants/greenery in my yard, so there were lots of healthy green leaves, stems, and petals laying about for easy gathering. I also had a big collection of dried wildflowers that I had harvested years ago and still had preserved between layers of newsprint, knowing I’d find a use for them some day. I laid out my fabric and like a burrito, filled it with plant materials and in some cases, wire and metal pieces, and then folded and rolled it up into tight bundles:
 
I tore some strips of PFD cotton fabric and also decided to try dyeing some silk (which I have never worked with before but had recently bought some yardage to try out). I didn’t know this at the time, but when using protein fibers such as silk, it is necessary to add some type of mordant agent to the boiling water pot to “fix” the natural plant dye colors to the fabric. There are several things that can be used for mordant – metal, milk, and soy milk are some options.
 Wrapping up the "burrito" of plant materials. In this case, I used a hollow metal rod to roll up the bundle around and then tied it with string. I had seen some pictures in Diedre’s post where they had used metal clamps and flat metal pieces as “supports” when preparing the fabric bundles. Lucky for me, my Partner uses wire and metal in some of her work, so I was able to pilfer some great rusty metal pieces from her stash for my bundling. I used these metal pieces as embellishments on the fabric bundles and to help provide some structure as I rolled, folded and wrapped the plant materials up in the fabric, tying them into tight bundles with string and rubber bands:
 Plant filled bundles all tied up and ready for boiling.  Backside of the 3 bundles with more metal pieces tied on. Then it was bundle boiling time. All those leaves, needles, petals, sticks, and pieces of metal made for an interesting aroma in the house. It was my very own backyard brew!
 Bundles in the water pot. After boiling, I let the bundles sit overnight in the brew pot before opening up the first one.
 Bundles after boiling in the water pot and "steeping" for a couple of days. The magical part of the process – revealing the results:
 
 Above photos are 1 piece of cotton, and below, are photos of another piece of cotton:
 
After heat setting the color and then washing the fabrics out, these 2 pieces of cotton looked like this:
 2 pieces of eco-dyed cotton fabric, dyed with plant materials from my own backyard.
The colors that the plant materials created in each fabric are very subtle yet beautiful (hard to see in the photos), and I love the dark shapes and marks that the metal pieces and string resist contributed. These 2 pieces of fabric really seemed to need to be together and so, over the next 3 days, I created a new textile painting using these fabrics along with some other cotton that I had hand-dyed earlier this year:
 "The Vagaries of Recall" ©Ayn Hanna, 46"x28", Textile Painting (cotton fabrics, eco-dyed and hand-dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton threads) I’ll post more of the results of this first eco-dyeing session, as well as photos from a follow-on 2nd dyeing session in a follow-up post.
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I made this drawing one morning when I was staying in a downtown Denver high rise hotel. Upon opening the curtains, I was so taken by the abstract images I saw in the reflections of the windows in the building across the street, I sat down and started recording them on a small piece of card stock that I found in the room.
 "5th Floor Reflections" ©Ayn Hanna, Ink Drawing on Paper Drawing – The Artist’s act of thinking
Michael Gormley, Editor Director of American Artist Group, shares some interesting thoughts about drawing in an article he wrote:
“Practiced frequently and without inhibition, drawing represents the graphic remains of a thought or idea-hence its evolution ultimately aims to record not just the gesture of the hand but the inspired movement of the mind. Drawing is thus a powerful tool for recording the stages and end products of our imaginative thought processes; it is associated with the highest levels of human consciousness. In a sense, drawing is an artist’s act of thinking.”
I resonate with Michael’s statement, as well as with this one, from Cate Prato, Online Editor, Cloth Paper Scissor Today:
“Knowing ‘how to draw’ is not just about putting down an organized series of lines to create an image we recognize, it’s a way to organize and express our thoughts.”
So true. This is why drawing is such an important component within every artwork I make, whether that artwork is a hand-pulled print, piece of sculpture, or textile painting. It’s the inherent drawing within a piece that gives the viewer the most insight to the artist maker.
I am fascinated by other artists’ drawing qualities in their work. It’s the first thing I notice and most appreciate in other artists’ work because it reveals so much to me about the person who did the work, without them even being there to tell me about it in words. It takes courage to put your honest drawing in your work, because it is so revealing, and “speaks” for you visually.
 "5th Floor Reflections" ©Ayn Hanna, 43"x36", Textile painting (cotton fabric, cotton batting, cotton thread) I made the textile painting above based on that quick little drawing of the window reflections. In the drawing, I really liked the abstract compositions within each window, the graphic quality, and the repetition of the hand drawn squares. The dual association of the repeating square format with art quilting seemed a natural segue for me to (literally) extend my drawing into a textile painting. And so I did.
I scanned my drawing and printed it out, and to my surprise, my old scanner read the drawing as a cut-out and printed the image with a black border framing the irregular shape of it. I realized I was looking at my mock-up for my new textile painting.
In a way, creating a textile painting of my drawing helped bring emphasis to it, objectifying it into something larger that feels like it has a better chance of being seen or noticed by others. And I think that’s a part of why all artists make art, at least I know it’s a part of why I do – to have a voice, share my thoughts, and participate in our society’s conversations.
The Studio Tour was a great time. I’ll post some photos (and maybe even a video!) soon, for those who want a virtual tour.
 Textile Paint Mixology Table In the Studio: Art Cloth Weekend Workshop
With my nieces in town this month, I have some eager artists ready to play in the studio and try out some of the techniques I’m going to be teaching in my Art Cloth Workshop next month at the Ah Haa School for the Arts in Telluride.
 Claudia demonstrating stellar silkscreen printing technique. What fun we had setting up our silkscreen frames, cutting freezer paper stencils and printing, printing, printing.
 Cristina added color and variety of marks to her art cloth using stamps and texture rollers. Day 2 was a chance to go further with more screen-printing and adding in other techniques as well.
 My Artist Mom in her element: Doing it "her way"! Art All Weekend, in my own Studio, with my own Family. I’m Joying my way to Joy!
The Free Fort Collins Studio Tour starts tomorrow. My studio will be open to the public from 10a-5pm both Saturday and Sunday. More info about the event and downloadable tour maps available here.
There is also a “preview” exhibition at ArtLab Fort Collins now through 6/26 with work from all the participating artists on the tour. An Artists’ reception will be happening tonight at ArtLab from 5-8pm.
 ‘Nuf Said!
 "Cowgirl with Polka Dots" ©Ayn Hanna It’s been a busy month both creating art in the studio and in the planning of several events – shows, workshops, and art fairs. In the swirl of activity and with so many events coming up throughout the rest of 2012, I wanted to take a minute and give an update on places where my work can be seen now and in the near future:
Now through June 30th: Merge and Flow: SDA Members Show, Nash Gallery, University of MN, Minneapolis, MN
Jun 25 & 26, 10a-5p both days: Ft Collins Art Studio Tour. This is a free self-guided tour of 34 Artist Studios in Ft. Collins. Free maps available at multiple locations around town. There will also be a “preview” exhibition of work from each participating artist at ArtLab (239 Linden St.) from Jun22-26, with Artist Reception on evening of Jun24. I’ll have several new textile paintings on display, including a group of small kitschy western pieces like the ones pictured above and below.
 Yee Haw! Gettin' ready for the Studio Tour! Aug 13 & 14, 10a-7p both days: Creative Garden Juried Fine Arts Exhibit & Sale at New West Fest, Remington/Oak Lot, Downtown Ft. Collins. It’ll be hot and I’ll be there all day- both days, sharing a booth with my friend Gwen Hatchette. Bound to be a good fun time, hope that lots of friends will stop by!
Aug 19-21, 10a-4p – Art Cloth: Unique Hand-Printed Fabric, Ah Haa School for the Arts in Telluride, CO. We will be playing with a variety of printmaking/surface design techniques to make original art cloth. (My partner Barbara will also be teaching a 2 day workshop “Tin Folk Portraits: Found Object Assemblage”, Aug 17-18, so you could get really wild and crazy and come stay for the week and take BOTH of our workshops!)
Various dates/locations now through rest of 2011: Thread Tails and Vapor Trails – Quilt Show Celebrating 100 Years of Naval Aviation. There are 6 trunks traveling the US this year. I have 2 quilts traveling, “Keep Your Mach Up” (Award Winner) is in the Gray trunk, and “Cat” is in the Blue trunk. They’ve been to LA, FL, VA, GA, IL, OH, MO, and even HI already. Next venues they can be seen at will be from July 1-10 at the Hoosier Air Museum in Auburn, IN and then at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Festival in Loveland, CO from Aug 19-21. “Heads UP” to those of you in KC that want to see my quilts – many of the quilts, including 1 of mine, will be in KC at the “Original Sewing and Quilt Expo”, Oct13-15.
 "Rough Ride on the Range" ©Ayn Hanna I have 4 more shows currently scheduled for this year to tell you about, but they’re not until the fall/winter, so I’ll provide the details for those later. One of them is a juried traveling show that will include venues in OR, WA, TX – 3 states I’ve not exhibited in before, so I’m excited for that. I’m also adding links to all my current and upcoming shows on the right hand “links” section of this blog page, so you can always check that to see where my art will be on view.
I’ve got lots more news and photos to share of new work I’ve completed, my creative process, developing my goals and implementing plans for building my art career, so I’ll be trying to get some of it out of my head and down on paper to share with you on this blog soon.
And right now, I have 9 days left to get everything completed, set up, and ready and for the expected 100’s of people to come through my studio during the Studio Tour on June 25 and 26.
 "Along The Way" (detail) ©Ayn Hanna 45"x18", Textile painting (discharged whole cloth cotton, cotton batting, cotton thread) It’s been over a month since my last post, a rather long unplanned blog break. Huge changes taking place, and I’ve been thinking a lot – about cycles and circles and changes, completion and initiation, deadlines and milestones, and resistance. So much happening and yet, I’ve had no words, no way to approach blogging about any of it.
Every time I’ve thought about writing a post, I didn’t know where to start. With too much going on, I’ve been stymied with trying to find an entry point to talk about it all. I finally realized I don’t need to cover it all. And – with credit to Pema Chodron’s words/book – I got up the gumption to just start where I am.
 Working on "Along the Way" So, I’ve been swimming in thought, and working long hours, juggling yet another change in role and manager in my day job (4th one in less than a year now), and cherishing the time I get in my studio, where I have several pieces in progress. Feeling a need for some resolution/completion (and needing to meet some show deadlines), I’ve finished a couple pieces (Along the Way, detail above, is one of them).
Circles and cycles and change. No beginnings and endings, rather an unfoldment of new desires. In this past month, 2 important souls in my life have made their transitions. A Patriarch and a Matriarch, 99 and 102 years young respectively, both such kind, loving, and wonderful artists, loved and missed by many. And mostly there is stillness, words seem so insignificant.
 Me at work in the studio, along with some of the works I have in progress. And so I’ve been working. April marked my 1 year anniversary for my blog, and my completion of my SHIFT-IT Graphic Coaching Certification. Major milestones achieved. And now the unfoldment continues, as I launch and align with new desires. The beauty of this circle of life – there is no end, and we’re never done becoming.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
– The Cheshire Cat, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
 "Tangled Web #5" ©2010 Ayn Hanna "16x10" Textile Painting (cotton fabric, cotton batting, cotton thread) mounted to 24"x18" canvas One of my readers recently asked, “How are you able to get your art done while also juggling a family and full-time day job – How do you do all that you do? This seems to be a pretty popular question, so I’m going to try to answer it.
Lucky for me, I’ve always been a good planner. And, I’ve also had some good training in project planning, organizational development – strategic planning and visioning, and graphic recording (drawing and writing down plans/outputs from meetings in organized ways).
I am currently a Shift-IT coach-in-training. Over the past year I have been working to complete the coursework to become a certified Shift-IT coach, facilitating several clients through the Shift-IT personal strategic visioning and planning process. I’ve been using the Shift-IT process on my own strategic visioning and planning too.
The Shift-IT process is a set of 7 process steps and 17 visual map templates – a strategic planning process for individuals – designed by Christina Merkley (aka “The Shift-IT Coach”) to help individuals make “shifts” in whatever areas of their lives they want more satisfaction with, and to identify, soften, and soothe the internal resistance we often have to achieving those shifts.
How I do the things I do
In a nutshell, here’s what I have found works for me to achieve my goals (and how I have used the Shift-IT process for my own planning):
1. DREAM BIG: I start with developing a clear vision of my goals – who and what I want to be and have by a certain date in the future. Within the Shift-IT Process, this step is called “Focus on your Future” and one of the key outcomes is the Magnetism Map (Clear Vision of your Future).
2. CREATE A “TAKE ACTION PLAN” and WRITE IT DOWN: I use a framework for planning out my major strategies to achieve my vision goals, with detailed tasks, dependencies, and timelines associated with achieving the strategies brainstormed and WRITTEN DOWN on sticky notes, which I then group and arrange on the wall. Within the Shift-IT Process, the applicable map is the “Take Action Plan” where you identify your big action areas (strategies) and then write down the “mini-tasks” needed to achieve them.
 Take Action Plan 3. MEASURE PROGRESS to achieve GREAT RESULTS: Any tasks that haven’t started yet sit on the left hand side of the wall. Tasks that are in progress are moved into the middle of the page, and adjusted to the right as they near completion, and then completed tasks are moved to the far right of the wall. I am a visual person and I love being able to actually “see” the progress I’m making as sticky notes move across the wall to the right!
 My dynamic 2010 Take Action Plan 4. REPEAT STEPS 1-3 to keep revising my Vision and Plan as I accomplish goals and new goals emerge: As I complete tasks and strategies, new goals emerge (We’re not the same people now that we were yesterday or even 5 minutes ago). One of the coolest things about achieving goals is how new goals-new rockets of desire-emerge along the way….we’re never finished creating our next selves!
5. HUSTLE and NEVER GIVE UP: Work smarter and enjoy the journey! Always get back up, dust off, check parts, take note of new learnings, and move on.
Proof it Works
I have achieved AMAZING results in the progress of my art career over the past year and I attribute a good deal of this to using the SHIFT-IT process. This SI process is powerful – it’s like putting rocket boosters to whatever “IT” is you want to shift – I’ve experienced it personally and had the privilege to witness it with my clients as well.
A few highlights of achievements that I have accomplished (or will before 2011 is complete) with my art career that just one year ago were mere goals and tasks written on sticky notes stuck to my wall:
1. I have had work accepted into several local, regional, and national juried exhibitions, received my first award, and had my work sell during the show.
2. I held my first ever (and now annual) open studio show.
3. I have been accepted into the Fort Collins Studio Tour event to be held in June 2011, so now will be hosting 2 Open Studio Shows in 2011.
3. I created a website AND a blog AND a Facebook Fan page for my art, and on April 6th, I’ll be celebrating my 1 year anniversary of my blog.
4. I will be teaching my first Visiting Artist Workshop, Art Cloth: Unique Hand-Printed Fabric, this summer at the Ah Haa School for the Arts in Telluride, CO.
5. I have been invited to participate in a 2 person show at a local gallery space in Fort Collins in the fall this year.
This is a quick overview of how I approach goal setting and action planning. There’s certainly more to it than can be captured in one blog post, so if there’s interest, I may dive into more details in further posts. Thanks for reading and joining me on my journey!
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