The weekend before I left town I had the pleasure of taking an altered book class from Orly Avineri http://oneartistjournal.wordpress.com/ . The title was lost and found and the the books were about loss. The funny part was I just wanted to take a class with Orly so I didn't care what the class was about and when I got to the class I was a bit worried that it would be an emotionally heavy class and I wasn't sure I was up to that. Well the whole day was about the process of altering the book and letting your ideas coalesce and I had the best time meeting everyone and I got to look at Orly's journals and nosh on a lovely lunch.
Somewhere in hour 4 I started to have a mini melt down. This has happened a few times in art classes it's like my brain gets full and I can't think any more. If I'm lucky the class is almost over and I can fake it trough till the end but when I was with Orly I had a couple of hours left and she saw me pushing my paper around and told me to do something else. 20 minutes later I was back in my brain and ready to work on the back cover. I have a 50 /50 chance of throwing out anything I make in a class. Sometimes I'm just trying to follow the directions and I'm not really tapping into my own thoughts so what I actually make doesn't fit into my style but this little book did. The cover was a process of layers and I went back and reworked a few items that I wasn't married to and I love it.
We lost one of our dogs and the dog pictured, Kino, is the one that is left. This is the first time Kino has been the only dog and this is his second home as his owner had a heart attack, 3 years ago and my boyfriend couldn't let Kino go to the pound. I didn't think the dogs would get along but they worked it out eventually. 11lb dog and 80lb dogs can find a way to get along. I'm a bit worried about him but I think that as long as he can be inside as much as possible and laying on the couch he is a happy camper. My boyfriend misses having a big dog but hopefully I can give him some tips on how to relate to a little dog. I grew up with a little dog so it's easy for me.
