Just a bit ambitious

This quilt-top has been hanging on my wall since I moved into the studio last December. It finally told me what it wanted to become. Into the dyepot with a little clamping to preserve a small section of the original color and to create some contrast. Believe it or not I DID iron this and the backing cloth before trying to baste it! I was able to pin the layers together on my floor, but put it up on the wall to baste it.

 I've been thinking about culture a bit. The quilt seems so ubiquitously American. I thought it might be interesting to contrast the quilt with another pattern superimposed. This is much bigger than the pattern blend neighborhood pieces I've been cogitating. I found an Iznik tile pattern while trolling Pinterest, and decided it would be perfect for my quilt-top. Here's a sketch:

Get used to it-- this is going to take a LONG TIME. I don't know what I'm thinking.....

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!

A view from the studio

Before I left for Montana I bought a new watercolor pad, but ended up so busy stitching I never really used it. So I thought I would do a series of small paintings just looking out my studio window. The first one was on a sunny day with lazy puffs of clouds drifting by.

 Yesterday was gray, and it even started pouring as I was trying to paint the view. I haven't painted in a long time, and it's nice to do something quick for a change.

I worked on making another fabric postcard as well. This one was on top of a photo transfer. The image got reversed in the process, making the graffiti truly indecipherable, so I stitched in my own word.It turned out looking more like "phija" instead of "Phila", but whatever. Stitching through the gel transfer felt waxy after a while, and satin stitch is not the best stitch to use as it cracks the film after a while. Also,as I fused the stitched transfer to a paper backing I ended up melting away some of the color, aging it a bit. It's all an experiment! I finished it off with a black twill tape binding. I do like the paper backing instead of a fabric backing, though as it's much sturdier, however, the fusible web didn't really want to stick to it for some reason. I think it would be fun to do a bunch more of these Philly postcards, but with non-traditional images. My Philly, not a touristy Philly.

A week of workshops

I arrived back home and then jumped right into teaching a week of Stitch and Surface summer intensive. I had a lovely group of ladies, including some familiar faces and some fellow elementary art teachers, so we had a great time learning and chatting. Sadly I didn't take a single picture!! However, I can share the samples I made instead. we started off with an easy symbolic stitch sampler, experimenting with new stitches on a personalized shape. We did a smattering of shibori experiments including pole wrapping and clamping. We tried gel medium photo transfer on fabric. And we created a 4x6 fabric postcard using a variety of the fabrics that had been created over the week.

I'm not a big fan of adhesives in fiber art. However, I knew a number of the students were collage and mixed media afficionados, so we tried gel transfers to create a photographic image on fabric. The trick is to paint a layer or 2 of acrylic medium onto a color photocopy and press and smooth it onto fabric just after painting out the last layer. We let them dry overnight, and then dampened and scrubbed off the paper to reveal the image adhered to the fabric. This technique does reverse images, so text is reversed, but I kind of like how that altered my graffiti transfer above. I think this technique would work better on a wood surface. However, it was interesting to have a different surface to work on in stitch. In fact, I may do more fabric postcards using the transfer technique..

 My fabric postcard was inspired by my Montana trip, of course. I used my arashi shibori sample as a background layer and then showed everyone how to use fusible web with fabric scraps to design a composition. Finally I embellished the surface with some straight stitches, feather stitch, buttonhole, and satin stitch. I was planning to put in "O Montana" in the sky, but the O looked so much like a moon, which made the sky look like aurora borealis, that I just left it. Finally I demonstrated how to bind the edges with some double folded bias tape, which framed it quite nicely.

Although this fabric postcard could probably be sent as is through the mail, I decided to protect it with a custom-made envelope cut from a brown paper bag. It's headed back to Montana as a thank you!

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.

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies

 For amber waves of grain

 For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain

 America, America, God shed his grace on thee

 And crown thy good with brotherhood

 From sea to shining sea!

That song must have been written by someone who actually crossed the country. I traveled for 3 days on a train and was captivated by the landscape unfolding before me. West Virginia was rolling and green and you could see the poverty, Indiana was all corn fields, Wisconsin seemed surprisingly suburban, North Dakota surprisingly watery, most of Montana flat and arid until all of a sudden the Rockies rose up. We took a drive one day through Glacier National Park. The power of the glaciers, the thrust of the earth shifting, and the devastation of wildfire was stunning... let alone the heights and danger of twisting roads and rockslides.

There's too much to see and take in.

I flew back this weekend. a 2 hour jaunt from Montana to Minneapolis, a short layover, and another 2 hours back to Philadelphia. How could such an expanse that took 3 days to cross by train zip by so swiftly under my feet?

I hope I can hold on to the sense of relaxation and beauty that has filled me  up over the last week.

Sketches from Montana

There is no way I'm ready yet to distill my experiences of traveling cross-country on my way to Montana. But I've been away from home for a week now, and am becoming saturated with beauty and fresh air. I miss my family and environment back home, but I'm having a great time just making art and absorbing new inspiration out here. Here's a sneak peak at my sketches from the past few days:

 The retreat is on a property surrounded by fir trees and stumps leftover from clearing the overgrowth. Our host mentioned an idea to personify the trees, and suddenly all these stumps became symbols of people intertwined by root systems just as we are connected in social relationships.

 Today we drove out to Glacier National Park and I sketched the entire time- I love to do "snapshot" sketches when on road-trips to capture the fleeting landscape. The Rockies are immense and scary and breathtaking and awe-some in it's true sense. We kept saying "Wow!" which does not express the overwhelming awe of seeing the peaks rise straight up from the valleys, and waterfalls gushing down rock faces, and narrow roads that wind up and over along the cliffs with a mere stone wall separating you from a precipice.

When you see such incredible vistas you wonder why you waste life in a tiny row-home in a crowded, littered city neighborhood....
I will enjoy the present, the landscape, and the time to be with other creative people doing what I love.

competition and emulation

I had a good and unexpected conversation with a colleague this afternoon that made me think about work ethic and drive. We were talking about my alma mater, and I mentioned some individuals from my graduating class that I have felt in competition with ever since undergrad over a decade ago. At the time, my sense of competition was tinged with jealousy, almost a sibling-like rivalry for professor's attention, and later for career opportunities and recognition. But now I'm seeing this sense of competition as something incredibly healthy and vital for my artistic life. I have to keep working, teaching, exhibiting, BEING an artist, because these other people are DOING it, too. And I am. And it's what has led me to be who I am and doing what I'm doing.

In my first graduate education course at Tyler, my professor asked us to think and write about our former art teachers. Many people had positive memories, but my most memorable art teacher was one who frustrated me (while a great teacher, he'd always draw on my paper, which made me really mad- so I'd erase his drawing and do my own). As an art teacher now, I have a sense of pride and perhaps superiority because unlike him, I do not draw on my students' papers. It's a little silly, but it's something I hold myself to. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even bad experiences, frustration, rivalry can be as valuable as the caring, attention, and encouragement we receive from others. They can drive us to be better, push us to succeed, and prove ourselves. They keep us on the road to success.

Animation and softies roundup!

I said earlier that working felt good. I'm lucky to have a job I love, and no matter what's going on in life or in the world it's hard to stay sad or mad when being creative with kids. I had morning and afternoon workshops at Fleisher summer camp last week, and both classes were TOTALLY full! This is the 3rd or 4th summer I've taught "Critter Softies" but never to such a large group before. Sixteen kids ages 7-10 came out and learned how to sew and construct stuffed toys.

As usual, we started off with a simple 2 sided felt animal so they could learn the basics of sewing. It's important they learn how to thread a needle, start and stop a thread, and do whipstitch, as they need to use the skill for closing up the opening on a machine-sewn softie too. 

 

We did  story and character brainstorm to come up with ideas for a hand-colored softie. I have the kids draw and color with fabric marker on plain muslin, and then do either a colored front and back or a colored front with fabric back. There were lots of Happy Feet penguins, a Totoro, and several  Loraxes. Kids who had time also made a friend for their character so that they could do imaginative play.

 These stuffies are sewn on the machine, but some kids added on handsewn limbs. I love seeing kids 2D drawings turn into 3D stuffies they can play with!

 With the kids ranging in age from 7-10 there's a huge difference in motor skills and craftsmanship. The rabbit sleeping on the moon below was AMAZING! She appliqued the silky white bunny over the muslin moon on both sides, stuffing under the applique before closing it up. I was really careful on the machine for her, and it came out perfectly!

The last project was a build-a monster. We did a roll-the-dice game inspired by the cartooning game "Pick and Draw".  I didn't have a deck, so I drew out 6 options for body, head, arms/legs, and facial features, and gave the kids a dice to roll to select their part. I wanted the kids to get the idea of how the pieces would fit together in sewing as well as get some inspiration. In the past I would have the kids draw their design, and then I would draw out the patterns they needed, or have them draw them. Unfortunately, it's REALLY hard to get them to understand the need for a certain scale when sewing, and they always draw things too small or skinny. So for the first time ever I came up with some simple templates that gave them construction options, and showed them how they could mix and match to make a creature of their own design. It was a good happy medium between my need for scale and consistency, and my desire to let them have choice and creative expression.. For the monsters I let them use any fabrics they want from a big bin- mostly rescued upholstery samples from the design center interior design showroom (I still have 3 huge bins full from when I worked at one 5 years ago!!!) So the creatures have very interesting patterns and textures.

We ended up making over 60 stuffies together over the course of the week. They went home with full arms and happy faces. 

I hope this video uploaded okay. My mornings were spent with fifteen 11-13 year olds for an animation workshop. This was the very first time I've taught the workshop and taught in our digital lab, so I had a bit of a learning curve. We started off with making flipbooks from videos of the kids in the courtyard. We watched a bunch of stop motion animations and learned the history and process of stop motion animation. Then the kids spent an entire morning working in teams to make the animations in the video above. Finally, I met with each team for editing while the kids worked on some photoshop drawing animations:

I was really pleased with how well the students worked together- one thing that helped was a worksheet I had them complete to plan out their storyline, shooting location, and supplies needed. The content was totally up to them. Some groups were very invested in telling a story while others explored movement of figures and materials. On the last day we invited parents for a viewing party, and we had a great turnout.

I'm very thankful I had these creative kids to work with this past week. Art is life-giving.

July moments

It's been a tough week.

My Jolie kitty passed away. The house and my lap feel very empty.

 I escaped to the studio this afternoon, even though it's 92 degrees in there. Working feels good. At one point I glanced out the window and saw a helium balloon float by.

I stitched some more grass and gathered up some supplies for my upcoming residency.

 Tonight I watched blueberries float up and down in my seltzer while a thunderstorm rocked the skies and cooled the air.