the importance of play

I also do watercolor. In that medium, I play with small pieces every day, keeping a feel for the problematic water/paint ratio, trying new things, now adding in goache and acrylics. But for some reason, I've avoided doing that practice, that play in fiber.

Can't quite figure out why. Somthing about fiber being more important (to me), or the cost of materials, or some undiscovered reason. I tend to think that every piece of fiber art I make is important. And it shouldn't be. It should be that some are, but some are just learning experiences that will never leave the house, even as jpg's on the web.

I should practice what I preach to my classes--to follow the Doritos principle: Use it, they'll make more.

In that vein, I've started playing with fiber. I've been trying to make needle felted hedgeapples; so far the examples are interesting looking (translation: they have a nice personality), but not very evocative of hedge apples. I have a big piece involving them I'm designing in my head, but that's not playing around...

Then yesterday I dug in my fun box. It is filled with snips and pieces (Ann, you don't get them all) of things that didn't work, things that needed trimming, pieces from playdates where we tried new processes. I took a piece of polyester that had been disperse transfer dyed, trimmed it down. Then I fused some curves of hand dyed silk on. Next came lots of close quilting, using a piece of felted wool sweater as a background and as a batting. Here's the result:

I got lucky. This one came out pretty nice. It is a little greener in person than it's showing up on my monitor. Anyway, this is a keeper. But if they aren't, back into the box they go for another time. Some of the postcards I made for Fiberart for a Cure were the result of these bits and pieces. So far, I don't think any of them have led to bigger pieces, but I'm sure that things I have learned that no one else can see have made their way into other work.

The moral of this story is take time to play. Don't worry about the outcome.

December and the end of a series

I blame myself. I had been thinking that I never had portrayed this little tree in snow, and on the first day of December we get 10 inches of the stuff. So instead of digging out, I made this month's entry.

During much of the year, the buckeye lives in the shadow of some large Norway spruces. In those late fall and winter months, it receives no direct sunshine. So when examining the tree from all angles visible inside the house, what struck me most about it was the shadows of the spruces on the snow around the bare limbs sticking out--and the fact that I could already see the buds for next year from a distance.


For the first time in this series, the above scan isn't quite right color wise. There are more subtle variations in it, and the wrinkles that show up aren't that visible in real life. The background is silk, the tree is hand dyed cotton. The tree was free hand cut and fused to the silk.

The quilting borders on being a little sweet. It was meant to be snowflakes drifting down, but they're more cute than anything.

The words say "December Beckons Us Onward." That's because this series is leading me onward. Looking back over the year, some pieces are better than others, some are more abstract, some border on being too canned, some approach being art. I view them as a series of sketches, a remembrance of the year 2006.

Next year's theme is going to be something more abstract. I expect the season of the year, the weather, events, to influence the pieces, but I also hope that previous ones inform later ones, that the series improves with the year. I'm not sure this year did. But maybe I can't see the forest for the buckeye trees.

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.

October buckeye

Autumn is a time of big changes around here, although this year that's been hard to see sometimes. We've had record highs, chilly nights, clear blue skies, dreary grey days. Ok, a typical midwest fall.

The buckeye tree has compound leaves (technically that means that what you might perceive as leaves are actually leaflets on a leaf stalk; you can tell by looking for the bud for next year's leaf) As with most compound leaves around here, the leaflets fall off, leaving the bare stalks on the tree for a few days. In the case of a Kentucky coffee tree near the buckeye, the stalks are red and really stand out. The buckeye currently has yellow leaf stalks, no leaflets in sight unless you look on the ground, and a few pieces of open buckeye pods.

So this piece began with the inspiration of the clear deep blue skies and the leaf stalks and the curly, fuzzy seed pods. The basic background is a piece of old damask tablecloth that had been dyed with osage orange to an ochre color. Using masking tape stencils to mask out the leaf stalks, I painted the sky with Setacolor paints.

After that dried, I removed the masks and painted the stalks to give them some depth. Three pieces of a curled up pod were scanned and printed onto raw silk. I cut these out and fused them to the background. The quilting lines remind me of the floating and soaring of leaves in the autumn wind. The words 'October Breezes By' were stamped on the lower edge.


When I started this series in January, I was obsessed with the shape of the tree, and thought it would dominate this series. But the last few months I have been playing with the seed pods. I guess it goes to show that is one of the benefits of doing a series is that you don't know where it will take you. The series takes over to some degree. Of course, the next two months, leafless months, may cause the tree form to come back to my art. Wait and see.

defining fiber

I find lately that my work has ceased being 'art quilts'. For one thing, it seldom has three layers, unless you count the layer of applique on top of the top layer...for another, it's starting to include fibers that aren't really fabric.

For instance, I'm working (although it feels like playing) on a piece that starts on a failed monotype on paper. Failed in the sense that it was a messy pull off the plate, and it just didn't work on its own. To it I've already added some silk and some metal foiling. After I had stitched across the paper--wonder if it dulls needles like it dulls scissors. Probably. But it's become a little piece of art.

My work does better in art shows than in quilt shows, maybe because I've strayed too far from quilt rules--I actually like uneven, big stitches. But that's ok with me I think.

I'm busy working on getting ready for a big solo show in February (in Jacksonville, Illinois, more details later), and I find the freedom of being able to frame or not frame a piece, to include an oddball material like window screening or twigs is a good thing.

So my definition of 'fiber art' is expanding. A picture of the first piece is below....percentage wise, it's around 10% fabric. But paper is fiber. So it's somewhere between fiber art and mixed media and the only time I have to define it is if I enter it in a show with categories.

september buckeye

September has landed in Illinois with a dry, cool breeze and a bright blue sky. Of course, part of that is because we're in a drought. But leaves are starting to turn, and the buckeye pods are ripening. The leaves are starting to turn yellow and dry up.

And in looking back at the previous months, I thought it was time to capture the clusters of buckeyes. The pods are kind of elongated, almost pointy on the ends. The buckeyes inside are fairly round, but the pods aren't. One morning this week, they were capturing the sun on their fuzzy surface, and I saw what I wanted to depict.


I began with a piece of tablecloth linen that I had dyed using osage orange and some nails. Using Shiva paintsticks, I first drew on the shapes of the pods. Then I used a small stencil brush to smooth out the color and to add highlights and lowlights of other colors. I have found that unless I'm using stencils, I like drawing directly on the fabric first with the paintsticks. Probably it's my impatience, but just using stencil brushes seems to take too long to start seeing the look I want.

I stared at the impressionistic cluster of pods for a while. I thought I was going to stitch around them and add hints of leaves using thread only slightly different in color than the background. But when it came time to do it, there was black thread on my machine and I was compelled to try it out first. Liking what I saw, I continued (the piece was backed with a piece of felt by this point) doing the whole thing in black. I think the result looks like a pen and ink sketch.

The words are 'September Ripens', a reference to the setting in of fall. By October I fear all the leaves will be off this little tree, and the cold winds of winter will be heard faintly in the distance. The year has sped by, as usual, but the little line of these pieces on my design wall marks the time passage.