Update

Well I’m playing “catch up” here today. I’ve been out of the studio the last ten days with a whirlwind of activity and adventure. We had a demanding rehearsal and show schedule for Shenandoah Moon with double tech the Saturday before Easter and then dress rehearsals, the show and a series of cast parties plus the final strike. It was an amazing experience and I am now hooked on community theater. I want to do this again!

This Saturday I hosted my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration. It was a beautiful event and I made the wedding cake. I left a little early after the party in order to go perform but there were others who stayed to help clean up. It was fun to connect with friends of my family who have known me from when I was a wee little girl.

I hope to be posting photos and telling the tales soon, but for now I think a nap is very much in order.

We Remember

The losses of this day April 2007 with the nearby campus of Virginia Tech. I remember the sadness that hovered over this area for weeks after that day. My heart and prayers are with those effected by the events of that day. (c) copyright 2009 Carmen Shenk-Mullett
I call this one Kyrie Eleison, the words on the characters show who they represent with the dates of the school shootings beneath each character. The stars represent the loss of life.

(c) copyright 2009 Carmen Shenk-Mullett
The are copyright protected images and may not be reproduced without permission.

For the Love of Color

I’ve got 26 colors of procion dye and instructions from the amazing Ms. Melody. I’m dangerous now, nothing in my house is safe at this point.

I did the little chemist thing, mixing all the stuff together and loving those colors as they soak into the fabric. I’m working with silk, cotton and linen. Oh, and some white on white as an afterthought.

I’ve got these laid out but they are not dry yet. I wanted some texture and color blending in these and I just can’t wait until they are dry enough to iron so I can see how they turned out. And I have one batch of all the fire colors in the washer and I’ll tell ya, I’m really impatient. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

The View from Studio B

When we bought this house we had no real idea of how beautiful the views from the back deck would become once all the trees lost their leaves. The leaves drifted off in the wind and I started to see slivers of blue distant mountains. And there isn’t anything I love more than the mountains of Virginia. We’ve lived other places, nothing compares. And even though we are in the city limits, this house is tucked away in a spot that makes us feel like we’re almost the only ones around. (Watch out for those golf balls though!) And I love it!
Here’s a little sliver of winter from not so long ago

And yesterday morning I looked out to find a dusting of snow on the ground, that’s Virginia in April for ya.

I realized that I often photograph the sunrises but there are other times of the day that are really beautiful here as well. Yesterday evening for example.

There is a tree in there with blooms on it, not sure what it is. So here is a close up, can you identify it?

I love this place.

A Pair of Floral Quilts

Yesterday I had to get in the studio for a while just to have the feel of something in my hands. Creating isn’t just my therapy, it is who I am. And I can’t stay away from the studio for long before it starts to take a toll. So yesterday I put aside the lengthy “to do list” and spent some time in Studio B.


A local (well… it’s 45 minutes from me) art store is closing and they have all kinds of fabric dyes and paints at discounted prices. I counted my cash and then carefully spent every dollar I had. A few days later I went back and did it all over again, only BIGGER! Plus I’m expecting a huge order from Dharma tomorrow. I am prepared to explore marbling and procion dying in addition to a few interesting brands of fabric paint and metallics. Oh, nothing is as good for my spirit as color! And once that box gets here from Dharma, all bets are off for me getting anything done that doesn’t involve color and fabric! (Did I mention that “to do list?!” (I prefer writing a blog post to marking things off that list!)

I also found some old linen in my stash. More cotton and silk are in the box from Dharma. I love the textures of these things and can’t wait to see and feel these fabrics.

So in the process of painting one fabric, I put a layer of wet linen beneath it. It took whispers of the color in the places where the paint seeped through creating a very unique (and entirely accidental) effect. So two chunks of that linen formed the basis for these two 8x8 inch quilts.

Linen and cotton, some hand dyed fabrics and some commercial batiks. They are fused, machine pieced, machine quilted, embellished with glass E beads and MOP coin beads plus some hand stitching with embroidery floss. $65 each, $120 for the pair.

New Website

I’m contemplating a completely new website. I’d like it to include a portfolio of the work I’ve done over the years from the different media I’ve worked in. And I think I’ll make some big changes in the way I offer some of the product lines and add in a space to sell my art quilts. Sometimes making a website is challenging because I work in a variety of media and cross the boundaries between them as much as possible. That makes it hard to organize the work into neat categories. I also tend to work in collections so every time I build a new website it usually ends up being pretty fat and complex. And going through programming in all the shopping cart stuff is a real time suck.

The community theater production I’m involved in goes up the 16th and runs through the 19th. We’re in dress rehearsal till then with only one night off between now and the show. My parent’s 50th Anniversary celebration is the 18th and I’m doing a cake like their original one that will serve 150 people. So once I get past the 19th I can possibly take on the website redesign. I don't have time to really give it much thought right now.

My First Book

In the next few weeks I expect to hold a copy of this book in my hands:

It's my first book and it compiles 20 images from my garnished poetry series. They are one to a page so they can be removed and framed if someone would like to. They are prayers, declarations and poems that I've written through the years. Some time ago I went through and combined the poems with some watercolor and mixed media backgrounds. I've sold them individually as prints but thought it would be really cool to offer them together in a book format. This is a collection of the ones that have to do with faith, the flow of creativity, determination and living life full tilt.
This is the one that brought up the title of the book for me. I call it "Draw Me" and the poem is ultra simple: "Draw me, Artist God, Draw we." It felt right for the title of a book of prayers, etc... created by an artist to be called "Draw Me." How can we come to God unless we are drawn?

I'm looking forward to seeing the proof copy I've just ordered so I can decide what changes I'd like. I'll let you know how it goes.