The Art Of Expression

At 10:30 a.m. one Thursday during the hottest days of the summer, a group of women converged on Linda “LuLu” Badgley’s house for the monthly meeting of Art Chix. After initial greetings and chitchat, they gathered around a table on the patio to work on that day’s project: hand-decorated paper. An odd assortment of tools for spreading pigment covered the table: notched tiling trowels, an egg whip, combs, a scrub brush, rubber stamps, plastic screen and sponges.

It was soon apparent that LuLu was not only this meeting’s host but also its workshop leader. As the Chix looked on, she spooned homemade wheat paste from a large pot into a Styrofoam cup. After stirring pigment into the paste, she demonstrated how to brush the mixture onto a dampened sheet of paper. Using a plastic card with a toothy edge, she gently combed colored paste across the paper in various wavy, crisscross and zigzag patterns.

Read the entire article in the January 2006 issue