Susy and Sarajo at Teahouse

By / / miscellaneous

 
 It’s taken me over a week to write this post and I still don’t know where to begin, so let me start with this: the class  took with Susy Pilgrim Waters and Sarajo Frieden at Teahouse Studio was incredible.
I’d signed up for the class because I was so ready for a change in my own work. I wanted to introduce more complexity to what I created, but I also wanted to have fun. From Sarajo and Susy, I learned not to treat things as if they were too “precious” (Susy’s word). I learned to tear up paper and push things to ugly and beyond (thanks, Sarajo).
Really, the class pushed me in a new direction. Right now, I’m hooked on making collages. Who knew? I’m temporarily abandoning printmaking because I feel compelled to paste paper onto board. I can already feel that these collages will inform my prints, but I’m going to go with the gluing urge for now and make collages until I’m tired of them (more on those later).

By the time the two-day class was over, I felt fearless. That’s no small thing for me; I often second guess myself and struggle to get into the flow. But sitting with a pot of gel medium, a table of paper scraps, and a collection of inks and paints, I felt compelled to just throw things together because they felt right – or because they felt so wrong that there was no harm in goofing off.

Mati, Stef and I all half-joked that we wanted to be Susy and Sarajo when we grow up. Except that they’re not completely grown up – they bring a sense of fun and play to their work that seems to get beaten out of most of us by the time we’re adults.

I’ll share the collages I’ve worked on since the class over the next few days. I even think that I’ll show them – rather than prints – in my upcoming show. But in the meantime, you can check out photos of our class projects on Susy’s blog, and on the Teahouse blog.

Sigh. And now back to my regular life…

3 thoughts on “Susy and Sarajo at Teahouse”

  1. Stef

    nothing makes me happier than hearing you are feeling fearless! I loved seeing you create that weekend and love seeing all the collages you are doing! yahoooo Jen! xx

  3. Anonymous

    jen, you totally took off.Your energy was/is tangible…
    delicious , intoxicating exciting.So glad Sj and I got fired up about teaching/sharing too.its a win win situation.Tea house rocks…Steph Mati,Tiffany…what a pleasure to be there.thank you.

    I am very interested in the Philly thing.please keep me in the loop there; )
    spw

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