September 10th, 2009

Altered Arts is a personal craft. It’s tons of fun, but in order to allow yourself to express yourself you need a teacher with patience and exuberance to give you the comfort and encouragement to try new things within a 4 hour class. Guest teacher Sasha Harris is seriously amazing. Not only is she a talented improv actress, she also has an uncanny ability to take her skills as an actress into the crafting world. You’ll be inspired, productive and proud of what you’ve done. Her class, Altered Art Techniques is one of our most popular and fun classes – the best part is that you’ll also walk away with a book you’ve made filled with new skills to apply to any crafting endeavor!

I sat down with Sasha last week to learn a little bit more about her and about what she is looking forward to most in her upcoming class, Altered Art Techniques, this Saturday September 12th, 11-3pm. $65 non-member/$60 member

Q: What is your experience as a crafter?

If I tell you I was a Girl Scout does that say enough? That was the early years. In 2000 I made a New Year’s resolution to make a quilt. When I enrolled in the class I had grandiose visions of a puffy duvet type item. But of course, I was quickly met with geometry, rotary cutting, and so many triangles! I fell in love with quilting and I made three (non-puffy) quilts before I started graduate school. Most importantly I became a devoted lover of fabric.

Q: What drew you to altered arts?

Altered arts came into my life In the midst of graduate school when I was dealing with a significant personal loss. I took several classes in mixed media book arts and reveled in these tangible creations – so opposite of my graduate training. It was fantastic to be able to manipulate paper, paint, rip, tear, paint over, ink, write on, and best of all SHARE while creating with an ever expanding group of artists. Every day there is something new to learn, a new book or magazine to be inspired by, and new tools or supplies to play with. Every supply seems limited only by the imagination of the user and I am constantly surprised by the creativity of other artists.

Q: What would you say to someone who is doubtful of their creative ability?

It is 100% okay to be nervous about messing up. If you weren’t nervous it might mean that you didn’t care about the end result. But wherever you are just begin. Even if the first step is saying, “I have no freaking idea how to do this! Help!”

Keep in mind that once you learn how to use the tools you are 99.9% there.

It’s like learning any new skill, like, driving or riding a bike. Once you learn how to drive the car you are good to go, all that’s left is deciding where you want to travel. Same deal here, you want to make pillows, pants, or books it’s okay to spend some time learning about the tools first. You don’t have to be mean to yourself for not knowing all about the stuff right away. Be nice to you! Eventually you will make your masterpiece.

Q: Describe your upcoming class. What do you hope students will come away from the class having accomplished?

The Altered Book class is a playground class. The focus here is practice and learning – not the final product. That said, students will leave with a book full of techniques for their future projects. Students use a provided hardcover book to explore tools and techniques to alter the structure of the book. They’ll cut the cover, create sections, insert tags, create a block niche, cover-the-cover, and work with folds. Once the basic architecture of the book has been altered, students play with decorative elements to embellish their sections: gesso, fibers, stamps, and other findings.

My hope is that students will have either experienced something new or played in a way they didn’t expect of themselves when they walked in the door. Everyday that we create is a good one.

June 23rd, 2009

Here are some photos from last weekend’s Altered Art Techniques class. Students repurposed an existing book, learning many magical altered art techniques from Sasha Harris, truly the most energetic teacher we have here. She is very passionate about getting people together to create and always brings amazing goodies to share with her students.



Stamps, gesso and mod podge, oh my!



Each technique learned is represented on a page in the book to refer to later on, no matter what project you are working on!




A finished, fuzzy creation.

May 27th, 2009

We had a great class this past weekend with special guest teacher Kelly Kilmer. Kelly always brings lots of fun supplies and materials for her classes and each student got to make three swatch books. Here are some photos from the day!

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!