study and scraps

Can you do a study AFTER a piece is done? I feel like that's what I have done, so I guess one can. It started with the scraps from the piece I've been showing in other blog entries like here, and was driven by ideas I had while making it. Like thinking what if I use this color of thread? What if I add more rust to it? So this is the result of my first 'after study':

November B

The piece is quite small compared to the big one--which by the way as been named November--but I needed something quick and easier to handle than the big one (it had been a while since I tried to force something that big under the needle). It measures 10.5" wide by 8.5" high, and features some of the same elements as November--the amorphic cheesecloth, the vertical 'tree trunks'.

But the primary stitching is done in a yellow green thread from Sulky. I had added some hand stitching to the original piece in these colors, but it only shows up when you get close to it. And from a distance, it's not real obvious on this piece. But it adds a liveliness to the piece that I like.

It was lacking focus, though. I had a kayak shaped piece of rust silk I auditioned on it (kayaks being one of my favorite go to shapes), but it was too large. I started by cutting it down with free hand rotary cutting, and the shape of the piece and the slice chopped off caught my eye--the negative space between them. So I cut the other side off, too, so that I would have three pieces, and was left with I think of as a 'deconstructed kayak.' I really like this shape; it will surely show up in future pieces.

So I guess the final answer to my question is yes, you can do studies after the fact. Working on a big piece always presents alternate paths that deserve to be explored, even if just in studies. Who knows where that path will lead? This is the joy of doing a series--the serendipity of discovery along the way.

By the way, this piece is for sale, directly from me, for $75. It is mainly silk with some cotton cheesecloth, and should be mounted on mat board for display.

New Etsy items

I added a few (ok, four) new pieces to my etsy shop. I haven't given up on it entirely, and had some extra things I wanted to put on there.

This piece, Winter Woods 2, is a small piece I made from scraps of hand painted fabric. I use a piece of mat board with a 4"x6" opening, move it around the scraps until something captures my eye. Then I added some details, often with free motion thread stitching like the tree here. In a way they are quickly made, except for the time spent making the fabric in the first place.

This piece seems appropriate for today in particular--the view outside my window of the park across the street looks just like this--gray, cold, dismal, and yet mysterious and alluring.

In honor of Kathryn

Today would have been my mother's 95th birthday. A few days ago we passed the 20th anniversary of her death.

She was a high school English teacher, a full time working mother in a time when that wasn't very common.

So in her honor, let me direct you to a site with a vocabulary game called Free Rice. As you play it, every word you get correct (no one knows if it's an educated guess) earns 10 grains of rice to be given to someone who needs it. The site is an off shoot of poverty.com, which an educational site about world hunger. The rice is paid for with the small ads that appear below the vocabulary words.

And who knows, you might learn a new word or two.

Warning, it can be addictive...

holiday gift buying

The prices of my art work will be going up the first of the year. So now would be a good time to do some holiday shopping on my website. As an added bonus, I will have free shipping in the US until the end of the year. Although I don't yet have a shopping cart set up on my website, you can pay through my paypal account. Just email me.

manipulation and inspiration

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.

Form Not Function

This piece, Strata 2, has been accepted to the Form, Not Function show at the Carnegie Center for Art and History, New Albany, Indiana. The show will be open from January 11-March 8, 2008.

While I have entered this piece in a couple of shows, it's never been accepted before. Anther one rejected by this show was accepted by another. Things like that keep me from taking any acceptance or rejection too seriously--it's all in the eye of a particular judge putting together a specific show. It is out of my hands.

manipulation continued

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.