May 19th, 2009

Kelly Kilmer is the kind of teacher who never fails to stir up boundless creativity. Her classes provide the encouraging nudge that gets you making things without hesitation or concern for perfection. She has been teaching altered art, journaling and mixed media classes for 12 years now, and has built a phenomenal reputation within the crafting community. In all, Kelly has taught over 400 classes; at least one class every weekend, major art retreats throughout the year and has most recently expanded to offering online courses.

This weekend, Kelly will be teaching a class called Swatch Books. What is that exactly? The project itself is creating a series of 3 books, assembled from “found” papers, stitched together and assembled with a variety of altered art techniques learned along the way. Kelly emphasizes that her classes are project based in order to apply specific techniques, but that the real goal is to explore and express a variety of creative ideas and apply new artistic approaches to any crafting endeavor you have or will have and want to pull from in the future!

Kelly’s favorite Swatch book is a Frida Kahlo book she made last year to document her trip to San Francisco to see a Kahlo exhibit at the SFMOMA. It ended up being a beautiful art book as well as a wonderfully unique documentation of a special and exciting moment. You’ll learn to make swatch books quickly. Kelly even carries her favorite little scraps around town and makes several little books throughout the day! Who needs Twitter when you can make Swatch books all day long? :-)

It’s no surprise that Kelly gets her students to take in their surroundings and express them in their work. Some of her greatest influences are the seemingly impulsive expressions of graffiti art and childrens’ art. Kelly talked to me a little via email about what inspires her and wrote that “They [children] realize that you can’t make a mistake with art, that everything is an opportunity and a fresh chance at seeing the world in a new way. I’m also inspired by keeping an art journal. I’m a firm believer in keeping a journal and have made thousands of them over the years. I always have one by my side. I post my journal pages on my blog, too, so that people will see that you can journal about anything and that we all have good days and bad days, and that your journal is your safe place to play.”

You can take Kelly Kilmer’s Swatch book class, here, at The Urban Craft Center this Sunday May 23rd from 10am-2pm. The cost of the class is $65 non-member/$60 member. Sign up in person, or over the phone at 310-392-0139. You can find the additional materials list here. See what else Kelly Kilmer is up to on her blog here!

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