Kimmel

I'm thankful for continued opportunities to show my work. This past week we gathered for an artist talk at the Kimmel Center for an exhibition of collaborative works by Moore alumna.

 Michelle Wilson and I are showing our collaborative book, "Infinite Thread".It as displayed nicely in  a case, however the lighting there is rather poor and I wish our piece had been placed on the other side of the building with the piece below. Our book was installed next to two loud abstract paintings, which were just too brash in comparison. Our subtly crafted book would have fared better next to the wood and metal spears.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Collaborations at Fleisher

 These wonderful, goofy kids made this fabulous wheatpasted arrangement of prints on the free wall outside Fleisher Art Memorial today to culminate our semester together.

They started off as 3 inch square zentangle doodles which were scanned into photoshop and repeated to create rotational symmetry. They were printed out as photo positives and exposed onto screens. Most of the ones on the wall are just 1 color prints of their key images. In the studio, though, they printed another set of 2-3 color prints with shapes behind their key image like in the ones that have green triangles. I like to have some reason for the multiplicity of prints we generate in the silkscreen studio, so they often end up as collaborative installations of some sort or another.
This wall was recently tagged up by a local graffiti-ist. It's a "free wall" for our kids classes to experiment with public art, but this is the first time in a long while anyone outside our school has tagged it. The tag was not very aesthetic to say the least, and covered up a previous stencil project I did with my screen-printers. The wall wasn't looking great since a previous wheatpasting by the digital photo class had disintegrated and been tagged. So at least we covered up the eyesore of old wheatpaste with our tile-like prints. The front desk printed out a letter addressing the recent tagger and asked that we wheatpaste that too! It suggested that the tagger come take art classes with us to improve their aesthetics!!

I'm hoping the weather doesn't get too rainy so that our wheatpaste survives for a while. Now for a short hiatus from community art. Registration for Winter session opens on Monday the 18th. In Winter session I'm offering Color theory (free class!) on Tuesdays from 7-9:30, Stitch and surface on Thursdays from 6:30-9:30, Printing on fabric on Saturdays from 9-12, and my teen silkscreen class on Saturday from 1:30-3:30. Bring some life into the winter doldrums with an art class!

Changing seasons

 My prayer cloth is once again on the walls of the Philadelphia Cathedral. On the Feast of All Saints and all souls we unraveled it and wrapped it around the congregation during the Prayers of the People. I cried through the whole thing. It is a precious gift for an artist to make something that brings people together and that is used ceremoniously. Despite it's length it is still not really long enough- so all are invited to bring donations of fabric from those you've loved and lost to extend the piece. I lie that it is an organic thing with the potential to grow.

 I'd like to find more opportunities to make work lie this. Maybe other congregations or communities would like to collaborate like this. (And it would be nice to make some money from this too....).

 In the studio I'm bouncing between the big quilt piece and this small digitally printed cloth. I'm scheduled to teach a class on digital printing on fabric up at Peter's Valley next Summer (YAY!) and wanted to work up some pieces using the techniques. This is a photo on silk I did a few years ago and it's been hanging on my design wall for ages. Finally I decided to embellish the blue painted asphalt with some satin stitch and then bead the ice and snow with clear seed beads. I love the texture and sparkle. It's dancing between being very literally a piece of sidewalk and looking quite abstract.

It's heralding the winter. The studio is a cool 60 degrees. A studio mate has offered to design a "roof" for my studio to help keep it warmer over the winter. It was truly frigid last year, so I may have to go for it if I want to keep working in comfort.

I don't like the sudden dark of November. But all around me I keep hearing how the seeds lay in the dark earth so that they can grow and be fruitful in the spring. It's a time to incubate some ideas.