Hello! I’m Wendy Solganik, aka @willa.wanders on Instagram. If this is your first time here on my blog, welcome! I’m pretty excited that you found me and my little corner of the art world.

I’ve done a bazillion kinds of art in my life, and the thing that intrigues me the most today is Mixed Media Collage Art.

I’m such a passionate student of this form of art and I’m obsessed with making and using collage fodder (what the heck is collage fodder?).

I really want to learn everything I can about it. I created an entire online art school called Fodder School where anyone with an interest in Mixed Media Art collage art, handmade books and journaling can come and learn this craft from a variety of incredible instructors, even if you have never made any mixed media art before! At this point, Fodder School is about to enter its fourth year with no intention of slowing down.

If you are looking for a great place to start your mixed media art journey from scratch, can I recommend this $19 course?

In this blog series, I’m going to be introducing you to the instructors that will be joining us in Fodder School as Fodder School 4 instructors. If you want to know all about what Fodder School is, go here.

Last but most definitely not least, Carrie Smith is our final new teacher joining the Fodder School crew!

Carrie is a self-taught collage artist currently living in the Bay Area. Before diving into the realm of collage art, she spent many years traveling the world and then teaching around-the-world art classes to children in her community. After taking an online art class with her daughter in 2023, the painting supplies never left the table and her passion for collage art exploded. Carrie continues to travel the world with her husband and two children (when busy schedules allow for it!), a lifelong passion that fuels her artistic journey.

Carrie specializes in hand-painting each and every piece in her collages, using vibrant colors, patterns, and floral aspects to create one-of-a-kind statement pieces for any living space. She says: "My favorite colors are all colors in their deepest, brightest, most bold, and vibrant hues. If you were to hand me a paper plate palette with dollops of indigo, magenta, forest green, saffron yellow, teal, and burnt orange on it, I might actually eat them up before it came time to paint! My process for selecting colors before painting is one that relies strictly on my gut. I survey my entire collection of paint and just pull colors that speak to me. This process has always worked and I have never questioned my choices. I just go for it." If you are drawn to the gorgeous tones you see in this email,keep reading to learn more about this year's Fodder Challenge and how you can sign up for Fodder School 4 today!

One fun fact about Carrie is that she has traveled around the world twice and has been to 45 countries! "Travel is a huge part of my life and without these experiences, I would be a very different person leading a very different life, that’s for sure." Carrie has an extensive history with teaching, having launched a private enrichment program in which she taught around-the-world art classes to children in her community. "We would dive deep into one country for 6 weeks, creating beautiful art, celebrating festivals and holidays, making and sampling foreign foods, reading captivating folktales, and listening to world music. At every step of the way, I would infuse my curricula with my own travel experiences through stories and photos"

Now, Carrie wants to bring her wanderlust here to our Fodder School home! For this year's Fodder Challenge, Carrie will show you how to make these breathtaking Sacred Hearts, her version of an iconic symbol of Catholicism in Mexico. She will introduce you to her process of color selection and invite you to the meditative flow state she enters when getting into her painting zone. After painting a few of these hearts, with matching 'flames', Carrie shows you how to attach some traditional "Milagros" charms and rhinestones, also encouraging you to add your personal favorite small embellishments. For more information about this year's Fodder Challenge, Keep reading to find out how you can sign up today!

Having taught around-the-world art classes to children for the last 12 years, Carrie's students and their families seem to have had in common one resounding opinion about her classes over the years: the content of her classes was unlike anything their child has ever experienced before. "I do not say this in a boasting way, but rather a way to show that teaching something you’re deeply passionate about will undoubtedly make a difference in others’ lives, and they will remember you for it. I do feel like I inspired them to continue to want to learn more about the world. Many of my students have gone on to study abroad and a handful have told me that it was all because they took my classes when they were young. Who knows if that’s true, but it does make me happy to know that at some point along the way, they remembered our time and worldly art experiences together!" You can see more of her art on Instagram @carriesmithart or check out her website carriesmithcollageart.com.

In her Fodder School month, you will continue to learn Carrie's favorite color and imagery motifs to make these absolutely stunning greeting cards. You will build upon some of the meditative painting methods Carrie showed you in the Fodder Challenge to make an assortment of vibrant flowers, leaves, circles, and funky backgrounds. Together, you will find ways to arrange all these elements and make a card cover that is compositionally breathtaking and sure to impress whoever receives it. Carrie would love to immerse you to her rich world of travel-inspired zen-mode mixed media painting crafts, so keep reading to learn how you can sign up for Fodder School 4 and join her today!

If you think that you aren't capable of creating incredible mixed media art like what you see here, you haven't been to Fodder School yet! We make it accessible. We make it effortless. We make it incredibly FUN!

Want to listen to Carrie and me discuss Carrie’s journey with mixed media art? Tune into my podcast, "Show Up or Shut Up."

Currently available for listening on the Willa Wanders website here, or on Apple Podcasts, Amazon and Spotify:

Get all of the information about joining us in Fodder School by clicking this button below:

XOXO,
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Where are you on your Mixed Media Art journey? Leave a comment and let us know!