Symposium 2012: Book Brooch

I've got a few minutes before I rush off to the next thing, so I thought I'd post a little about the Symposium. I had a really great time this year. Partially because I didn't have to do any of the work, but mainly because there were more hands on activities as well as more presenters over all. I think that we all learned at last year's symposium that the workshops we had were just too full. By adding more workshops, each workshop had a more reasonable number of people in it so you could see more and do more.

One of my favorites was Amy Tavern's workshop on just making something, anything (well, a piece of jewelry) out of the materials you have on hand. She provided us with leather, fabric, cardboard, staples, tape, string and a few other things and told us to get to work. We had an hour to make a piece of jewelry.

These are some photos of one of my pieces (courtesy of Amy). I knew as soon as I saw the slick, glossy paper that I wanted to use some of that! I'd had a book technique that I'd been wanting to try rolling around in my head, so I started with that and just kept folding. The overall shape I came up with is a little too similar to the shapes that Amy uses for me to feel comfortable with it, so I tried to make it more my own through the mark making.

I also really enjoyed some of the conversations that came out of this exercise and hearing Amy talk about her work habits. She talks about how easy it is to get distracted, which I can totally identify with. Amy said that she'll tell her self to just go work for an hour, go sit at the bench for an hour and then she can go do something else if things aren't working out. I found myself doing something similar, yet opposite. If I just work on this job application for an hour, I can go play in the studio.

The recurring theme that I kept seeing pop up at this symposium was making something everyday. Renee Zettle-Sterling spoke about it in her keynote lecture, and Amy discussed it in her workshop. I've heard more than one person, post-symposium, say that they were going to implement this practice into their own lives. I'd been thinking about trying to make a book a day, once I'm back at Linda's where I can spread out, but maybe I'll open it up to just make something, one thing every single day.