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It's a gray, warm autumn day here. So it's kind of hard to take a detail picture, but then that's not really what I was after. I wanted to show some of the inspiration for the piece I've been talking about. This is shot looking west from my driveway.
We here in west central Illinois tend to have dreary autumns. It hasn't even rained much here lately (we're in a drought), but we have all these long, darkish, gray days. As the leaves fall off the trees, the only ones left are those are the oaks, which turn a rusty brown that in the height of autumn seems dull, but now that it is the only color left, it seems warm and cozy. So the spots of orange and brown pop out against the gray of the tree trunks and branches. That's what I'm trying to capture.
And I am quilting away on it, between the chores and errands and etc. of life. It's fairly densely quilted so far, that may change as I move across the piece. I just hope I have enough thread to do the whole thing, and avoid my usual problem of running out of a color 4/5 of the way through a piece. Planning ahead is not my strong suit in art.
And there are still bits of a dull acid green about, small trees that haven't given up for the year, the duckweed floating in a pond. So I may find a way to work bits of that color in, maybe some hand stitching. In any event, this is a major piece for me both in time it's taking, in size, and in what it's taught me about where I want to go next.
I started quilting on the gray piece I blogged about a few days ago. The colors remind me of late autumn in my area, when most of the leaves are off the trees, the weather is gray and rainy, but there's a spot of bright color left here and there. So the quilting lines are mimicking tree bark of large trees, with small trees behind.
But now that the quilting is started, and after a walk past the golf course where I saw bald cypress trees turned rust colored reflected in gray water, I realized that I had been looking at the piece upside down.
It just looks right this way. The light spots become reflections of sky on water, the rust the leaves still on the trees. I know it's a very abstract version of what I see that no one else might be able to identify. But that's the way I work. I struggle to compose and design without an inspiration to guide me--I need that to guide me. Even if you don't see it in the final product, I do.
Maybe that's a result of my Midwestern, practical upbringing, that idea that art has to be about something. I am drawn to the abstract expressionists, and drawn to the idea that I want to make art about where I live. So I'm forming a new series, one called Hancock County. I realize that the last couple of pieces I've made are probably in the series. It's about what I see in my everyday life here, the view out the car window at 55 miles per hour. (It's easy to abstract that blurry view). I'll go back and put labels on the pieces I think belong. And when this one is done (I haven't quilted a piece this large in a while...wow), there'll be more coming.
The recovered piece continues to evolve. It has been hanging on my design wall off and on for the past few days, and it just didn't feel right. Maybe it's the image of a human figure I keep imposing on it. Maybe it's the technical difficulty of putting the pieces together. Maybe it's the top piece that I don't like as much as the other pieces.
So today I tried simplifying it to this:
It would be my intent to sew the pieces together so there would be no gaps as show in this snapshot. It has an oriental feel to it, and is much simpler and calmer than the previous variation.
So do I wait another week to see if this the right way? So sew it together and move on with my art? I vacillate even as I type this. Maybe tomorrow I'll decide....or put it off...
And of course this leaves me with three other pieces to play with. I really like the thin long strips that formed the arms...could they be stand alone pieces? I could see them hanging on a narrow wall...art for problem spaces...
I think the piece that started with something I was afraid to cut into is finally done. I have contemplated it for several days, added a bit yesterday, and have decided it is time to stop.
The bit I added yesterday was the shadow circle at the bottom, made of dark (navy?) tulle. I think the piece reads like a diptych now, and I think--I admit I'm not sure--that it balances well. It's a case where the negative spaces may be more important to the design than the positive ones.
And I did a lot of hand stitching on this piece--not the quilting, but seed stitches and French knots here and there. Here's an example:
The first picture is a more accurate rendition of the color than this one; but here you can see the seed stitches. While I am striving toward the 'less is more' school of design, I think that adding texture that can only be appreciated when you approach the piece is a good thing.
I originally just overcast the edges on here, but I actually didn't like the frayed look for a change. I had enough of the acid green silk (which came from a hand dyeing accident--one of the few times I've had color transfer in the washer after dyeing) to use as a single layer binding. I thought about using black, but decided that was because my design wall is black, and not because of what looked right on the piece. I like the echoing of the greenish circle.
The piece is called Lake Cooper after the place I recognized in the original dyed tea towel--the lake formed above the dam on the Mississippi at Keokuk, where I have watched many sunsets on the calm still water, the best ones from my kayak.
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