Registration Opens June 22 at 10am.

2015 Maiwa Textile Symposium

Workshop: Story Painting on Cloth

Susan Shie

$495 includes 75 lab fee

October 1, 2, 3, 4,  - Class Limit 14

Maiwa East: 1310 Odlum Drive, Vancouver BC

In this four-day class, students will begin with a “page” of white cotton fabric, then, through a variety of techniques, create story paintings. Each day the class will start by choosing an optional theme together. The theme may then be worked up in a sketchbook to come up with ideas for the day’s work.

Students will draw freehand on cotton with fine-tip black permanent markers, then brush-paint in the colours, and finally use the markers again, as well as airpen (optional), to write freehand on the surface, creating a typographic texture over the images in the story.  

As Susan describes it: “You’ll be drawing like you did as a child, in relaxed wonder over your abilities, and writing off the top of your head, just like when you write a letter. No planning ahead. This spontaneity is what makes naïve art and children’s art so appealing to the viewer and so inspiring for the artist.”

Susan will demonstrate each process and spend time with each student, making sure the work progresses smoothly. Special emphasis and instruction will be given with the airpen with ample time for students to discover whether it might be for them.

In addition students will learn how to make a self-bordered quilt sandwich and then do “crazy grid” quilting.

Susan is an encouraging instructor whose goal is to bring out the student’s freer inner self and to get the creativity really flowing. Susan Shie travels from Ohio, USA, to join us.

Instructor Bio

Susan Shie has taken art quilting into new territory with her interest in handwritten text and narrative imagery. She has combined these interests with an iconic style, a developed line, as well as her personal diary and socio-political commentary. She is very interested in healing through art and in using artmaking to help balance everything from our own selves to the Earth.  She believes that healing can occur more easily when we are stress-free. So when we are happily creating art, we are in that sweet state of unstress, of joy, and we can do some healing.  

With both her BA and MFA degrees in Painting, Susan Shie sees her stitched paintings on cloth as soft paintings more than as art quilts. Working out of her Turtle Moon Studios in Wooster, Ohio, she is in great demand as a lecturer and workshop instructor. Her work is widely exhibited throughout the world and she has received generous acclaim for her creative vision. In 2008 Susan was awarded Teacher of the Year from the International Association of Professional Quilters. www.turtlemoon.com