Happy Easter!

I was asked to bring dyed eggs to Easter dinner tomorrow (maybe because I'm supposedly the "creative one"). My original plan was just to marbleize some eggs. While we were doing that I wondered what the oily food coloring would do to paper, so I cut some egg shapes out of some printer paper and laid them over the bowl of oily dye (success!). Finally I thought the eggs could use some holders, so I cut up some paper towel rolls into 1 inch rings, wrapped them in green tissue paper and fringed the edges for grass. The paper egg shapes turned into flower petals on my basket tray with the eggs and holders in the center. Some jelly beans make it complete. This is ridiculously cute and crafty. Not my usual style. Pin away!

PS. We rigged up a little lottery hidden in the eggs. The lucky recipient of a hidden bird sticker will have to sing a song, the hidden frog sticker winner will have to do a silly dance, and the 2 winners of the hidden house stickers will have to do all the dinner cleanup!!

Good Friday

It was special. My friend Anne and my mother, who have both been battling cancer in the last year, participated as artists and both are returning to health. Several participants returned from last year. Some people from the crowd came up to me and said they still have my scrap of stitchery from last year's Stations of the Cross. Several teenagers participated. The community gathered for something positive despite ongoing blight and violence in the neighborhood.
This is the best kind of art I can make. Art for prayer. Art with meaning. Art for people to see and touch. Art that connects people in my community. Art that sparks conversations. As I spoke of Mary and the feeling of mothers- our desire to protect our children but our inability to do so at every moment in their lives- I saw heads nodding and calls of "Amen".

There's a small doubtful voice in my head that questions if it's a good idea to dwell so much on religion or spirituality in my work. Maybe it will turn people off? Maybe it will pigeonhole me? Maybe it will not be taken seriously? I can't listen to this voice. This work is meaningful and worthwhile to me. I cannot be apologetic for sharing  the spiritual side of my creative life. For thousands of years art was primarily an expression of spirituality. May it continue.

Spring Break

I am soaking up every last drop of Spring Break free time doing everything I love and recharging my creative batteries. First off, I've spent lots of time with family, who I feel like I barely ever see with our crazy everyday schedules.

 We visited Laurel Hill Cemetery for the first time, where there is an awesome view of the Schuylkill River as well as some fascinating funerary sculpture and architecture. It's a strange city within a city.

 We visited the Philadelphia Art Museum, partly to see the Peale painting my daughter is currently researching for a school project. But I loved seeing some new works hanging in the Prints and Works on Paper hall, especially this panoramic charcoal drawing by Mei-Ling Hom. We also went through the Outsider art exhibition and I snapped this charming bird collage by James Castle:

I've spent some time in the studio every day. (oh blessed, beautiful, quiet studio- I've missed you) I'm working on a large "wall" piece with lots of patterned running stitch to fuse the applique layers together, so my fingers are starting to get calloused again from pushing the needle. Today, I took a little stitching break and sketched the odd cast iron shapes of my sewing table legs:

 Tomorrow our adventures will continue, but I'm most excited about Friday's Stations of the Cross exhibition at Norris Square, 3 pm. I'm looking forward to sharing this piece with the crowd:

The great perks of teaching are the lovely breaks. But believe me, these breaks are very well deserved and crucial to the well-being of teachers. Teaching is both the most rewarding and the most stressful job I've ever had. I'm very thankful for this week off to relax, renew my creative spirit, and refresh my inspiration. I will be totally ready to meet the challenges of the last few months of school!

Stations and time

Some projects take forever... some no time at all. Part of it is how long it takes to come up with an idea. The other part is how complicated the execution is. It's always easier when a exterior source poses your artistic challenge. This coming Friday, March 29th is GOOD FRIDAY, and I was invited to participate once again in the artistic interpretation of the Stations of the Cross in Norris Square Park at 3pm sponsored by West Kensington Ministries. It's a great ecumenical community event with participants of all ages and artistic experience, but each interpretation is heartfelt and meaningful.

 I am doing Station 4 this year- "He Meets his Mother". I was thinking about Mary's desire to offer help but feeling helpless in the face of her son's persecution. To know from the very beginning what his fate would be. I cast in plaster an upturned hand- a gesture of both offering and asking for help, as well as one of prayer. (My daughter played hand model for me- how has she grown so much that her hand is as big as mine?) In the palm is a strip of cloth printed with the stories of Mary and Jesus' interactions throughout his life- a lifeline if you will. Here it is in the studio:

Next to it is my newly finished "Deborah's window", which was 2 years in the making due to fits and starts, compared to the 2 week timeline of the Good Friday piece. They are both mournful pieces. My work feels mournful lately- even the wintry tree piece. You'd think I'd lost a lot of people in my life to see all this work.

Anyway- I'll be in Norris Square, corner of Hancock and Susquehanna on Friday, March 29, 2013 at 3 pm walking the way. Come join us for an interesting afternoon of art, song, story, and prayer.

Fabulous Fiber at Fleisher!

 It was a lovely week for some screenprinting on fabric at Fleisher. In my last class, one student completed dye printing her cherry blossom handkerchiefs (below) for her wedding reception. I snuck back on Monday to spend some time on my own work, and printed some text on a length of linen in preparation for a Good Friday project in Norris Square. We have a little break between sessions right now.

However, the new semester is creeping up quickly! I need some more students to register for Silkscreen on fabric (Saturdays 9-12) and for Stitch and Surface (Thursday nights 6:30-9:30) for the classes to run.
In Silkscreen on fabric we learn how to:
- create a stencil on the screen in both photo process and hand drawn techniques
-how to print in both dyes and inks
-how to design motifs and repeats
Past silkscreen on fabric students have printed on T-shirts, aprons, hand towels, handkerchiefs, pillowcases, and fabric yardage for making stuffed animals, garments, and fiber art. This course is open to all levels of experience, from introductory to advanced, and has only 8 students for an intimate studio experience.

In Stitch and Surface this semester we will:
-create a "Band Sampler" to learn a variety of embroidery stitches
-create our own easycut stamps for printing on fabric, inspired by Adinkra stamping
-do a collaborative fabric challenge to see what each student can do inspired by the same piece of fabric
-experiment with mixed media fabric collage
Stitch and Surface is open to all levels of interest and experience in fiber art, from "never-picked-up-a-needle-before" to "been-stitching-since-I-was-5", and has a maximum of 14 students for plenty of one-on-one instruction.

Please visit www.fleisher.org for registration either online or over the phone. Act 48 credit is available for educators. I hope you'll join me for an adventure in fiber art!

The 100 print challenge

Look at this:

 This is a vision of a well-oiled machine. My Saturday teen screenprinters at Fleisher are doing an AMAZING job trying to complete a 100 edition 2-page zine. Which means one sheet of paper will get printed on 8 times (4 images per sheet, 2 layers of color per image). Their zine contains images and views in and around the Fleisher campus, and we will distribute them to visitors on the last day of classes.

To print 100 sheets of paper is a true feat, but by the time they complete it they have honed their technique for how to get a clean pull. Sometimes screenprinting with my teens seems a bit pointless- why have multiples of anything? But this works. It has been refreshing to work with this group of teens. Most days I'm with the 5-11 set, and if I hear one more tattle tale I think I'll flip my lid. But this group has worked so well together and so maturely that I don't feel like I'm working. We're just in the studio... making our zine... yeah!

How to pass the time

I have a new sketchbook. On Sundays my daughter has a 3 hour language lesson, and I stick around to socialize with the other parents. On our way in today she told me I should write and draw pictures in it for a story. I asked her what it should be about, and she said, "The fox who stole winter". I asked her to elaborate a little, and she proceeded to spin a tale of a fox who worried about skinny rabbits, and who wanted it to always be warm and sunny so the rabbits would come out and fatten themselves up on the grass. So I sat and drew this for the first half hour:

I think it would make a good myth- how the fox got his white-tipped tail... trying to sweep up the snow.

The brain is an amazing thing. Where do such ideas come from? What made her think of foxes? How did this image spring from my imagination and pen? How lucky I am to share a creative spirit with my child!



A bit of sky

Cameras just don't do justice to what the eye can capture. At least point and shoot ones can't. Moments before heading to the studio I saw the sky streaked with yellow, pink, and purple. In the photo, it's just all overblown. But in my memory it serves as inspiration. My dye-painted piece has all the reverse applique complete, and now I'm seeding the sky with those streaks of color. I'm loving this piece. The wintryness of it. The high contrast. The crisp edges. There's a little guilt in making something beautiful. A worry that it isn't important or worthy enough.

On the other hand, it's a true impression of cold and winter, and the joy of light, however brief. Here I am huddled into my scarf, my nose and fingers too cold to keep working, and the cold northern light from the studio windows waning, leaving the warmer but weaker artificial lamplight. I can't wait for spring.



The lost art of reverse applique

Well, perhaps not totally a lost art, but one worth experimenting with once in a while. I love reverse applique because whereas most stitchery builds UP surface texture, this technique allows you to dig DOWN INTO the surface. There's a subtle sculptural quality to embroidery, and this is another way to push and pull the surface. A look at the sunset sky tonight on my way to the studio inspired me to cut into my dye-painted tree piece to create a line of color to make a horizon.

 To get started with reverse applique, you first need to baste together a fabric sandwich. I enjoy stitching through 2 layers of fabric all the time, and my purple fabric matches the size of the top piece. However, a small patch piece, larger than the area to be cut away by about 1/2 inch all around can be basted to the back of a fabric instead. Select an area to be cut away, separate the layers, and snip the center of the area. Cut to the corners or angles to create flaps that can be folded back. For example, the X-shaped cut above creates a square when the flaps are folded under. I'm doing blind stitching on a turned edge, but a raw edge can be used instead by cutting out the entire shape to its edges and then stitching a decorative stitch over the edge. But back to blind stitch:

 The flaps are folded under to make a turned edge. I added pins to make everything lay flat and lined up, and remove them as I stitch. I thread the needle and come up at a corner between the layers in order to hide my knot. Blind stitch is sort of the reverse of hem stitch. You try to make the tiniest stitch between the layers and travel around in the fold. Wherever the thread is coming out of the fold or the base cloth, you insert the needle RIGHT NEXT to that point in the other layer, then slide along about an 1/8 of an inch:

 Pull tight enough so that the 2 layers touch snugly but without gathering or puckering the fabric. If the cut areas are close together, leaving narrow top layer sections, the flaps may need to be trimmed smaller so that they can still fold under and fit between the layers

 I'm very excited about these blue violet windows into the background. I think once they go all the way across the piece they will help separate snowy ground from cloudy sky. Cutting away to another color also adds more color contrast and drama without having to stitch every bit of the surface, a time saver when doing larger pieces.

I got this far before losing all the light of the afternoon. My lamps help, but just aren't quite enough for lighting my work when working this precisely. It took me about an hour to find a backing cloth, cut it down, baste the pieces, decide to take the plunge and cut into the fabric for the reverse applique, then snip and stitch these 3 lovelies. I can't wait to get back tomorrow and do some more in proper daylight.

First Month

 Well, I managed to clock 20 hours in the studio in the moth of January. I'd like to aim for 40 a month (the equivalent of a regular work week a month, but those kinds of hours are going to have to wait for warmer weather when the building is a little nicer to stay in for longer than an hour!

 In those 20 hours I managed to nearly complete the window portrait I've been working on for over a year. I did some dye monoprinting for the background of a large wall piece and completed a small color study and picked out fabrics for it.

 I also experimented with some dye painting, and started a shibori landscape piece. And yesterday I finally pieced together the shibori and bridge printed piece at the top of this post. I don't feel like I got as much stitching done as I wanted, but my surface design experiments are going well. It's interesting to measure my artistic time and effort. Since I'm paying for the privilege of a working space now, I want to make it worthwhile.

This is a good start.