art for your ear

It's been forever since I wrote here, again. I have been busy, VERY busy. I'm on a plane right now returning from eight AMAZING days at an artist residency in New Hampshire, where I had an entire GIANT, beautiful barn all to myself. It was incredible. I go so much done. I documented it all on my Instagram account (@tiffanieturner) if you'd like to see. It was truly a highlight of my life.

While I was there I recorded a podcast with my friend Danielle, aka The Jealous Curator, for her Art for your Ear series. We talked about what I'm up to (A LOT), how I got started and what's coming next. I loved doing it, and I've been getting some nice feedback on it. If you like to take a listen, you can find it HERE. And for all of the rest of this series, go HERE. There are so many fantastic and inspiring conversations.

More soon! xoxo

free time!

My paper flowers on some beautiful and very old French ticking
from French General in Los Angeles.

I have about a million things going on right now, including but not limited to: contracts, proposals, grant writing and more. I have big and small news. I have a lot to share! But, a miracle has happened. I also have planned ahead and will be taking most of July off from working. The kids need me, and I need them, and I managed to leave a giant hole in my schedule before things go bonkers over the next year. So, four weeks of summer, then I'm off to the races again.

I have written about a few extremely exciting goings-on over on the main page of my website. You can head over there if you're so inclined by clicking here, and you can always find me on Instagram as @tiffanieturner.

I do have several great workshops coming up later in the summer here in the Bay Area and in Salt Lake City, then in New Hampshire in September and Los Angeles in November. SO excited about all of that. I will be working on listing those workshops on my website over the next week, and will post links here as well when everything has been settled.

Have a wonderful Monday and a wonderful week. I'll be back soon!

xoxo

upcoming workshops!

Paper Bougainvillea Workshop

I hope you all enjoyed your Mother's Day in one way or another. Today is my wedding anniversary and we are returning from an overnight trip to a treehouse. Everyone here (besides me) wants to live in a treehouse when they grow up, so I though I'd give them a taste of it. I'll let you know how it goes!

I wanted to let you know about three great workshops I have coming up in May and June. The first is "Paper Bougainvillea", at Handcraft Studio School in Emeryville, CA. I will teach how to make paper bougainvillea in two different styles and in a giant array of colors. The bougainvillea petals and blossoms can be used in wall hangings, wreaths, in your hair or wherever you'd like.

PAPER BOUGAINVILLEA

Handcraft Studio School (Emeryville, CA)

Sunday, May 31, 2015

10:30-1:30 p.m.

Register HERE

1920s-Inspired Mock-Vintage Metallic Floral Headpieces

I love this workshop, and hope to hold on to the piece I make in class this time. I end up giving them to girlfriends and don't have one for myself anymore. Have you seen the headpiece Kate Hudson wore to the Met Gala this year? I am thinking about how to create that more draped look for this class as well. Either way, they are gorgeous and great for summer weddings!

1920s-INSPIRED MOCK-VINTAGE METALLIC FLORAL HEADPIECES

Makeshift Society (San Francisco)

Monday, June 8, 2015

6:30-9:00 p.m.

Register HERE

Paper Rose de Granville

Finally, my rose de Granville workshop. This was great fun when I ran it earlier this year. The students all went away with beautiful specimens they had made in the class. Fun fact: I taught myself to make these as samples for Dior Paris. I have an agency there who gave me the opportunity to make these as "free gift with purchase" for Dior cosmetic counters in France. I don't know if it was my price point or something else, but after lots of rushing around I never got a definitive answer and have no idea where my samples are now. Learning lots of lessons along the way these days. But come make some with me, you won't regret it!

PAPER ROSE DE GRANVILLE

Makeshift Society (San Francisco)

Monday, June 29, 2015

6:30-9:00 p.m.

Register HERE

I have some really exciting news to share, but I am waiting to get a few more of the details before I post about it here. Will do so very soon. Have a great week!

xoxo

upcoming workshop

Look at me, I'm hitting the once a week posting mark here! I wanted to let you know there are just a few spots left in my next paper flower headpiece class at beautiful Handcraft Studio School in the East Bay. (Emeryville, to be exact.) The class is Sunday, April 12 from 10:30 to 2:30 p.m. We will be making roses, godetia, bougainvillea, carnations, dahlias and some rudimentary Icelandic poppies, and attaching them to headbands and crowns. I hope you can join us, this class is always fun + hard work + rewarding!

You can register for this workshop HERE, if you are so inclined.  

I hope you have a great week!

xoxo

dead paper flowers

I thought I'd start the week off sharing some pieces I've done that are near and dear to me. I have fallen hard for making dead and dessicated paper flowers. Some with tea stained lighter paper left over from my giant dead peony piece entitled "For Shame", and some with a deep tan colored crepe paper.

To study how a flower decays is to understand where it begins to lose its structure and how it is put together in the first place. The gaps between shriveled petals tell the story of what is at the center of a flower and the mechanics of the petal's attachment. And they are so beautiful in their own right. I couldn't bear to let go of any of these little gems right now, but I would like to create many more to wear in my hair.

carnation

 twelve-year-old peony (from my wedding)

dried up rose

another shot of the wedding peony

More to come. Have a great week!

xoxo

recent specimens

How I've missed this place! Looking to return to a regular schedule here, after I learn how to put myself to bed before midnight every night first. In this career of my choosing I have found no balance, but there has been so much work lately that things might start to swing towards being able to hire a sitter every now and again, and with that will come better work days and more sleep, and that's a wonderful thing.

I've managed to post a snap of each new bit of work I do to my website in a section entitled "RECENT SPECIMENS". These are usually taken right from my Instagram feed, but it is wonderful to see all the work in one place, like a garden blooming.

I hope you are well and having fun and feeling good. Have a wonderful weekend!

xoxo

a workshop this sunday + what's new

Just a little note to mention there are a few spots left in my Rose de Granville workshop this Sunday morning at Handcraft Studio School in Emeryville. I'm excited to teach this single subject class. There was a lot of interest in this class, so look for more single flower classes in the spring, I'm thinking ranunculus!

Lately I have been trying my hand at some new smaller scale flowers, like a better ranunculus and David Austin and other garden roses. I just spent a week making headpieces for San Francisco Magazine that may or may not make it into the final spread of an editorial photo shoot they shot in Carmel earlier this week. I hope they use at least one of them, they were a TON of work! Until I make a page for my smaller work on my papel SF website, you can always scroll through my Instagram feed to see what I'm up to, if you are so inclined! I am @tiffanieturner. Those headpieces are now back and up for sale in my Etsy shop, if you want to take a gander. 

Next week I am preparing for my teaching trip to L.A. The all-day workshop at French General is almost full. I am very excited to get away and also to see French General. I hope I don't spend ALL my earnings there. When I return I am going to see about doing some fundraising through Kickstarter or some such thing to help fund an exhibit I've been invited to do on the East Coast this summer. I am horrified of making a video for the campaign, but I really cannot go much further with my work until there is a little money behind it.

Finally, for anyone still reading, I am talking to a friend about doing a book. A paper book filled with flowers and more. I think it's time. Apparently, the more public support I have behind this idea, the better I will do when submitting my proposal. So I am taking screen shots of every wonderful comment on Instagram and saving the emails I get requesting me to teach from all over the place, building my case. Those comments matter, I guess! Maybe this would be a good time to see if you would be interested in a flower (and other) paper art book written by yours truly. I'd love to hear from you, and it can only help!

Okay, that's all for now. Have a great weekend, and thank you as always for reading! 

xoxo

los angeles workshops!

I am really excited to announce that I have THREE Valentine's Day themed workshops I will be teaching at French General in Los Angeles on February 6th and 7th. I cannot wait to finally visit Kaari, Robert and the gang and see all the beautiful wares there. I will probably spend all the money I make teaching there before I leave!

If you live in the area, I would love to see you! And, if you have friends in Los Angeles that you think would enjoy these great workshops, spread the word! It would be great to fill these classes to make the trip even more worthwhile.

Here are the links to register for each of the three workshops. Also, I will be teaching the rose de Granville class at Handcraft Studio School on February 1st. You can sign up for that class HERE.

Rose de Granville at French General

Friday, February 6, 2015

12-3:00 p.m.

Register for this workshop HERE

Egg + Crepe Paper Hearts at French General

Friday, February 6, 2015

6-9:00 p.m.

Register for this workshop HERE

Paper Flower Headpieces at French General

Saturday, February 7, 2015

10-4:00 p.m.

Register for this workshop HERE

dead of winter

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope your holidays were great. Realizing I didn't make record of our holidays here just now is making me melancholy. I miss those days.

But there's news now. I've been toiling away curating my very first art show. It is called Dead of Winter, and it is a show I am deeply proud of and vey excited about. It runs from January 7 to February 4, 2015 at Rare Device here in San Francisco. It features ten wonderful artists (including yours truly), and in a nutshell, the show explores botany in winter. The work I have received from all of the artists is beyond my wildest expectations. Such diverse media and diverse interpretations of the theme. You can read about all ten artists on the Rare Device blog here.

Hanging the show was such a great experience. I just barely fit all of us on the gallery walls, but I think it looks amazing. AMAZING!

Oliver hung out all day with me while I hung the art, and then again the next day

when I labeled each piece. He is such a great, incredibly patient little guy.

Of course there is one snag. My piece isn't done. I've been waiting for so long for an excuse to work on a decomposing flower head. It's why I asked Giselle at Rare Device if I could do this show! The study of how the head of a flower starts to fall apart is fascinating, and as I remarked on Instagram the other day, I have to check myself each day to be sure I am letting the flower die. I think I'm happy with the results, but I have a few more hours to go tonight before I die of exhaustion, so we'll see what happens. I really want to put it on the wall tomorrow and get some sleep before the opening.

Speaking of the opening, please join us this Friday night, January 9, 2015 from 6-8:00 p.m. at the Rare Device gallery (600 Divisadero at Hayes) for the opening reception. I would love to see you there!

Here's a sneak peek at my piece, entitled "For Shame". And if you are using Instagram, the hashtag for the process work for the show is #deadofwinterRD.

news from "the studio"

Hi there. It's been a while, again. I've been keeping busy.

I have so many things to share, but today I am sharing something very special, my collaboration with Simone Truong, a wonderful artist from the UK who is as obsessed with flowers as I am.

Simone and I discovered each other through my friend Danielle's blog, The Jealous Curator. Simone had seen my work on The Jealous Curator back in May, and I discovered Simone's gorgeous, ethereal work on a post this past October, on which I immediately left a comment about collaborating with her. Simone got back to me posthaste, and we have spent the last month or so collaborating on these four new pieces of work, which I am very happy to present to you today.

Paraphrasing from our statement on this work:

Although working in different mediums, different scales and even different countries, Simone and I both have one element in common; our subject matter. Flora are at the center of both of our works, inevitably forging an exploration into the difference in scale and mediums. In this new work, Simone strays away from exploring the transitionary states that occur in natural phenomena to embrace the delicate and still beauty of my giant, intricate paper flowers. By scaling these large, explosive blooms back down to a size manageable on the printed page, Simone has captured their solitary beauty in a way their original capacity never would have granted. We worked together to find the tension and balance in these compositions, which were executed by Simone in her UK studio. 

To put it very simply, we have taken my giant flower heads and scaled them down to what would be their natural size and state, knowing there is nothing natural about these flowers with their hundreds and hundreds of petals made of paper. We have worked with emotional tone, composition, scale and color, and treated the pieces with Simone's beautiful and mysterious techniques, described on The Jealous Curator as akin to swiping a finger to "taste the pretty iced roses of my childhood birthday cakes".

These images of my "fake" flowers, being preserved this way, suspended in space forever, are somewhat dishonest, in the most subtle of ways. If you didn't know the back-story on this work, you might never notice that these faux flowers have way too many petals, or that they were already fated never to wilt. Reducing them and then hanging them in space, stemless, as Simone does? There is a lot of mystery in that, and I love it.

The four images below are the final products of our collaboration. We are offering giclée prints in an open-edition run, 11 x 14" on Hahnemühle FineArt Pearl paper. They are gorgeous, and I cannot wait to have them hanging in our home and my studio area. If you are interested in ordering, you can find them all here in my online shop.

I hope you like them as much as we do. It was a privilege to work with Simone. I love collaborations, and this one was a great fit.

   

Fictitious Array I

Fictitious Array II

Let's Pretend It's Forever I

Let's Pretend It's Forever II

On another subject, I am running a wonderful 1920's style metallic floral headpiece class this Sunday, and a few more before the end of the year. I'd love to see you in one of my workshops! Visit my workshop page for class descriptions and registration information. I have some unique classes scheduled this season.

Have a wonderful weekend!

xoxo

crowns

Here are a few crowns I've added to my papel SF Etsy shop. I somehow ended up booking a little two day exhibit for Dia de Los Muertos (with the biggest pieces I've ever made!) and so I cancelled my remaining crown workshop so I could stay focused. I had a slew of flowers I'd made for the classes lying around, so I took a day to put together a few more wonderful crowns. I LOVE them!

Don't forget the discount code for 10% off through Halloween is PETALSFORHALLOWEEN in my Etsy shop (HERE).

Have a wonderful fall weekend!

xoxo

marigolds

(L): Two paper marigolds, the rest real;

(R): I'm racing the clock to construct the biggest marigold ever for Dia de Los Muertos.

Hope you're having a good week!

xoxo

halloween shop!

BOO!

I wanted to let you know that my papel SF Etsy Halloween Shop will be going live at noon today. I have loaded it with a handful of lovely floral headpieces and crowns, as well as a photo booth prop set made of five great, colorful remnants from my larger scale work. I had fun putting it together, and I hope you can scoop up something you like!

I am offering a discount code to my blog, Instagram and IRL friends. The code is "PETALSFORHALLOWEEN" and is good through October 31, 2014 (Halloween).

Have a great day! xoxo

paper godetia + bougainvillea tutorial

I'm very excited to share my latest project as Carte Fini's featured artist. This one is much simpler than many of the ones I've done for them over the past year. I just discovered godetia recently in the checkout line at the grocery store and now I'm hooked. I bought a bouquet, worked up some blossoms, and now can make about forty of them in a sitting without batting an eyelash. They are dead ringers for the real thing! The bougainvillea are more of a gestural representation of that flower than the actual thing, but they look beautiful, too.

Here's that link:

CREPE PAPER GODETIA + BOUGAINVILLEA

Have fun with it!

dahlias

I recently completed an order of thirty-three dahlia headpieces in white and faint-to-bright pink. They were created for a fantastic patron saint and new friend. Here they are arranged in a color gradient that would hopefully make Lisa Solomon proud. It was such an undertaking that I thought I should share them. Somehow I only managed to photograph the pink ones, but they were all so pretty.