creativelenna.com

Who is creative Lenna?

Lenna Andrews describes herself as a creative and passionate mixed-media artist and instructor. She lives in Avon, Connecticut with her husband Steven Deming and their two rescued dogs. Lenna loves to create, teach mixed media art classes and share about this (and more) on the creative lenna blog. She enjoys making sample artwork for Alpha Stamps and ARTchix Studio and says she is lucky to be able to spend most of her time with Steven, creating art, editing her websites, teaching classes, taking care of their home and pets, and organizing art swaps for creative swaps!

This is Lenna's original website developed in 1996 by her oldest son, Decklin Foster back when the internet and websites were just babes. Decklin was only 14 years old at the time! These days, at age 27, he works as an Information Technology specialist in the Neuroscience Lab at Harvard University. This original website has grown and changed over the years and the site updates are now taken care of by Lenna. This website is home to lots of examples of Lenna's artwork: fabric art, collage art, altered books, fabric books, ATCs, fabric stamping, rubber stamp art, and Lenna's published pieces from 1994-2007. In addition, there are links to other websites where you can view more of Lenna's art in the sidebar to your right >>>.

For current artwork hop over to Lenna's art blog. Besides the blog, there is a newer website focusing on Lenna's tutorials and on-line/email workshops called: A Little Creative Space. Workshops are published as pdf files so you can purchase them and work on them at home at your own pace. The tutorials on the web site are free! While you are here on this site, visit the about Lenna page and learn more about Lenna's history & her family. Lenna's great uncle, William Glackens was an influential American Impressionist painter at the turn of the century. You can find his work in many major museums and collections. Lenna is named after William's daughter, Lenna Glackens who was also an artist and a writer.

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Do you have questions about how-to do fabric stamping and properly heat set it? Are you wondering how to create small fabric quilties?

Visit A Little Creative Space for my free tutorials.

A personal note from Lenna: Steven and I sometimes get asked why we have different last names (since we are married)? I would have happily changed my last name to Deming when we were married, but Mr. Deming had other ideas. In fact, he insisted that I keep my maiden name! You can visit this page for a little more explanation and the story on how we met ~ if you are curious! Steven is my biggest supporter and fan. He works as a senior level technical consultant and systems architect for Innovative Computer Systems (Farmington, CT) allowing me to spend most of my time creating and teaching. But Steven is also an artist who has created award winning graphite drawings, funny cartoons and more recently, collaborative paintings with me. He will deny he is a true artist if you ask him - Huh? Everyone disagrees! We happily share our creative home with two pets we've rescued, our friendly terrier-mix dogs - Asia & Chloe. They are a lot of fun!

I hope to be sharing a studio with Steven again soon, perhaps after we move to Florida? These days his time is quite consumed by work and he has not had the time or the inspiration to create anything recently. . . . until Christmas of 2008! I've added a photo of my gift he made me (etched wine glasses) to my blog. They are so lovely. Steven also created a card for my birthday in February 2009 - he drew a wonderful cartoon for me of our 2 cats Star & Farfel. Thank you, Steven! A note: Star & Farfel no longer live with us . . . they have been adopted by a new 'mom' as we cannot take the cats with us when we move to Florida . . . after our home in CT sells.

.Contact us via email anytime, if you have questions .

more about . . .

www.creativelenna.com

The Photo Gallery is where you'll find ATCs, altered books, collage pieces, mixed media art, and fabric art. Look at the right hand side once you are there for links to specific pages. Lenna has also made a page on this site for her husband, Steven Deming to showcase his talent. Drawing by Steven Deming (click for more detail)

Personal photos celebrating Steven and Lenna's wedding in June of 2005 are also found in the Photo Gallery. View the happy occasion and take a peek at all the art sent to Lenna and Steven from family and many on-line friends around the world and incorporated into their wedding. Lenna made her hand-stamped wedding dress and stamped the back of Steven's vest at his request!

Family photos, including a photo diary on how Lenna's father creates handmade wooden cedar strip boats are in the Photo gallery. Lenna's mom claims that Lenna has received all her creative talents from her dad (smile) but her mom is very creative too!

The collaborative art gallery page is where you'll find a number of paintings done together by Steven & Lenna. Here's Steven standing with one of these paintings. This 2007 photo was taken at the West Hartford Art League's Juried Art Show. Steven & Lenna love this painting and both agree it was quite a thrill to get into a juried art show with their piece called Color Play.

ART SWAPS and Exchanges shares swap related art, 2007 and prior. This is where you can view the results of completed swaps Lenna hosted. You'll find Lenna's own swap/exchange art, as well as the art of many other creative and talented artists to inspire you! For my newer art swaps, visit the Creative Swaps Blog. This blog debuted in April 2007 to organize and share the art swaps Lenna hosts.

And . . . leave this website to visit my gallery of custom-made U.S. Postage Stamps created from art and photos by my husband and myself. The postage stamps are produced through Zazzle.com and they are legal! You can personalize our designs for your own use by changing the text, or you can create your own stamps and other items from your own art. These art stamps are great for Mail Art.

buy unique gifts at Zazzle

I just have to share some favorite photos of Wolfe Island in Ontario, CANADA ~from 2006

We visit beautiful Wolfe Island, Ontario every year -- Steven's grandmother was born on this island and his family still owns the farmhouse she was born in and the surrounding cottages on the banks of St. Lawrence River across from Kingston, Ontario. Wolfe Island is the largest of all the Thousand Islands, and very beautiful and peaceful.

To the right is a photo of Steven motoring the sailboat he named 'Nimda' after a computer virus (!) around the island. Kingston, Ontario is in the distance -click on the photo for a better look.

Below, I'm walking with Asia on Wolfe Island. This rural, farming island is very beautiful and I am so happy Steven introduced me to it!

More photos of beautiful Wolfe Island, Canada are here.

"Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing. When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for better understanding."

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit (1923)

My great uncle, William Glackens was a protégé of Robert Henri and shared a studio with him in 1894. I admire Mr. Henri as an artist and a teacher, especially after reading more about him.

For more quotes, check out my favorite quotes page.

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