Tammy Gilley: Meet Your Mixed Media Teacher

I’m constantly picking things up – ask Suzy!  She caught me red-handed picking up a piece of old linen outside the Vanves flea market, which I then used as the binding of my Paris journal.    A travel journal gives me a repository for all of my found treasures, and later provides a record of my travels that I can revisit again and again.  I like to create my travel journal well in advance of my trip – it just increases the anticipation of that trip.

Keeping a travel journal has given me a new way to look at things when I’m out and about.  I look up and shoot a quick photo with my iPhone of a lovely building façade.  I look down and find a stray piece of linen or an interesting cluster of leaves.  It’s about paying attention and being in the moment, not getting from the hotel to destination A for the day.  It’s about the wander, the finding of objects along the way, the capturing of those memories and those feelings of being in that place at that time, then archiving them in a way that I can go back to them again and again.

Style schmyle!  I fly by the seat of my pants!  Hahaha!  But that’s not probably what you want to write down. Honestly, I do work from an outline, a set of things I want to get across to my students.  For example. “Today we’ll talk about building out pages and adding layers of interest. Tomorrow we’ll work with image transfers and photographs.” 

But then, I like to be open to whatever comes up – she found a fabulous rusty bolt along the railroad… How the heck does she incorporate that into a journal, for Pete’s sake?! (It’s easy actually. It becomes a cover element with some carefully curated words from a page torn from an old book she found at the book market. Voilà).

Oh my gosh, so much!  Seeing old masters’ work at the Orsay or L’Orangerie.  People-watching at the airport.  The way the sunlight reflects through my glass of rosé and onto the menu on my table.  Other artists.  My students!  Life inspires me.

Because I have to.  It’s not a choice, really. Although if it were, I’d choose creating over and over again, above everything else.  I find if I go a few days without creating, I get cranky, antsy.  When I’m creating, I lose all track of time, and I feel really, really happy.  Like traveling is not being about the destination for me, but the journey itself, creating is not about the finished piece, but about the joy in creating.  No creating, no joy, no bueno.  For me, anyway.

I’ve created all my life.  All the women in my family are/were artists.  Painters, quilters, storytellers.  I remember when I was young and my mother’s mother and aunt would come to visit. All of us and my sister sit at the dining room table working on something. The ladies might be working on a quilt together for someone, and my sister and I would grab up their fabric scraps and make clothes for our trolls or pillows and quilts for our Barbies.  I don’t remember not being creative.