Guilds & Groups
IN addition to online courses with individual student sign ups, I also teach groups and guilds in person and via Zoom. I’ve had several sessions for small groups who organize for a private session (or more) for a camp, family reunion, quilt guild or other organization. These programs can consist of a lecture or an interactive workshop. Clients include Fiber Artists of San Antonio, Studio Art Quilt Associates meetings and conferences, summer art campaign New Mexico, Trinity University, the San Antonio Botanical Gardens and more.
My Artist’s Journey
My artwork and teaching are informed by a lifelong journey exploring, understanding, and pushing into the creative process. Join me for an hour exploring the path I've taken for that journey — weaving through themes, technology, skills, and an unrelenting curiosity that has shaped everything I make and everything I teach. Along the way, you'll have the opportunity to reflect upon your own journey and consider what has guided, inspired, and challenged your own creative path.
Included in this session is a brief hands-on drawing experience designed to help you explore and map your own creative history. Using simple materials, you'll begin to chart the moments, influences, and turning points that have defined how you think and make. Depending on the size of the group, we will share these creativity maps with one another — opening up a conversation that is as much about community as it is about personal reflection.
Supplies are simple and a list will be provided before the lecture so you can come prepared and ready to dive in. The session is delivered as a live-stream lecture with a recorded slide show shared via Zoom, followed by a live Q & A where you're welcome to ask anything — about the work, the process, or the ideas we've explored together.
Art quilt, designed on an iPad using shape drawing app
Digital Beyond Photos
Many quilters have seen the amazing digital reproductions of photos created by art quilters around the world. But with the use of an iPad, computer or other tablet (even a phone) quilt artists can move beyond photographic reproduction into artistic filters, drawing and painting and amazing patterns.
Lectures
The Digital Beyond Photos one-hour lecture includes a live introduction, a 30 minute video/slide show of examples and apps, and a 20 minute live demonstration of apps shared from my iPad screen, followed by 10 minutes or so of Q&A. Fee for lectures in 2022 is $300 (small guilds can request a discount).
Workshops
Three- to four-hour workshops include live instruction, Q&A, a Zoom share and discussion of exercises, experiments and examples. PDF copies of tutorials and links to videos are included for participants. Planning can include some customization of the content, with a focus on drawing and painting, photo editing and special effects apps, pattern apps, using Spoonflower etc. Fee for a 3-4 hour workshop for up to 25 participants is $500 (lecture included if not viewed in a guild meeting before workshop).
Longer (1-2 day workshops) include a project using the images that participants make, sent to Susie for mail delivery later, topics of choice, a demo of working with Spoonflower, and a video demo showing how I construct a fused raw-edge collage appliqué art quilt using an inkjet printed image and how to mount a small quilt on a canvas frame.
Fee for a full day workshop (6 hours) is $800 per day.
What does it take to discover your unique visual style and voice in your work? Are you ready to move beyond other people’s patterns, from traditional work into the world of art quilting? This lecture will outline the steps that will help you get started with quickie hands-on writing and sketching assignments as we go through the process of taking your imagination, personal history and skills into a visual world that only you can create. Even if art quilts are not genre you are interested in pursuing, you’ll understand more about the processes that all artists, no matter the genre, use to find their unique expressions.
Lecture
My Creativity one-hour lecture includes a live introduction, a 45 minute narrated video/slide show, followed by 10 minutes or so of Q&A. Fee for lecture is $300 (small guilds can request a discount).
Workshops
Three- to four-hour workshops include live instruction, Q&A, a Zoom share and discussion of exercises, experiments and examples. PDF copies of tutorials and links to videos are included for participants. The workshop includes a focus on the creative process, the Sensory Alphabet and a self-assessment of each artist’s creative process. A supply list will be provided for at-home or guild workshop space activities. Fee is $500 for up to 20 artists.
A full day workshop with expanded activities (6-7 hours) is $800 per day.
Creativity: Our DNA, Dangerous Myths, and Finding your Voice
This is the “alphabet” I use for idea generation, critique and to organize my explorations of the world: line, color, shape, movement, texture, rhythm, space, light, sound. Each of these (related but not equal to the design tools we study in art classes) is a way to analyze and generate ideas for original work, a path for understanding one’s unique perceptions and a tool for reaching into new ways to working.
Lecture
This one-hour lecture includes a live-stream lecture with slides and video, a few short exercises to get you started on the path, followed by 10 minutes or so of Q&A.
Workshops
Three- to four-hour workshops include live instruction, Q&A, a Zoom share and discussion of exercises, experiments and examples. PDF copies of tutorials and links to videos are included for participants. The workshop includes exercises for each of the Sensory Alphabet elements. A supply list will be provided for at-home or guild workshop space activities. Half day fee is $500 for up to 20 artists.
A full day workshop with expanded activities (6-7 hours) is $800 per day.
The Sensory Alphabet
Nine elements to make your work sing.
Writing and Creating
Artist Videos
This is an online video writing and production workshop for artists working in any visual medium or genre. Use your laptop, smartphone or tablet to plan, write and produce compelling and intriguing short videos using Adobe Spark and YouTube for use on social media, at exhibits and in your own workshops. The process of producing a visual multimedia artist statement will help you focus and define your creative work and purpose, and enhance your communication to collectors, students and your art audience. YOu’ll learn some easy tools for creating your own videos. This workshop is co-facilitated by retired communications professor and documentary video producer Dr. Linda Cuellar, and Susie Monday, artist and teacher.
With Dr. Linda Cuellar, retired mass communications professor, producer, videographer, author.
Workshop
Six-hour workshop includes live instruction, Q&A, working with a partner (either together or via Zoom) a Zoom share and discussion of exercises, experiments and examples. PDF copies of tutorials and links to videos are included for participants. A supply list will be provided for at-home or guild workshop space activities. Participants will need a smart phone, a computer to use for demos and some artwork samples to share with others. Lots of unperson coaching, critique session and editing help.
Fee is $600 for up to 12 artists.
From Digital Design to Print-at-Home and Print-on-Demand
You CAN design your own fabric! You’ve heard about Spoonflower and other companies that print your designs, you have an inkjet printer (or you want to know which one to buy for printing on fabric). But if you don’t get help with set-up your results may not be what you expected. This 3-4-hour workshop takes you hands-on with your computer or iPad from paintings and drawings, collages and photograph/s to both commercially printed and home-printed fabric to use in your quilts. You’ll go live with Susie as she takes you through the steps for simple edits, easy to use filters to make them really interesting, and then the technical skills needed for inkjet printing at home, and uploading to print-on-demand sites that will print your image for yardage. You will learn to size images correctly, how to make repeats, and a quick intro to using the Spoonflower site. You will set up a Spoonflower account and upload a sample photo or image (no need to order, just for practice.) Downloadable PDF tutorials available to participants after the workshop. Workshop 3 hours, $400.
Workshops
Three- to four-hour workshop includes live instruction, Q&A, a Zoom share and discussion of exercises, experiments and examples. PDF copies of tutorials and links to videos are included for participants. iPad or laptop or Windows tablet required. A supply list will be provided for at-home or guild workshop space activities.
Fee is $500 for up to 20 artists.
This lecture and workshop takes participants through both digital and surface design techniques to use for designing original quilts and fabric using text, letter forms and quotations.
Lecture
The one-hour lecture shares examples and inspiration for using text and letter forms in your art quilts includes a live-stream lecture with slides and video, followed by 10 minutes or so of Q&A.
Workshops
Live demos and recorded videos in this workshop will cover some fun techniques for adding words to your images, both digitally and” in real life.” Each participant will make and share a magazine collage and smartphone photos with filters that open up a world of possibilities for your textile art. We will also do some simple cut-and-paste letter form experiments and hand-printed fabric. Downloadable PDFs for participants after the workshop.
Three- to four-hour workshops include live instruction, Q&A, a Zoom share and discussion of exercises, experiments and examples. PDF copies of tutorials and links to videos are included for participants. A supply list will be provided for at-home or guild workshop space activities. Fee is $500 for up to 20 artists.
A full day workshop with expanded activities (6-7 hours) is $800 per day.
Text on Textiles
Artist Journey/Artist Journal
A yearly check-in to see what you are doing as an artist and a human being. This online version of my in-person workshops (15 years plus) is a way to look at what you have done, want to do and what you are being, too.
Each Artists’ Journey/Artists’Journal workshop focuses on how to enrich, endure and keep moving ahead with your creative practice, both in art and in your “ordinary” life. Our everyday is just as much a work of creative art as any canvas, manuscript, quilt or piece of pottery.
We’ll spend 6 hours online exploring together what it takes to keep creativity alive and well as part of our studio practice and as part of our daily routines -- health, wealth, spirit and will woman adventure. Fill the creative well with writing, journal-making, collage and mixed media fun.
Workshop
A full day workshop includes live instruction, Q&A, a Zoom share and discussion of exercises, experiments and examples. PDF copies of tutorials and links to videos are included for participants. The workshop includes a focus on the creative process, a look at your past year of creativity and a self-assessment of each artist’s creative process. A supply list will be provided for at-home or guild workshop space activities.
Fee is $600 for up to 20 artists.