Mothers to Our Daughters and other exhibits

It's been a long time since I showed any artwork at Philadelphia City Hall, but this month I have 2 pieces in "Message to Our Daughters", an exhibit of female artists with messages of inspiration accompanying the work. I'm most excited about the fact that my daughter, Zillah Elcin is exhibiting her artwork next to mine in the show! Above is "Mother and Child", which includes fabrics created by some of my Fleisher students, and which I started as a sample piece for my Stitch and Surface class. Below is my daughter's watercolor "Hotel Wakeup", a still life representing the tale of a bride who was left at the altar but who goes on her honeymoon anyway.

In January and February I exhibited at the University City Arts League exhibit "High in Fiber", showing 2 of my largest embroideries ever.

Next week I'll drop off work from the summer program at UPENN for a show running through April at the Westtown school.

I've been fortunate to have a great season of exhibits all over the Philadelphia region, and I hope things continue to flow creatively throughout this year. 

Shifting

This picture is from a waterfall at Ringing Rock Park in Northeast PA. My family went out a few weeks ago to explore. It's a place of incredible geology, with obvious evidence of how old and changing the earth is. A field of odd boulders sits in the middle of a forest. They are evidence of the passage of glaciers in an ice age thousands and thousands of years ago. This waterfall runs over a striated cliff. You can see the folds of the earth and the shifting of plates.
It seemed appropriate to visit this place right before the school year. The tectonics of my life have shifted a bit. I have been moved into a full-time position as a middle school art teacher at my school. My daughter has just started high school. At Fleisher I've begun teaching a new course on Basic Design. And with all this busy-ness, I've had no time for my own work. I've given up the studio at the Papermill, and moved everything back home, reclaiming my former bedroom spaces. It was painful to leave my beautiful space. The room of my own. I will miss it terribly. I do not know how this bodes for my art work. My creative energies are being tapped planning new curriculum and lessons (having to start from scratch for the middle school). I no longer have my free Mondays to work on my own endeavors. I feel like my artist self is hibernating at the moment. It's an unsatisfying feeling. However, it is balanced out with wonderful feelings of FIT in my new work situation.
I suppose a certain amount of dissatisfaction is what keeps us striving..

Hip Hip Hooray!

I Won!! Over the course of the faculty exhibit at Fleisher viewers were invited to pick their favorite work of art and submit a ballot to vote. So this was a people's choice award. From over 800 ballots I won! The exhibitions coordinator presented me with this lovely gold-painted wooden manikin and $100 prize. 

Feeling pretty proud today =)

Welcome/Summer

 What have I been doing since February when last I posted? This monstrous big embroidery on digitally printed fabric. Entitled "Welcome", it is a blend of 2 photos taken from Fleisher Art Memorial: the sunset street scene superimposed with the Samuel Yellin gates to the sanctuary. I stitched the outlines of the gate pattern in backstitch and running stitch. The light shining through the trees are thousands of french knots in variegated perle cotton. I got the image digitally printed by Spoonflower.Believe it or not, it started off as a cell phone picture. It was a bit blurry, but that's where the stitching came in to make things crisper, leaving the background with an almost watercolor effect.

 The piece was stretched on stretcher bars and framed.It's now hanging in te gallery at Fleisher for the annual faculty show. The reception will be Friday, July 18th from 6-8.

 School is out. I have no summer plans. Just taking each day as it comes. Today was hammock-swinging, dappled light from treetops, and cloud-watching.

Oh.. and getting ready to move, preparing new exemplars for an upcoming Basic Design course, and other general busy-ness. I can't totally relax all day.
I'll try to post more often...

Cold... but warm

 

This winter is so long and dark. Despite my northern ancestry, my blood longs for the Mediterranean.

I had a beautiful morning tessellating patterns for block printing with my adult students at Fleisher. The snowy afternoon chased away my teens, and only 2 showed up for class. But that's special too- having a chance to connect one-one-one with young people who would normally speak barely 2 words to an adult. I wonder if my elementary students connect to their classroom teachers the same way as they do with me in art. Is it art? Is it me? I seem to get their smiles and hugs and best behavior more often than not. It's a privilege to share their joy and creativity and growth.
Yesterday morning after we said the pledge all together in the cafeteria at school, a first grader took my hand and held it as we walked up the stairs with her class. In the evening I went shopping at Old Navy and one of my (sometimes challenging) 3rd graders was there. He rushed over to hug me, and I got to tell his mother how wonderful he'd been doing in class that morning. She looked so happy and relieved- I don't think she hears good things very often from his classroom teacher. I have so many moments like these that fill me up.

I get impatient sometimes for my studio, my needle and thread and cloth and paint and dye. But what's the most effective means of making a better, more beautiful world ? Filling it with beautiful objects that may last beyond my lifetime fills me with some satisfaction of eternity.. or at least longevity. But being a positive element in children's and people's lives, connecting them with creativity, helping them be better communicators of ideas, encouraging them to be empathetic, attentive, and careful may have greater reach in the world.
But I still have to stitch and draw and paint and print.

pattern play

Snow day today!! Which means I've had time for the great pleasures of reading, cooking, and photoshop playing. I was not about to slosh over to the studio, but decided to stay cosy at home and make some art on the computer instead. There were some photos I'd taken around South Philly that I wanted to mash up. Here's the Fleisher sunset with the sanctuary gates superimposed:

 And a little piece of Isaiah Zagar mural from 7th and Carpenter has made its way onto the ghost rooms from a building torn down at 7th and Bainbridge. I walked by yesterday and found a nearly complete new building has sprung up where this wall once was.

I REALLY want to print these out onto some silk and add some stitched texture. The beaded snow piece I started last month is complete and needs binding. Oh boy, there's a bunch of binding that needs doing!! Perhaps that will be my winter break activity...

In the meantime.....
Registration is open for Winter session at Fleisher and I need a few more student for Stitch and Surface!!! It's a 10 week course on Thursday evenings, and I promise a new sampler idea, some fabric bleaching experimentation, and a portrait project!
also:
Registration for Summer workshops at Peters Valley is now open as well! I'll be teaching a digital print (and embellishment) on fabric class at the beginning of July. Check it out!

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.

sunsets

 This week has had some beautiful sunsets. The trees are starting to show bare limbs, making lacy silhouettes against the sky. October skies are brilliant blue. The air is crisp and it makes me feel alive and nostalgic. Everything is changing so quickly. My daughter celebrates her 14th birthday this week, and I don't know how all that time has passed.

We went to Linvilla Orchards in Media this afternoon and picked apples. I wish I could freeze those moments as the three of us walked through the rows of trees, reaching in between branches for ripe Granny Smith with the sun sparkling gold in our hair and the edges of the leaves. Don't grow old! Don't change! Stay here forever with your warm hand in mine with the crisp snap of apple on our tongues....

But the windfalls are already fermenting
and the earth keeps turning
and the sun keeps setting

Texting

I've been busy the past few weeks getting ready for the new school year- but things have been simmering in the studio too. Seems like text is making a comeback in my latest work. The stump piece I started out in Montana is getting text embroidered in from a poem one of the other participants wrote during our residency:

My latest postcards are all bound up and have graffiti inspired text:

The photo transfer above resulted in a flipped image and backwards text. Since it was pretty indecipherable in the first place I decided to find my own letters and stitch over them. The piece below started off as a scrap sketch for the larger one I've been working on, so I finished it off with some bubbly text stating "BE".

Today I finished up a submission for an exhibit in Brooklyn at Wayfarer's gallery. They came up with a text and gave each artist a word to translate into a work of art. My word was "LIFER".

 It's ambiguous devoid of context. I used some leftover dye monoprinted cotton and started backstitching around the brick colored shapes to pick out the letters. I like how that made the "font" a little unpredictable. I continued the outlining around the edge to make a border, but the piece lacked color and energy. So I added some clusters of red french knots in the negative spaces. It helped define the letters a bit more, added texture, and created some movement across the text.

 The word "Lifer" could refer to a life sentence in prison, or a career military person, or just to anyone who remains committed to someone or something for life. Till death do us part and all that. I hope my image is ambiguous enough to allow multiple interpretations. Are they cells and blood, an aerial view of city blocks, graffiti on brick? Are the red knots blood or a growth?
I'm curious what other kinds of interpretations and media people used. There will be around 250 artists!! I'm not sure if I'll be able to go up for the opening or not, but that will be November 9th if you're in the Brooklyn area. It's all bound and ready to ship!

Creativity in the woods

I've been home for a week (somehow this week flew by in comparison with the week before). I thought I'd look back on the artwork made by myself and the other participants at the residency in Montana. It seems far away now, but I'm still feeling the restfulness that grew while I was there.

Tobacco Road Studios was a great location with 2 studio spaces in the garage, and a wrap-around porch where I made my workspace. Our hostess was working on an elemental series and cut a huge spiral in the lawn for "earth". The elements and trees around the property were inspiration for many of us.

 I noticed how most of the trees grew in clusters,like families. their root systems are shallow because the bedrock is so close to the surface, and the interlocking of the roots help the trees support each other. A great deal of underbrush has been cleared out of the surrounding woods over the past few years. I noted numerous stumps dotting the landscape and thought it would be interesting to take prints from them.

Woodblock printing with ink and a brayer was a total failure as it picked up only the sawmarks instead of the beautiful rings. So I switched to oil pastel rubbings to capture the texture and age of about 8 stumps. After heat setting the pastel I experimented with walnut ink on a few, but didn't like the loss of contrast.

 The 2 small stumps with walnut ink were appliqued to some red sunprinted cloth I'd made in grad school. I stitched a few rings and used feather stitch for roots reaching out and entangling. It needed a little something extra, so I added  a ring of red seeded "fire". Wildfire is a major concern in the Rockies in midsummer. The firetruck came out at one point because someone noted smoke from our (well-tended) campfire! But fire is needed at times to control undergrowth and bring new life to the forest floor as well. I finished this 12-inch piece up in a day and then moved on to a larger piece.

 I waited for a full sunny day and painted out a yard and a half of cotton with blue, ochre, and emerald setacolor. I laid plant material I'd found on the forest floor on top and let the fabric dry in the sun for a lovely organic sunprint. Five more stump prints were appliqued onto this 4x5 foot background, and then I spent 3 straight days doing concentric circles in running stitch until my fingertips ached.

 On our last night we had an open house despite rainy weather. All our artwork was hung and displayed around the porch. The event was publicized in the local paper and we had a number of adventurous souls venture out in the rain to visit. Here are some of the other artists' work:

 Michelle Menard of San Francisco delighted us with a puppet show she developed over the week. She created all the characters and scenery from painted cardboard and papier mache. Above is wise Ladybird in a cage and below is the blue bird of happiness nesting.

 In the evenings we gathered on the porch for some basketweaving lessons from our host's mother, and they were displayed along with the rest of our art:

 I'm quite proud of my tight little reed basket. I've always enjoyed weaving....

 One of the major events of the week was a pit firing for the ceramic pieces that had been made. It was a little scary to do after all the fire warnings, but I helped out by keeping the surrounding area quite damp with a hose. A 4 foot deep pit was dug out, the ceramic vessels were loaded in the bottom and the fire was fed over the course of 3 hours. Finally we let it burn down, and by morning it was cool enough to unload.

 The woodfire makes an amazing and unpredictable smoky effect on the clay body. Our hostess, Christina Barbachano's pieces are above.

 One of the local artists who joined us in the evenings was Nikki Meyer (also a reporter for the town paper!). She worked on a series of somewhat surreal photos of animal life, playing with real and unreal, pumping up the contrast and color to distort perception. I loved the image of the turkeys and buffalo below. Not all of the animals in this image are actually alive though....

 We had a few of Christina's high school art students up as well. A pair of them collaborated on the "Dr.Seuss Tree" below, transforming a former porch post into a fantastical tree with a strange creature in the branches. It was wonderful to watch the perseverance of the pair, as they struggled with weather and materials to get it complete.

It was wonderful to have so much time to just make art and be surrounded by other creative folk. As artists and mothers and working people, so much of our time and mental power gets distracted by everyday life and responsibilities. It was a joy to let all those distractions fall away.

 I've returned to my fair share of worries (perhaps to balance out that free time!) but  I'm trying to hold on to that rest and rejuvenation that soaked into my spirit while I was in that other world.

Papermill party

 My studio building, the Papermill, had an art party tonight. Many artists from the building brought art down to hang in the big gallery space on the first floor. The theme was"Coloratura", which was plenty open-ended for the eclectic bunch of people we are. Some bands were invited to play.

 In the patio area some canvases were set up and some art materials were out for anyone to come draw and paint.

 And the best thing all night was that one of my pieces sold! I had pulled out some older works on paper that I did during grad school- 2 rust prints and a watercolor/collage. The big one at the bottom found a new home, and I'm a happy artist!