Morrisburg or bust!

It's that time of year again! The MPCG notices start coming out :)

What is MPCG? The Morrisburg Polymer Clay Gathering. It's a Thursday-Sunday Polymer clay retreat held every year towards the end of April in charming Morrisburg Ontario. The days are filled with brilliant classes and demos, laughter, shopping trips and the occasional (or not so occasional) bottle of wine shared with a couple bags of chips, a bunch of artists sitting around casually giggling about nonsense. I look forward to these few days every year. Being able to work side by side with these incredible artists. Margi who is really the reason I got into polymer clay, after seeing her work on the internet. Violette's words echo in my ears everytime I start feeling sorry for myself about aging "they're not wrinkles, they're details"...Barbara making me laugh "give it some British!" And all the other incredible women I spend 4 days with every year. It's something not to be missed!

So now, I am terribly proud to say I'll be teaching again at this year's MPCG. Over the past couple of years I've been doing more masks. Not really to sell, although I have sold a few, but more to decorate my own home, my studio and to just express myself creatively without the stresses of making a 'for sale' product. The research I put into each piece has taught me so much! I'm pretty much an expert on Slavic mythology now *grin* I'm learning about the carnival masks of the Dominican Republic, one of my favorite places on earth and at the moment, spending lots of hours researching African art! So what's my class? "Inspired Masks" I'm going to ask people to choose a culture or country and collect little bits of things that remind them of it. So let's say I choose China. The class will NOT be about reproducing a Chinese opera mask or any such thing, instead we'll use the mask shape as a canvas. Imagine, if you will, a bright red mask, antiqued and impressed to look like cinnabar. The face shape is vaguely Chinese mask but the details are what make it. Black laquered chopsticks across the top of the mask suggest spiky hair. A large faux jade ring in the nose, chinese coins dangle from the ears. Do you see it yet? Nothing traditional here.

This is my African Zen Warrior mask, he was built over a buddha shaped face and ended up looking pretty chill, I think I'll call him Bobert.