Do you really want to know more about me ??
There is a link to my personal page on the links page, so I won't spoil the discovery for you... Maybe you just need to know that I studied Art to become a teacher, that I had children and many different jobs, including being a warden in of a sheltered housing scheme for retired citizens, instead of passing this time in an accreditation year; that I studied in Germany (as I am German) and in the UK (as my husband is British), and totalled 5 years of practical and theoretical Art, plus a few more years keeping up with developments in the Art and the educational fields, developing my own painting style and very personal types of work, running a business selling art-craft materials and giving art lessons, talks, demonstrations.(that was a brain-full ;-) of thought squeezed with difficulty into one sentence...) Now I work in a day centre with adults 20 - 56 years, who have serious learning difficulties/special educational needs with associated problems (physical, mental, sensory). Since obtaining my diploma in France, I may call myself A.M.P. (aide médico-psychologique).
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Stone-clock face design: "Autumn Mandala"
this is my only "commercial link". I don't get paid for it. This man makes the most beautiful timeless medieval watches. For the visual pleasure alone take a look!
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What I do by way of CREATIVE WORK and other hobbies --
in no particular order of preference
*** I have discovered silk painting and can doodle happily in a very graphic style, or design a board game on a scarf, or just enjoy creating colour-shape experiences. Which often get made into "pictures" (to sell to friends) and preferably into clothes (to keep with me)...
*** I like sewing, not having done any courses I sometimes have difficulties. But as my clothes are either avant-garde or hopelessly out of time (whichever your fashion interests)I make the best I can, which can be eyecatching sometimes.
*** I make greeting cards using a variety of unusual and ordinary as well as usual and well-known materials. These I send to friends, make to order for special occasions, and sell at craft fairs. I am well aware that many of my cards end up framed on a wall.
*** I invent games. The type that makes people sit together and enjoy the game and the company. That means inventing a concept, the games board, the figures, the rules, making the figures and accessories and painting the board. Needless to say that these boards also end up hanging like pictures on walls instead of being folded up and put away into a box. However, some of my games are funftional: they are a teaching aid in language learning.
*** I used to make over 1000 Designer Christmas Crackers a year. But since living in France I can no longer get the materials: my wholesaler has moved while I was settling in and searching for my address books, and I cannot trace him. Much to the disappointment of my family, friends, members of the association where I have been active, the craft fair visitors of different nationalities. If you know a wholesaler please mail me.
*** I used to do a little embroidery - but I decided that knitting was more useful. I am above the clothes size where feel-good, warm and unusual pullovers are easily available for a shoestring budget. As I am disabled, knitting is also a kind of reha-activity even though I can manage just one sitch type. I shall celebrate my first completed stocking-stitch jumper; it represents so much more than an item of clothing...
*** Through my husband I have started being interested in weaving. I can manage a simple loom. Some of the disabled people at my place of work liked doing paper-weaving and some abstract weaving, so I want to introduce this craft more "seriously" : for this I am thinking about making a few weaving-frames with various methods of opening the shed. I often make objects to try out techniques, crafts etc as I would feel unhappy about asking my employer to finance a project which in the end cannot successfully be done. If anybody knows where I can get reeds cheaply, I'd like to know. Thanks.
*** My gardening interests are restricted to enjoying and sometimes collecting the fruits of my husband's labour (literally). But I am deeply interested in medicinal herbs, and also use a lot of herbs and wild plants in cooking.
*** Through our farm (the Old House dates from 1771) I got interested in historical research and read many books about the life at that time. My husband wrote two phantasy books based upon some ficticious and wonderous "early time" events in our county. From there I went back and imagined how the environment must have looked a few hundred years earlier. I started being interested in medieval life - and this is noteable in the clothes I make for us, in the way we work the land and the garden, the plants we have and eat, the animals we raise, the respect for all Life and the ancient ways, lore and stories, trusting one's own powers and trying to rely on one's own abilities.
*** I love sitting in one of our fields, under "my" oak and listen to Nature. It is necessary to empty one's mind and let Nature enter, it is relaxing to feel part of this circle of Life. Meditating and concentrating - that strengthens my mind for the day with all its adversities and problems, and opens the spirit.
*** I like writing stories and poems which I illustrate. I am planning a hand-made book of poems and stories adding my own illustrations; it will be a highly exclusive object. I have tried to find publishers for this, but am getting nowhere. So I'll look at this question of getting my work seen, from a different angle! I will make a maximum of 20 copies and the price will be aimed at the serious collector of rarities as the time needed to make each illustration maybe twenty times, none exactly like the other, and the binding (which I have to learn at least the basics of) will be reflected in the price. I take orders until November 30th 2002, will work on the books throughout 2003, mailing orders November 25th to 30th 2003.
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