First Meeting of PortWag

Last year I took a great ecourse called Goalar Energy through Artella. That experience morphed into a lot of stuff -- including this blog, indirectly. And I "met" through the internet lots of great artist-types. One of those gals has started a women's art group and she invited me. Yeah! For now, we're called PortWag. Port for Portland, Maine since that's where we're meeting and Wag for Women's Art Group. I really think we need to put an item on the agenda for our next meeting to come up with a better name.

Anyway, we had our first meeting on Sunday afternoon and it was just delightful. We talked a lot about the importance of community, the healing power of creativity and art and the value of connecting with like-minded souls. (This is big stuff, not taken lightly... but still sprinkled with lots of laughter, silliness and mania.)

I didn't know any of the other six gals who were there. One of them did not know any of the rest of us -- the remaining 5 all knew each other before, so that was a bit odd, but ok. I"ll be eager to see them again next month.

Deb lead us in a great collage technique. It was described in the last issue of Cloth Paper Scissors, but I promptly skipped over it since "I don't do paper." But the opportunity to use someone else's supplies (paper, paint, gel medium, stamp pads, dyes, pigments, etc) and to have someone walk me through it was delightful. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to get back to fabric, but it was really great. I was pleased with the results. Actually, everyone's work was stunning.

Next month we're going to work on shrines. I might end up making a shrine/box in which to put my guardian angel (for the QA challenge). That's a month away, in the mean time....