Artist network tv has several water color and pastel painting workshops that are well worth renting to improve your skills or to learn new skills. I feel that expanding my knowledge of watercolor and soft pastels improve my mixed media art. Interweave Press also has mix media workshops which are well worth the time and money. Interweave has frequent sales on downloaded media — so if you get their email and wait you can watch top rated teachers for a bargain.

My current favorite  Mix media artist is Beryl Taylor — she has two video workshops and both are full of ideas. I plan to use some of her ideas and add some of my own embellishment, beads and wire. I can pre-sew squares and take them along to embellish and assemble on the road. I have tons of beads waiting for a place in my mixed media art. Travel printers are portable and most are set up to use photo paper and special paper which can be ironed to fabric or paper. The Southwest is a creative person’s paradise. Have camera — will travel!

Mary Hettmansperger has a couple of mental embellishment for quilts workshops found on Interweave press. Many of her ideas are adaptable to the portable mixed media Art projects. Metal and wire don’t take up much room — especially if the projects are planned ahead — leaving room for creative variations.

Amazon’s Kindle have a number of art and mixed media books that can be downloaded to your Kindle device or to your computer. Since the Kindle is not yet in color — downloading Art and Craft books works better on lap top traveling computers.

So far my Art Packing list includes — Moleskin watercolor notebooks, kurataki brush pens, assorted paint brushes, water color paint — travel kit, a few soft pastels — water color paper. Quilt squares — many colors. Oil sticks for the quilt squares. Wire, copper wire and silver wire. Copper clay — torch fired variety — from Whole lotta Whimsey. Wire pliers — various. Hammer — with replaceable textural heads.  Glass beads — various sizes. Cameras and tripod — and an easel for outdoor painting. My aim is to compact this list down into a small carry bag. I’m betting that the glass beads will take up the most room. I may leave the small beads behind and only pack my own beads, planning to buy small beads for embellishment on the road. After all we will be going through cities with bead stores! Also, I will bring my hand spindle and spinning fiber. That takes very little room and I can get a lot done while waiting.

I plan to visit bead stores, quilt/fabric stores and yarn shops as we head south in October.

This post will be cross posted at http://snowbirdruminations.wordpress.com/

During the late winter and early spring we headed south — and played snow bird. Ironically as we headed south we encountered huge RVs heading north. Perhaps farmers heading home to prepare the fields? Since we are soon to be owners of a tiny 17 foot Fiberglass trailer, I find that I notice all the farm houses with trailers. These trailers are the very large ones — 30 feet or more. Of course farm have trucks and why not take the farm truck on vacation?

We only have a small pick-up, with a recently rebuilt engine. Fuel efficient small truck that can pull a small trailer. Really this trailer has everything we need:   beds, stove, furnace, bathroom and shower, oh and the kitchen sink. Before we headed south we researched small travel trailers and liked the under 20 foot fiberglass egg shaped trailers.

Death Valley is to blame for the trailer. I swear two nights in Death Valley was the tipping point. As a kid I was a happy car tent camper. My family pitched tents all over the Hawaiian Islands and when I was in High School we tent camped in Yosemite and the Sierra Mountains and in beach parks. Two years ago I introduced the spousal unit to car camping. We had a great time at my favorite place — Death Valley. Two years ago in February, it was warm, there was NO wind.

This time our visit to Death Valley we got to know the Desert rain storm and the desert wind storm. Suddenly the folks in trailers and assorted RVs seemed very smart. They were warm and snug and eating real meals, while we ate snacks (no cooking involved) in the truck. The tent was pitched before the rain hit, so we had a dry night, once our soaking wet clothes were removed. No one mentioned in guide books that foul weather gear useful on sailboats might be of use in Death Valley. The next night the gale winds hit, our dome tent dented and groaned but remained intact. We, however, barely slept a wink. Again the small Fiberglass trailer a couple of rows over looked really good.

After the second night we decided to go directly to Phoenix and then head to the Fiberglass trailer showroom in the dreaded state of Texas. We had already done the research and sent for the sales brochures from several companies and had narrowed our choice to three.

Note that I’m really not involved in any real creative projects. I have my drop spindle and some spinning fibers. I also had some sock yarn with crochet hooks. But there was simply no time, no place to create objects of art that speak from my soul. From time to time I would think that I should be doing something arty or even crafty — but that’s impossible when we have several hundred miles to go before the next motel.

Thankfully other artists managed to remain in their studios and produce fantastic pieces of jewelry, ceramic art, fiber art, mixed media art works — that my mind and eyes were kept constantly busy. If only I were a CEO being paid millions — I’d have one of the finest collections of contemporary western & southwestern artwork.

Museums generally have shops and very often the manager is able to bring together a collection of local artists with fresh and unique pieces of art. Shops in Museums of the Southwest are my favorite place to visit.

The desert Southwest is full of eye candy, and every day can be an inspiration. I constantly take photos — and these serve to rekindle my creative juices when I return to the dark grey, mostly overcast skies of the Northwest.

We put a deposit down on a 17 foot Fiberglass trailer. My husband has upgraded his small pickup with towing gear and electrical connections etc.

In October we embark on a long snowbird season in the Southwest. Our focus are the Indian ruins of the Four Corners region: Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. We’ve been to Chaco Canyon and will return to revisit after extensive research into the Chaco culture. This year we visited Hoovenweep which is almost dead square in the four corners, with segments in at least two states, Utah and Colorado.

Hoovenweep was an outlier of the Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) sphere of influence and control. Chaco Canyon (Anasazi) started about 900 A.D. and ended about 1300 A.D. No photograph can do justice to Chaco Canyon (National Monument). What is interesting and part of the mystery is that suddenly from pit house dwellings there is a jump to gigantic multi- room, multi-story buildings. On one side of the river there are small stone dwellings (and a huge Kiva). This could be the workers villages. On the other side of the river are ruins that still command respect and awe. Hundreds of rooms per ruin. But the greatest puzzle — where are the cemeteries? With many of the Chaco related ruins the question is — were are the bodies? Who were the people who created Chaco?

There are theories and some modern day tribes are lying claim to the Anasazi/Chaco. They didn’t disappear, claim the modern Pueblo cultures. That is one theory — I’m exploring other theories as well.

Creative work from the Southwest. I’m certain there is something in the Southwest air or perhaps the water.

The San Juan Islands in Washington State are another creative center of the world.

Cover of AGLF Calender

stands for Artisans and Glassworkers Legal Fund. Here is the Link for this calendar and it is at the rightin the Blog roll. Every photo of beads, soap and candy in the calendar was submitted by victims of the Stalker. If you haven’t hear — there is an individual who has targeted people who sell their art and crafts on the Internet. This individual has randomly declared over 200 individuals — Frauds, tax frauds. This Wacky individual claims to have “reported” each and every person on her list to the local and federal taxing authorities. Each individual targeted is well aware of their duty to pay federal and state taxes. Which is why there an active lawsuit against this stalker. [It is generally known that artists and craftspeople under-report their expenses, often because they don't realize just how much they can legally deduct from the selling price of their work. I did this myself when I was selling my handcrafted work years ago, and the other craftworkers were also cutting themselves short on the tax forms. Not much has changed in the years since I actively sold my work. A very few at the very top do make tons of money -- but they are the rare exceptions.]

A defamation of Character civilsuit has been brought against this individual and the very slow wheels of justice have started rolling. Wacky has lawyered up and her first response was something like — hey that’s not me — prove it.

So far her last victim, in Oregon, was targeted on 11 December 09. There is no state sales tax in Oregon. They do pay individual income tax, as well as the Federal Income Tax.

Although it appears that this stalker has broken several Federal and State Laws, no Prosecuting District Attorney on any level has filed charges. This person could be charged with mail fraud or some of the newer Internet Stalking charges. But apparently since her victims are spread out all over the country and this is a relatively new crime — this person’s alleged crimes have been ignored by the Feds and State’s empowered to deal with pests like this.

So it is up to the victims to band together, raise money and hire a lawyer to show the DAs how Internet Stalkers should be handled.

Image of calendar is here and the link to buy the calendar is here.

And again — photos to be added — because a photo is worth several paragraphs. I’ve made disks from COE 104 and 96 — but Boro seems a natural for disks.

It was so cold for the last two weeks that working with the softer glass was nearly impossible. I would turn on the heater (radiant heater, hung from the ceiling) two hours before I planned to melt glass. Even though the chill was off the room – the glass was shocky. What that means is that as soon as I got the glass rods close to the flame the ends would explode — hitting the table under the flame. Boro is magic — it isn’t shocky like the soft glass.

After hot molten   glass dropped in my lap –  leaving holes in two denim skirts I bought a professional leather welding apron. Now I feel like a professional glass worker. The first time I wore the leather apron — a chunk of red hot glass fell in my lap leaving a black mark on the leather apron. That chunk of glass would have burned my leg — just above my knee.

Now after making dozens of disks with boro glass, in very cold weather  (below freezing outdoors) I’ve found that the thin edges of the disks sometimes break. Not very often — perhaps 4 times at most. So I do have to remember to keep the disks flashed in the flame and not allow the first disk to cool while I’m wrapping on the glass for the second disk.

The purpose of making two disks on the same mandrel, besides conserving the bead release, is that earring pairs or matching disks can be made right next to each other. It is easier to make two nearly identical beads right next to each other, rather than making 6 beads and hoping that two fo the 6 will match.

One thing about boro is that the color of the rod isn’t an indicator of the end color of the bead or off mandrel sculpture. I have some blue glass that looks nearly identical — one of the blues produces blue beads. To other blue turns multiple shades of blue and sometimes shades of green. The red rod turns a deep burgundy red. Such is the fun of the grab bag of Boro, unlabeled (cheap) Boro. It looks to me like the “shorts” are from the factory — the tail ends of a super long rod that is cut into uniform lengths.

Tomorrow I’ll pick up some more boro colored rods at the post office so I can add to my colored disk collection. The boro disks make very light weight earrings. I feel as if I’m the first one to explore disk stacking. Humm … does boro lend itself to etching?

The LE Gallery of late has been spectacular — new tutorials are for sale.

A calender for the glass workers defense fund has been designed from photos from some of wacky’s victims.   Betsy, LE’s resident graphic artist used photoes sent by glass artists to  create the calender. The Calender is for sale here.

http://www.zefrank.com/snowflake/

Perhaps the neatest hollows are the blue ones — sapphire blue — decorated. I’ve had some sapphire blue in my stash — mostly unused — that’s because this is THE color for hollows. Green hollows are alluring as are topaz.

This Sapphire Blue Hollow is one of three. The flower is a sparkle orange and the center is a hand murrini from glass artists on Etsy.com. The stem of the flower is a hand pulled cane/stringer that I made. I didn’t really like the commercial stringers — they are nice but I like different and complex greens in my vine canes.

Sapphire Blue Hollow Bead, with complex flowers

This clear semi-hollow is the embryo stage of an idea I’m working on. There are murrini — chips of hand built cane — complex multi colored cane and then there are simple skull murrini — again from Etsy.com artists. The idea is that the skulls are floating or swirling in water. I first made a tube bead, placed the skull murrini on the clear tube bead and then built hollow walls around the tube bead and then I placed colorful barnacles on the outside of the semi-hollow with the interior swirling effect. The inner tube bead could be a deep blue, sku murrini applied, hollow walls built up and then the barnacle murrini applied to the outside of the semi-hollow.  I will place a link to the two esty shops with their unique handmade murrini. But first I’ll make my order, in case I create a run on these etsy shop due to the high volume of my blog (just joking).

Floating skulls in clear glass, semi hollow bead

Swirling skulls -- inner layer -- outer layer -- pretty murrini

Click on the above photo for the large, full view of the swirling effect of this bead. The skulls are much more visible from other angles. This bead is like so many other art glass beads that should be viewed up close and personal to really see the detail.

This hollow is part ivory and part clear with some silver glass and transparent glass. This is also another hollow form I want to explore — the DH (Double Helix) is fairly expensive glass but used as decoration and accents it can go a long way.

complex hollow bead with surface decoration

By the way the background for these photos is hand painted fabric, Mine. I’m also a fiber artist.

To me making hollow beads is THE holy grail of bead making.

Last night I made 19 hollow beads — in one sitting. Not a single one shattered or committed suicide while being made. I’ve made hollow beads before — one or two at a time and then I had to return to making the solid glass beads. It was so nerve-racking trying to build up the two walls of the hollow bead and get them to connect before one side or the other would go blasting off and hit the table or the wall.

Hollow beads are great — you can wear a large looking bead on an earring and the bead is actually light and not at all weighty feeling hanging from my ear lobes. I would think that a necklace of hollow beads would also have the visual appeal of the more massive beads without the weight. That will be my next task — to make bracelets and necklaces from my hollow beads.

Photos of Hollow beads to be added.

Although many of us are following the defamation of character case against Wacky we have continue to work on perfecting our skills. There are so many new colors of glass and tutorials that there really isn’t that much time to keep track of Wacky’s latest outburst.

Samantha Beads has a DVD for sale at her etsy.com store showing how to make a hollow bead. She uses these hollow beads to make her hollow bead fish. This DVD has 4 tutorials, 1. Hollow Bead, 2. Frog Bead, 3. Hollow Bead Fish, 4. Stringer for floral beads. You can easily use this DVD to come up with your own style of beads. Although she never says — do not copy what I am showing you on this DVD — I rather like to adapt what I’ve learned to my particular style or COE glass.

96 COE glass

COE = coefficient of Expansion. The most common glass used by glass bead makers is probably COE 104 which is generally known as the Italian glass, although COE 104 is also made in China CIM (Creation is messy) and in the United States, Double Helix being the makers of the Silvered glass that is all of rage in the glass bead making community.

Frit is the glass pieces or broken glass (tiny pieces of glass) that is applied to surface of melted glass. Plain yellow glass can suddenly become more lively with the addition of a rainbow of glass colors. Most Frit seems to be of the COE 96 — and as a general rule of thumb 15% of the glass on a COE 104 bead can be COE 96 Frit.

From adding frit to beads the next step is to investigate making beads from all COE 96 glass. Which means that we can pack on the color using Frit or glass from rods of COE 96 glass.

The next COE is Bullseye COE 90 which comes in both sheet and rods. The Bullseye comes in a vast array of colors. This glass is made in America, in Portland, Oregon. It tends to be a bit expensive.

I’ve made glass beads from Bullseye glass on my hothead torch. This glass is great for sculpting. I believe that dichro works best with either COE 90 or 96. Dichro glass is also being made for COE 104 glass. Dichro typically does not photograph very well — but in person it makes some of the most opulent beads EVER!

When I entered this art form three years ago I had no idea that there was so much to learn. My biggest concern was trying to get the glass on a mandrel to look sort of like a bead.

Thanks to the very generous glass bead artists at the LE website I have progressed to the place where I can now make hollow beads, encased floral beads, sculpted beads, beads with axillary holes, Big Hole Beads, beads with inclusions, silver glass beads, clear encased beads etc.

A whole lot of artists are unwillingly learning more than they ever wanted to know about the legal process.

Last year it was a tiny case of one individual buying lampwork beads made by glass artists and then this buyer claimed the beads were either made by her or for her in Italy. The glass artists objected to their work being claimed as made by someone else. That was last year. [This detail can be found in the legal papers filed by the victims with the court in Texas.]

This year many of these same artists who objected to their work being claimed by someone else are now being called “FRAUDS” and “Tax Evaders” in a blog published on the Internet by the individual who is nick named Wacky.

Remember that this sort of slander could happen to anyone, which is why this case is important. Wacky has hired a lawyer. The lawyer is now collecting “evidence” and appears to be trolling the internet.

One of the words that lawyers and crime drama shows love to throw around is — motive.

MOTIVE

What is the motive for someone to continue adding names to this online fraud investigation list? Who would feel the need to dig up obscure individuals, some who have not sold anything online, or who no longer have websites, or who have changed their names or the names of their business? Why spend so much time and effort to call local taxing districts or jurisdictions to personally report artists as tax evaders etc.? Where are these calls coming from and can they be traced? Many individuals on this list had no idea who Wacky is, nor knew any of her history with the glass working art community.

Wacky will get her day in court and she has every right to hire lawyers to represent her. It is too bad that she didn’t understand the concept of legal proceedings before publishing names of artists on her blog and labeling each one individually as a Tax Evader.

Her blog has published a verdict — calling people tax evaders — when not a single person on this list has been indicted, tried NOR been found guilty of tax evasion. Newspapers and legitimate news reporters use the word — alleged murderer, alleged drunk driver, alleged robber until the individual is convicted or acquitted.

For more information and details about this case click this for the blog “Meanderings” by one of Wacky’s earliest victims who is fighting back.

At the link above you will find a link to donate to the legal fund. You can also buy stuff that has been donated with proceeds going to the legal fund.

The catch-all legal phase for this law suit is Defamation of Character, and here is how a case against the Wacky is built:

1. Show that there was a false statement made about you. Generally, to prove defamation of character, you must show that someone made a statement of fact about you and that statement was untrue and not privileged.
2. Step 2

   Establish that the statement was relayed to a third-party. It isn’t enough that the untrue statement was said, it must also have been conveyed or published to others and understood to be about you. Public figures seeking to prove defamation of character must also show that the false statement was made with actual malice.

3. Step 3

   Put on evidence showing that the statement caused you harm. To prove defamation of character, you must show that the statement exposed you to hatred, ridicule, contempt, or caused injury to you in your occupation.

4. Step 4

   Recognize the defenses to a defamation of character suit. Truth is an absolute defense to a defamation action. Privileged statements, such as those made in court, are also protected. Likewise, innocent dissemination of the statement and consent to the statement being made are also defenses.

The law suit can be found at this Texas court-house link. Enter this case number: 200966253

See I was able to do this without using the defendant’s name. Somehow Wacky doesn’t seem to understand that SHE is not the judge and jury. SHE does not get to claim people are tax evaders simply because she says so.

It will be interesting to see what sort of defense her lawyer can conjure up. Blasting artists names on the Internet-based on lies is just dumb and it is mean and unjustified. She won’t stop, so it is up the court of law.

Can a blogger harvest names from art and craft lists and then publish these names on a public blog calling them FRAUDS and tax evaders — without evidence of any wrong doing, or any intent of wrong doing by the individuals on this list?

For example, say someone who owns a blog decides that anyone driving a white van is a tax evader (this is just a random example –no white vans nor their owners are being accused of anything, what so ever). So this blog owner manages to get a list of owners of white vans (could be green vans or orange vans — but this blogger hates white vans, or it could be anyone who owns a flower shop). Local taxing authorities of van owners are called to report these van owners as tax evaders — or FRAUDS.

Most people would say that the blog owner is loco, wacky or nuts. However, if someone were to do a Google search and find this person’s name on this infamous list — this individual could lose a job, or a sale. [edit -- "this person's name - refers to the mythical owners of the mythical white van that appears on the mythical list of this made up example. This mythical person could be harmed based on the unfounded lies published on an Internet blog.]

The Internet is one of the greatest inventions — but there are always nuts who will use this powerful tool to harm others. The truth is always the best defense — and that’s why these brave artists have taken this to court.