Incredible Eggs 2019 Calendar
It’s that time of year again. The new egg calendar is out and I think it’s the best one yet. I have a few eggs pictured too which is just a fun bonus. If you want to order one for yourself, here’s the link
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Northern California Eggstravaganza 2018
Northern California Eggstravaganza 2018- “Winter Wonderland“
Crowne Plaza Northeast 5321 Date Avenue Sacramento, CA 95841
Show and Sale
March 3, 2018–10 AM to 5 PM
March 4, 2018–10 AM to 3 PM
Seminars
March 1-4, 2018
It’s time to get these dates on your calendar. I’ll be selling my pysanky and egg jewelry in the showroom plus teaching two classes on Saturday morning, March 3. For more class info, click here.
The 2018 Incredible Eggs Calendar
It’s here…the new calendar filled beautiful egg pictures and I am honored to report you will find photos of my work along with pysanky and batik-style eggs from all over the world. Click here to get the purchasing details and to preview each page.
My Happy Place
Wow, I just spent a week teaching “Pysanky for All” at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, and I declare to one and all…this is my happy place.
Farm House, my home for the week.
For those who are not familiar with the Folk School, think of summer camp…only year around…for adults…filled with folk art classes…on 300 beautiful acres of gently rolling hills and woodlands…with other like-minded life-long learners. That should give you the beginnings of an idea of this place.
Years ago my sister and I attended an artisan bread-baking class there. In spite of the misty cold January weather, we had a blast baking all week long. With our fellow students we started with basic breads and then experimented with sourdoughs, crusty ciabattas and even got to bake in the wood-fired hearth oven right there in the kitchen. The communal meal-times offered lots of opportunity to meet fellow students and instructors from around the country. I fell in love with this whole concept of non-competitive, cooperative learning based on the Danish “folkhojskole” or folk high school and I knew I wanted to come back someday and teach.
It took me a few years to gain enough experience teaching and then a few more years to work up the courage to apply, but I was delighted to teach for the first time in June 2016. And even more delighted when they asked me back for this year’s class and scheduled me for October 7-13, 2018.
This year’s class of eight students exceeded my expectations greatly. On Monday morning we worked our way through an introductory egg to learn the basics. Step-by-step through the next few days they gained skills and confidence so that by the end of the week they were designing and completing their own masterpieces. We bonded as a group quickly and constantly helped each other by calling out, “Did you plug your egg?” as one or more students headed for the dye table. “Show and tell,” was followed by oohs and aahs as the finished eggs made their way around the class.
Finished class eggs from our week together.
Saturday and the end of our stay came too quickly, but with the hope of a return trip next year, we parted as long-time friends instead of students and teacher. That’s a really good feeling in my book.
The total eclipse was a wonderful unexpected extra.
Arts Camp 2017 – Go Wild!
And go wild we did. A fast-paced week filled with all kinds of art. My class was the BEST, of course.
Only Two More Spots!
Wow! The new catalog of classes for the John C. Campbell Folk School just came out a couple of weeks ago and my “Pysanky For All” class August 20-26, 2017, is nearly full. This is such thrilling news for me because it means I get to go back to that lovely spot in North Carolina and “play eggs” for a whole week with students of all skill levels.
I love teaching beginners. My favorite part is watching their faces as they remove the wax from their very first egg and see the colorful results. And I love seeing their excitement as they progress through the week, improving in skill and beginning to come up with design ideas on their own.
I also love teaching those already experienced with this wax and dye process. Helping them stretch their artistic muscles as they work with new colors, or techniques, or styles is great fun for me. I learn almost as much as they do as we work through the week together.
Here is a photo of the work my class did for the big “Show and Tell” celebration at the end of the week. Didn’t they do a great job? I feel like a proud parent!
The Northern California Eggstravaganza 2017
Secrets of the Enchanted Forest
Show and Sale February 25-26, 2017
Seminars February 23-26. 2017
Crowne Plaza Northeast
5321 Date Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95841
The 2017 Show is fast approaching. I’ll be teaching two classes and selling eggs and egg jewelry in the showroom. Take a look at the show website here.
And see here for more information on the beginning and Trypillian classes I’ll be teaching.
The Incredible Eggs 2017 Calendar
I love getting fun mail! Today’s was especially fun because I received my 2017 Incredible Eggs calendar and I’m proud to report that a collection of my Trypillian style eggs appears on the November page. This entire calendar is filled with an amazing display of colors and styles by lots of different egg artists from around the world. Click here to get the purchasing details and to preview each page. There is even a Canadian version for those of you north of our border.
Working in Series
Sometimes design ideas just pour out of my head and onto the eggs and I can’t find enough studio time to complete them all.
Then there are other times when I sit staring at a clean white egg and experience what I call “Blank-egg-o-phobia.”
You know the feeling. You want to create and yet you sit and stare at that unstarted project and the longer you sit and stare, the harder it is to get started and pretty soon you realize that your studio is a mess and you should really organize it better but first you need to move everything off your table and you discover it is incredibly dusty which requires a trip to the kitchen to get the cleaning supplies where you remember that you forgot to unload the dishwasher and two hours later you finally come back to your studio and decide you’ll try again tomorrow.
Please tell me I’m not alone here.
So how do I get past this? Artists everywhere have discovered that working “in a series” can help unleash creativity again. A “series” just means creating a body of work with a common theme. It doesn’t even matter whether you decide to link all your work by color, texture, subject, or style, a series will provide definition and boundaries.
It’s very counterintuitive, but limiting my choices requires me to think more deeply about the subject. It’s an opportunity to explore those ideas fully and to learn from each step. The same rules that limit me will keep me on track but free me to get creative in discovering new solutions to design problems. Fear of ruining a piece can keep me stuck but working in multiples can get me unstuck.
As I started thinking about this topic, I noticed that God also works in series. Think about trees, for instance. God designed all trees with the same basic parts… roots, trunks, branches, leaves. That could get boring pretty quickly but God, the infinitely creative artist, started playing with all those parts using color and shape and size. I’d venture to say there is an infinite variation in the tree world but all within the boundaries of those same boring parts…roots, trunks, branches, leaves. Take a look around you. It’s not just in trees, it’s in everything…clouds, rivers, rocks, and people too. Absolutely everything shows God’s creative handiwork within a set of rules.
The lesson here? Rules are your friend both in art and in life.
Returning to my studio here…Let me give you a peek at my latest series. Quite a contrast to my usual multi-colored eggs with lots of fine lines, these Trypillian-style eggs require only three colors…white, brown and black. The designs are very bold, simple and repetitive but as a group I find them fascinating. Hope you enjoy them too.
Save the Date!
It’s never too soon to start planning for summer fun. And if you want fun, friendship and unhurried time to explore the art of pysanky then this retreat should go right to the top of your list. Beginner to expert skill levels are all welcome.
Pysanky USA Retreat 2016
July 12-16, 2016
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
A little unabashed advertising here…I will be teaching “Quilt-inspired Eggs” and “Egg Mosaics” classes at this retreat and there are lots of other great classes by a variety of very experienced teachers.
Here is the website for more info.
The Northern California Eggstravaganza
The Northern California Eggstravaganza
March 5 and 6, 2016, at the Crown Plaza Northeast, 5321 Date Avenue, Sacramento, CA 95841.
This annual egg show and sale is coming quickly so mark your calendars now. I will be teaching two classes on Saturday, March 5, as well as selling pysanky eggs and egg jewelry in the showroom all weekend.
Click here for details on these classes.
It’s Calendar Time Again
This just in…the 2016 Incredible Egg Calendar is finished and it’s beautiful. So many wonderful artists around the world contributed photos. I’m honored to report a couple of mine made the cut.
Clicking on the above photo will take you to the calendar page at Lulu.com and once you are there click on the tiny word “Preview” directly underneath the cover photo to scroll through the month by month photos.
Enjoy!
Big News!
I cannot begin to describe how excited I was when I found this catalog in my mailbox. 
It means finally I can officially announce that June 12-18, 2016 I will be teaching a pysanky class at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina.
The Folk School is like year-round summer camp for adults in a beautiful farm-like setting but is it so much more than that. They emphasize non-competitive learning in all kinds of different folk arts…from quilting to blacksmithing to cooking, writing, woodturning, and music to name just a few.
Years ago my sister and I attended an artisan bread-baking class there and we loved everything about that experience. I had always dreamed of going back, but going back to teach an egg class is a dream come true.
Got plans for next June? Come on down.
A Taste of Heaven
Five days of “playing eggs” with friends old and new, now that is my idea of what heaven is like. I just got back from the Pysanky USA Retreat 2015 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and am still on a pysanky high. Together with 70 other pysanky artists we spent our days giving and teaching classes, hanging out in the play room working on eggs, and catching up on each other’s lives. True community at its best.
This is a far-flung group to say the least. One person came from Japan and not only that, she comes from the same city where I was born. Such a small world, isn’t it? Another spent this last year on the medical ship Mercy Africa in Madagascar. Many folks came from the Northeastern states but we had attendees from the South, the Midwest, the West Coast and also Canada.
Here are just a few photos to give you a taste of my personal heaven.
Art and Faith
Back in 2010 I had a solo art show of my eggs in the Art & Soul Gallery of our church. It was a huge leap of faith for me because it was the first time I really connected my art with my walk with God.
It ran throughout Lent, which is traditionally forty days of preparation for the Easter celebration of Christ’s Resurrection. Fasting and prayer often accompany this time of waiting. It is a season for reflection and taking stock. A time of soul-searching and repentance.
As I gave this thought and prayer, I recalled my childhood experiences with Lent. We usually chose to give something up as a reminder to pray and to look forward to the Easter celebration to come. It took a while but gradually words bubbled to the surface to express my Lenten experience. Fasting, prayer, listening, repentance. But the story didn’t stop there. At Easter fasting becomes abundance, prayer becomes hope, listening becomes growth and repentance becomes forgiveness. God’s story of love and transformation became more real now that I had words to express it.
Now I wanted to experience and express visually what that time of preparation meant to me. So the big question…how in the world do I take this colorful, traditional art done on eggs and give the viewer a sense of my own journey of faith? Eventually this thought crossed my mind. What if I gave up the use of color on these eggs? What if I only worked in black and white? My next thought was, “Are you crazy?”
I knew my designs would have to be strong enough to stand alone, without the distraction of color. How in the world do I create interest using only lines? I’d never tried this before and I was pretty sure I’d be able to do a few but could I create enough to fill the whole show? And what if I couldn’t come up with enough material in time? What if I failed? Fear, self-doubt, and a sense of the enormity of this task sidetracked me for a while.
As the days ticked by I kept hearing a soft voice say, “Just make one egg.” So I did.
“That wasn’t so hard,” I thought. And so I made another…and another…and pretty soon the design ideas flowed until chicken, duck, goose, and finally an ostrich egg all in black and white covered every surface of my workroom.
The show looked great in the gallery but I have no idea if anyone understood what I was trying to say with these eggs. And it doesn’t matter because the important part of the show for me was what I learned along the way. Sometimes God doesn’t give you the big picture. Sometimes you just have to start the journey and not focus on the goal. And sometimes you will find a joy in that journey that surprises you.
Coming soon!
If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to create these eggs, now is the time to sign up for an introductory class through Carmichael Recreation and Park District . See this flyer for more details.
Incredible Eggs Calendar
It’s that time of year. The 2015 Incredible Eggs calendar is out and I think this one is the best yet. And that’s not just because I have two egg photos in it this year. Click here to see the details and to preview the gorgeous photos.
Summer Camp for Me!
Doing what you love is a good thing…but doing it with a bunch of other people who also love it is an amazingly good thing. I spent last week in Pennsylvania with 60+ other pysanky artists at an egg retreat learning, teaching, connecting and laughing with friends old and new. To put it simply, I went to summer camp for adults…and I highly recommend it.
This is my third year attending the Pysanky USA Retreat. I took a few classes, taught a few classes and mostly hung out in the “play room” where we could work on our own projects as we talked and shared about egg art and life in general. The room population ebbed and flowed throughout the day as classes started which allowed me to meet new people with the luxury of unhurried time on our side. Free flowing ideas sparked new techniques, new color combinations, new dyes to try. Wow, my brain got full fast!
I came away from this week not only with a renewed enthusiasm for this art but with a sense of community and connectedness to my fellow pysanky artists across the country. And I’m already looking forward to next year!
Arts Camp 2014 Recap
Here’s a glimpse of our week at Oak Hills Church Arts Camp!
God blessed me with 12 wonderfully creative 5th and 6th grade girls, two loving shepherd helpers and a calm and cheerful assistant teacher this year. Together we learned about God and His love for us while we learned the art of pysanky and how to create these jeweled wonders. We also learned that occasionally eggs break but life goes on because you get to start over on a new egg.
All valuable life lessons in my book.
Arts Camp 2014
Once again I’ll be teaching a week-long class of 5th and 6th graders how to create pysanky. Oak Hills Church in Folsom, California, bursts with activity as the campus transforms into a vast studio of kids and volunteers all focused on finding God through the arts.
Dance, music, theater, visual arts, creative craftsmanship, and even culinary arts come alive as we all learn how to nurture our creative souls.
For more information and to register, click here.
Egg Classes in April
Want to learn how to create these lovely eggs? Along with the Ukrainian Heritage Club of Northern California I am teaching an introductory and a “next step” class on Saturday, April 5, 2014.
La Sierra Community Center
5325 Engle Road
Carmichael, CA 95608
Introductory Class–9:30-11:45 AM
No experience necessary for this class.
Next Step Class–1-3:30 PM
If you’ve made these eggs before and want to learn a new technique, this is the class for you.
You can get more information and sign up through Carmichael Recreation and Park District or call 916 485-5322.
Calendar Girl
I know this is a bit late but I’m Miss February, for the third year running! Or at least one of my eggs is Miss February. Click here to see a preview of all the wonderful photos and find out how you can order a 2014 calendar for your very own.
Creating beauty on eggshells can be a time-consuming and lonely process but thanks to modern technology I am part of a worldwide egg art family. To me, this calendar is tangible proof that even though separated by miles, we are a community connected through our art.
True Colors
Through February 5, 2014
Some of my eggs are on display Monday to Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM at Gallery 625 in the County Administration Building 625 Court Street, Woodland, CA 95776
Ukrainian Festival 2013
Sunday September 8, 2013
Veterans Memorial Center Theater and Community Hall
203 East 14th Street
Davis, California 95616
Come see Ukrainian arts, crafts, dance, music, and food at the Ukrainian Festival celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Ukrainian Heritage Club of Northern California.
I will be there with a wide variety of my pysanky for sale so stop by and say hi!
Here is a link for more details.
Eggs by Teresa 