website updated

I spent part of this holiday week updating my website. Mostly tweaking it, but I added a page for my critique group, the River Road Fiber Artists. And some pictures of me on the 'about me' page. And changed the background to a piece of composted fabric rather than a solid color. It takes a little longer to load now, but maybe I'm the next to the last person on the planet still on dialup....

"They" claim that you need to change your website frequently so you stay high in the rankings on search engines. But since I'm getting ready for a couple of shows, I haven't gotten new work done lately. So does tweaking count? I mean in the eyes of the search engines, probably, but am I just now using the web site as another way to waste time?

I have started a bunch of things this fall. It's just that none of them are done. I'm having trouble finding the end point...just as I am in the website. Maybe that is part of being an artist, never being quite satisfied with what's been done so far. I know that my biggest problem in watercolor paintings is stopping when I should--at least fiber pieces the damage of going to far is usually reversible...

Here's my favorite of the pictures I added--me ziplining over the canopy of the rain forest in Costa Rica...it is, I think, symbolic of the risks I'm taking making art--leaping out into the great unknown. Although I don't think failing in art would kill me...

November buckeye

This November has started out dreary here. It has been an unusually cloudy fall this year. So maybe that explains the darkness of this piece. Or maybe it's because all the leaves are long gone from the tree, and I've plucked off all the seed pods because of my fascination with their shape and texture, and there is little to distinguish the tree from its surrounding.
But part of it is because of a watercolor workshop I took last week from Carol Carter. Especially the glowing backlighting.


I started with Setacolor paint on dupioni silk, after lightly sketching in the tree shape. The yellow glow was added at this point, as well as some sparkly pearlized paint. When that had dried and was heat set, I used fabric inks to do the tree--the Setacolor seems to help stop the flow of it, so I was able to get fairly sharp lines. I shaded the tree with some heat set pastels.

The stitching was done in spirals--the leaves swirling around in the autumn wind, the flocks of starlings toing and froing in the sky. The words say 'November Winds By.'

This year is almost done, and I'm already thinking about what to do next year. I like doing small series such as this, and the monthly schedule doesn't put too much pressure on. Next year's will maybe start with a design that evolves month by month. Don't know for sure yet.

But meantime, the buckeye approaches full circle--leaves are gone, the shape reasserts itself. It has gotten taller, produced a bunch of potential offspring, survived. And I have documented this, which makes me smile.