Train of thought

I went looking for images of the African dance masks that may have inspired Lucero's sculptures from the previous post:




Then that one reminded me of the giant monster Sweetums from the muppet show...

so now I know it's time to go to bed.

Texture sampler from my weekend in NY

I'm currently enjoying a bit of a Spring Break, and managed to get up to NYC this past weekend! Mostly it was to do museum trips for my History of Modern Craft course. I went to the Museum of Art and Design to see their Global Africa Exhibit, SOFA at the armory, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Based on my photos it seems I was very drawn to textures!



closeup of rolled paper beads for Algernon Miller's "Change" hanging. The beads were made from Obama campaign literature and constructed by a women's co-op in Uganda. I think I'll write my final paper on this piece.



Detail of a collar piece of rolled paper beads by Sanaa Gateja who organized the KWETU co-op that worked on Miller's piece

 

Necklace of ceramic beads cut from a porcelain platter by Gesine Hackenburg. I like the heirloom made ornament idea.



SOFA was held at the armory at 67th and Park. Lots of ceramic and glass, but not much fiber =(



At SOFA Duane Reed Gallery from St Louis presented these ceramic and fiber sculptures by Michael Lucero which I'll use for my presentation in class



closeup of a wall piece by El Anatsui at the Metropolitan. The Miller piece above has a lot of similarities!



A resist-dyed tunic from Peru- I'm gathering resources for a shibori class this summer!



An incredible roof piece in the oceanic cultures section at the Met, with layered, patterned bark paintings. Incredible! 

Lots of inspirations to think about. It was really exciting to see many of the objects we've covered in class in person at SOFA and the Met. I was intrigued by all of the open storage at the MET. Philadelphia Art Museum should do that. I don't get up to NYC very often, and this was definitely  a great trip. I especially liked going up on my own instead of on the bus tour with the class, and taking things at my own pace.
Now, I'm looking forward to the end of this semester, the end of student teaching, and an upcoming printmaking studio class I'll be taking. I miss blogging on a regular basis! I miss time to focus on my studio. I miss going to see art more frequently. Thanks to any readers who've stuck around the last few months despite my slow post pace. It'll pick up again soon!

"one in the Crowd" project

One of my Art I classes just finished their "one in the crowd" projects. It started off with a week of gesture drawing to generate lots of different drawings of figures. Then we studied perspective and students drew and painted in tempera a perspective drawing of typically crowded space using color to express mood. Finally students collaged their figures into the space using overlap and scale shift to emphasize the sense of space and placement and interaction of the figures to also create mood.



a crowded school hallway

  

a wacky art museum



a subway scene



another hallway

This was a challenging project for my drawing-resistant students. But they were intrigued by the one-point perspective trick, and became quite invested in their spaces. Many of them redrew gesture figures specifically for their spaces.

Spring Break next week! Then only 2 more weeks of student teaching! I'm currently planning the layout for my "Art of Student Teaching" exhibit. Here's the layout so far with a few placeholders for pieces I don't have pictures for:

I need to come up with some kind of low shelf or table for all the sculpture projects. We did a surprising amount of sculpture!

Weight of the World figures

Only 3 weeks remain of my student teaching experience and we're wrapping up a lot of work. The district puts on a district-wide exhibition, the school wants an art fair at the end of April, and I have my own student teaching exhibit to mount. So we've been matting and finishing and weeding through piles of artwork. While this was going on I finally got to take pictures of two of the Kentridge-inspired collaborative works my students did near the beginning of my placement. Students helped collage the silhouetted figures and then drew objects of things they loved/hated/worried/hoped/feared to load on top of the figure.

 The one above has gone off to the school district building for display. It contains some of my favorite student drawings including a graduation cap on the figure's head, a devil whispering in his ear, and a clock to show the passage of time. Below is the one I'll put in my students exhibit at Tyler. She doesn't seem as loaded down by all these things. it's more like she's offering them to us. My favorite drawings in this one are a bowl of noodles, a giant cell phone, and a bouquet of flowers.

Fleisher classes are starting up again this week! I enjoyed the little break from the crazy schedule, but it was great having a new crop of kids in the silkscreen studio today, and both my adult classes are running! Just a few more weeks of crazy to get through....



Giveaway Winner!

It's Saturday, which means a winner has been selected in my little giveaway experiment. I'll have to try this again sometime and maybe get a few more takers. However 6 readers commented (thank you all!) and the random generator says the 4th commenter wins:

That would be Deborah from While I was Waiting who said:

Deborah said...



I'm a lurker and enjoy seeing both your work and your students' work. Blue is my favorite color but I would be thrilled if i won one of your pendants of any color!

So, if she'll send me her address I can mail off her new pendant. Congratulations!

In the meantime preparations are underway to do screenprinting, embroidery, and soft sculpture with my high school students next week. I'm a little nervous!!!

creeping along... and giveaway reminder!

It's been a while since I posted anything about my own work. It's still happening, just at a slower pace than usual. Being creative with kids all day long kind of satisfies that urge to make something.

My tendrils of vines are continuing to slowly creep over this piece, just as slowly as Spring is taking its time to arrive around here. So much for March going out like a lamb.

 A comment on yesterday's post reminded me I haven't shared the portrait in a while either. But that's coming along nicely. Seed stitch takes a long time, but I love how it's ghosting this portrait over the quilty squares. I need to make him look happier. He needs laugh lines.

Don't forget- the comments are still open on my last post for anyone who'd like to try out for the giveaway! You have till Saturday!

Giveaway!

Hello there........... I'm feeling generous today and thought I'd try out one of these giveaway things to see if anybody's actually reading this nonsense I post. I made these embroidered pendants a few years ago and have a few still floating around. If you'd like to have one of these for your very own, please post a comment with your favorite color and tell me if you lurk because you like when I show my student work or my own work or why it is you like reading Colored Thread....

I can't promise you'll get either of the ones above, but I'll try to pick one out that's closest to your favorite color that you tell me. You have until Saturday, April 2nd, noon EST to post a comment and I'll pick a name out of a hat or something. Ready, Set, Go!

Stitch and Surface embroidered books

 For a final project this past session, my Stitch and Surface students at Fleisher created embroidered handbound books. The idea was very open-ended, but most people chose to do a decorative cover for a blank book. Fran Schatz (above) used sun-printed fabric from last semester to embellish with buttons and couched ribbon for a "color" themed book. The inside pages are all sheets of felt in a rainbow of colors that she may continue to embroider. This fabric book has pages stacked on the cover with a machine-stitched binding down the center of the stack

 Gail Corbett's notebook, "Seeing Red" has satin stitched letters and a selection of raw-edge appliqued circles from the same striped fabric tilted like sunspots on the retina. The fabric was adhered onto bookboard, the inside pages are craft paper, and it has a 3-hole Japanese Stab binding. Funny story- the last center stitch was so tough to pull through, I offered to help and ended up breaking the needle!!

 Sharon Mastrobuoni created a blank notebook with an arrangement of fabric yoyo's and 4 different border stitches. Her covers were sewn with a contrasting fabric, bookboard inserted into the resulting "pockets", and final edge blind stitched closed before doing the Japanese Stab binding through 5 holes. Believe it or not we had another broken needle on this one!

Tiffany Robbins' book has satin stitched text and a feather stitch vine down the side. Her covers were adhered to book board, but she has a signature of fabric on the inside, using the coptic binding down the spine. After working on this one with her I realized coptic binding is way easier on paper than on fabric! It came out great anyway.

I love to see how my embroidery students grow and innovate with fabric and thread! If you'd like to join me next semester there's one or two more days left to register at Fleisher. I could still use a few more students for the class to run! Don't miss out on a new adventure in thread.

Come stitch with me!

 Tick Tock! Tick Tock! Sign up for Spring Session workshops at Fleisher Art Memorial before it's too late!

 Stitch and Surface is a fun introduction to embroidery and fiber arts for those who've never tried it before, or great studio time with a chance for critique for the more advanced student. This semester we'll be doing a stitch-a-week sampler book, a Japanese sashiko embroidery/quilting project, and a few other things I've got tucked up my sleeve. It will be on Thursday nights from 6:30- 9:30 at Fleisher Art Memorial, 7th and Catharine in South Philly. I hope you'll join me for a stitching adventure, or spread the word to a friend or family member! Register here.

P.S. All these images are works by some of my past students. You'd be amazed at what you can do with some time and a little help!



"Buddha's Banana" a collaborative story

Last Weekend my darling 11-13 year-old Screenprinters at Fleisher finished up their prints for our collaborative story print exchange. We started off playing a postcard game- each kid got a handful of art postcards and they had to put forward an image to fit the idea of "a setting", "a character", and "an object". Once images were submitted we voted on which ones to use and they did a "continue the story" game. So if the story below seems strange, well it just is. It's a surrealist exercise, so the results are bound to be a little odd. The kids divied up scenes to illustrate and created a 2 layer stencil print. Time was limited and only one kid got to do the final drawing layer monoprint which would have really pulled together their images. Next session I'll arrange for more "work" time.... So, let me present:

Buddha's Banana

Buddha's Banana Title page

Once in a dingy city there was an ugly woman who could not sleep.

She held a grudge against nature for making her terminally ugly and she was jealous of her beautiful neighbor.

To cheer her up, Buddha gave her a magical banana which made her extremely powerful.

But with her new powers she destroyed her beautiful neighbor's house in a fit of jealousy.

Buddha was angry and tried to convince the ugly woman to use her powers wisely.

Regretting her actions, the ugly woman put the "net of shame" over her head.

Buddha forced her to rebuild the neighbor's house and hold it up for all eternity!

 The End. What's the moral? Ummmm, be happy with what you have and don't squander gifts from the Gods. Each student made 10 prints which were exchanged so that everyone would have an illustration for each part of the story. The exchanged prints were placed inside the portfolios they had made earlier in the semester.

This semester I started having the kids use stencils to block their screens instead of screen filler. We went through 2 boxes of freezer paper, but I saved myself hours of time not having to reclaim screens with screen filler. I also started having specific drawing exercises for their sketchbooks for the first 15 minutes of class instead of free draw time. This helped me target specific art concepts I wanted them to learn in order to understand composition and color.

Next semester we'll be doing an abstract layered series of prints and a T-shirt collaboration with the digital photography students. We have a break for a few weeks, but I can't wait to get back in the studio with them again!