Happy Thanksgiving!

I've been plugging away at my research paper this week with little time for art making, unfortunately. More by chance than by design, I'll be home tomorrow cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my little nuclear family.

This year I'm thankful for a family that's been supportive of my art and studies, the chance to go back to school and have the opportunity to earn my Masters degree, and for all the amazing things I'm learning and working on. I'm also thankful for the online community of stitchers and readers. Hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving!

Painting and Drawing for 12-13 year-olds

Today was the last day of the Fall session at Fleisher, and my last day with a great group of 12-13 year-olds. I'm hoping the all come back next semester, as I felt like they were only just starting to open up and feel comfortable. Below you can see 4 out of the 6 projects we did.Students worked together in teams to make group mark-making drawings, which were then divided and individualized. They then enlarged them drawing using the grid method.

For these object collages students focused on value and prepared by painting three sheets of color in light, medium, and dark values. They also used ink line drawing experiments from a previous project.

Students made 4 different drawings of the same still-life from different angles and by using a different drawing technique for each drawing. Throughout the semester I encouraged a lot of drawing exploration, including blind contour, gesture, line drawing, value drawing, etc. It was interesting to see which drawing styles students seized upon. Several brought in their drawings from home to show me how they continued their explorations-totally unexpected but incredibly rewarding!


Students looked at John Singleton Copley's portraits, especially at how he used objects in hands in order to identify the sitter. So the students used personal objects and painted their hands holding the objects.

Now I get to plan for next semester!!!

Polar Opposites

So, these are the 2 pieces I've been working on this week, and they kind of illustrate how reactionary my response to artmaking is. I really like the experimental, exploratory nature of the rust-dyeing, and the building up of abstract imagery. But then I get itchy to make something more realistic. It makes it sort of difficult to build a body of work, as it looks like 2 different artists made these. The streetscape above is my street ala Google Maps Streetview, which I collaged together into the panorama. I used 2 shades of grey for the buildings and cars, and a variegated blue/green/yellow for the foliage. It's sort of foggy looking, nebulous, looking off to the no-man's land of North Philly.
The rust-dying below is a remnant of the giant piece, which I over dyed with more rusty objects, pricked, and painted with India ink. I think it'll get some French knots in black before it's finished.There's some imagery, but I'm hoping it's not overly obvious. What do you see?

Again, sorry if I don't post much next week.... Lot's of deadlines coming up.

Disappearing act

Forgive me if I don't post much over the next two weeks, but I've got final projects for 3 different classes due the first week of December. Wish me luck! I will try to photograph all my students' work on Saturday to share as my first session teaching Painting and Drawing for 12-13 year-olds comes to a close. Until then...

Before and After- Rust print in progress

Here's the before image I last presented to my critique group at school. Things they hated about it included the "overallness" and the gird, and that there was not much interaction between squares of the grid. My connection to the "map" was also questioned.

So based on that I went back to the drawing board a bit, thought some more about mapping, about creating more cohesiveness and movement with the image as a whole, and so here I am:

If you scroll down a bit to a previous post you'll see the drawing I made to determine the size divisions. There are now 4 large 9x9's that stayed virtually the same, 13 4.5x9's, 4 4.5x4.5, and 24 3x9's, so that overall it is more representative of my local neighborhood map. The shift of light to dark sort of represent what I perceive as safe zones and danger zones which also correlate to the more public and private areas of the neighborhood.

I'm still considering puncture holes and french knots in black perle, but have to sketch it out a bit more. I have an individual crit a bit later where I may negotiate some of that. TTFN.

Webbing

Thought I'd share some interesting sites I've been pointed toward or discovered recently:

• The Antique Pattern Library which has helped me with my art history research
• The Textile Blog, which has a presentation of a wide range of textiles
• Hand/Eye Magazine which just featured blogger Jude Hill, one of my favorites (Thanks D)

Sort of sad that next week is the last week of fall session over at Fleisher. My 12 & 13-year-olds have been such a pleasure and they're just starting to open up. I hope they'll all come back for Winter Session. However it'll free up time to wrap up my research and work for school.

more mapping

I'm thinking of breaking down my rust dyed piece into a more accurate (proportionally) map of my neighborhood. So a plan is always good! I've been overdyeing some of the pieces in order to get alittle more complex/more mark-making/ more value differences in the sheets of paper.

In other news, today I mailed my submission for the Text/Textile show at Da Vinci in February! I'm really glad Kathryn Pannepacker is still curating this show despite Philagraphica and SICA (sp?) taking over what would normally be the city's time slot for the Philadelphia Fiber Biennial. Who cares about prints and ceramics? I WANT FIBER!!!

Map Love

Today I was looking at the work of Joyce Kozloff for mapping inspiration. Sometimes she uses actual maps, but she also makes inventive composite narrative maps that combine a feeling of maps but also Middle Eastern miniature painting/illustration and patterning.
See some more work and an interesting review here as well.

Critique day

I spent the last week not sleeping to bust these out for a critique today. Thought I'd share my wall with you. I had these 6 street find slow cloths above, and the 4x5 grid of rust dyed pieces below.

The rust dyed piece is not complete- in fact I'm thinking of breaking it down into smaller rectangles like the one below and combining pricking and stitch into the paper. The image below is a sample experiment. Critiques are terribly stressful, compounded by my sleep-deprivation. I need to remind myself that I wanted to be pushed and that critiques are by nature sort of negative. I need to weed out what was said and decide what was valuable and rich for further exploration.

Nimble Fingers

Betsy Wetsy has a new hat. I'm really pleased that my daughter has started to crochet. She has a natural sculptural sense, and it's interesting to see how she has applied that to crochet. The only thing I helped her with on this is the join between two pieces. I also think it's pretty cool that this doll has provided so much pleasure to 3 generations now. Actually- Betsy is wearing the cap made by my daughter, a dress made by my mother, and a sweater made by my grandmother.