thread sketching

Somehow I got way behind on reading the magazines I get about fiber art--Quilting Arts, Fiber Arts, the Surface Design Association Journal. As I caught up with them, I started seeing pieces that made me want to work on my photo fiber pieces again...and to experiment to find a way to use them more effectively. Ok, and I also got a wide format printer to print them on...

My first experiment started with a photo of two white pelicans that I took below the Keokuk, Iowa dam last year. Since the great flood of '93, white pelicans have been stopping here in the spring and fall as they migrate. I may be slightly obsessed with them.

The photo I cropped and manipulated in Photoshop Elements, and then printed it on cotton organza. It's a very evocative picture, kind of foggy, vague, very low key. I then fused it a piece of multicolored commercial fabric that is mostly greens and violets. Then I started stitching.


Ok, but not quite what I was thinking of. A little too coarse maybe? So I stitched some more.
This is more like it. Maybe it doesn't show up online, but the stitching closer together is more calm looking, more of a flow and not as jarring. But the pelicans aren't quite showing up. So I touched them up with some white pearl Jacquard Luminere paint.


To buy this piece, click here.

I also trimmed the piece and overstitched the edge. As a sketch, it's pretty much done. Can't figure out any way to improve this particular piece. Did I learn anything? Yes, I think I did--subtle can work, a piece can be too low key. Contradictory things? Not really. In person, the piece works better than it does in these scans. But it's still just a sketch. And that's ok, it's the kind of thing I need to do more. I had an art workshop instructor tell me the secret to good painting, which I summarize as 'think, think, think, plan, plan, plan, paint'. Substitute sketch for one of the plan steps, and that's all I am doing. Learning to make art.

new show

I have had an opportunity come up at the last minute to have another solo show. For the month of April, some of my fiber and watercolor pieces will be hanging in the lobby of Blessing Hospital in Quincy, Illinois.

Hope you can stop by.

new beginnings

I have been neglecting this blog, that needs to change. Starting now, I want to publish more often, to keep reporting on where art is taking me.

Last summer when I was flying over the midwest, I was looking down on the landscape and thinking about all the art I had seen based on the patchwork like intersection of fields and roads. But I couldn't remember seeing much that included the creeks and rivers flowing through, adding curves to the straight lines. I came up with this abstracted sketch:



I wasn't sure this was the right configuration of straight and curved lines, so I doodled in my journal:



Next came the fun part, playing with fabric. My first attempt involved a naturally dyed piece of linen, all squares the same, with the creek line depicted strictly with lines of black thread stitching.



OK, but not quite what I was looking for. The next try I painted heavy canvas, leaving white spaces to denote the field edges, and a piece of blue ribbon stitched on for the creek.



This is actually my favorite. It's painterly, fairly abstract, nicely colored. But I kept going.

This began with a piece of hand dyed raw silk. I used decorative stitching to mark the field edge, a different stitch and varigated thread to do the creak. The piece is quilted to a piece of felt. Then I stenciled on the shadow of my plane crossing the landscape. Probably a mistake. I think it destroys the abstract illusion--maybe it's better to let the viewer interpret something on their own without shoving it in their face?



But, since I follow the Doritos principle of fabric (use it, they'll make more), I tried one more time. This piece has the feel of reverse applique, in actuality it's a black background with earth colored silk sewn on top. It does make the creek sink into a lower level, where it should be. The plow lines are mimicked by stitching. It's probably my second favorite.



So what have I learned from this series? I worked through an idea, explored it, got it out of my system. Ended up with some pieces I regard as sketches. But I stretched some, applied techniques I've picked up along the way. Had fun. That's an important part of being an artist, isn't it?

working in series

I've been working on pieces inspired by the photo in the last posting. I kept dyeing silk, not getting the color I wanted, and ending up with nice pieces of fabric that weren't what I wanted...but somehow most of them have ended up in pieces in progress. If I had to pick, one of them would be the most representative of what the picture says to me, but they all are abstracted from the same point in time and space.

Now that I've had a couple of solo shows, I find myself wondering where to go from here. And keep coming back to the notion that my body of work is kind of a scattered vision of the world. People tell me they can pick out my work; I don't always see that. But seeing a large portion of my work on the walls of a gallery, I see this jumping from place to technique to play. I think I want to try to get a cohesive set of pieces, one that anyone can see go together.

But where to start? That's the problem I've been mulling over the last few weeks. This challenge group is one series, but I have no where to go from that--one piece hasn't really led to the next. I have another piece in progress, one exploring the idea of stratification, such as seen in the canyons of the southwest. I'm just not sure if I can find the next step to take to make a group out of this...

And so I continue to putter. I have made pieces lately, just haven't gotten around to photographing them so I could show them to you. My growth as an artist feels like it's stepping in place--I'm ready to take the next step, as soon as I can see where to plant my feet.

doldrums and business stuff

I haven't made much art lately. Of course there was the holidays, with the cold I always get from one of my blood relatives. But mostly I've been getting ready for my next solo show (opening Feb. 3, 2007, 6-8pm, at the David Strawn Art Gallery in Jacksonville, IL). Doing the stuff I always put off until I have to do it, sewing on sleeves, making hanging rods, cutting mats. And my sewing machine is in the shop.

But the sun is shining today, and most of the work is done. So I've been painting fabric. I used an idea from the Quilt Art list, of laying fabrics when you're painting so you get more than one piece. Although they go together, I'm trying to think of a way to layer them in a piece, offsetting them a little maybe...and I used up the extra paint I had put out in my palette making an abstract stripy piece, using shiva paintsticks as a resist before painting.

And I read in the latest Craft Reports about one problem I may have created for myself--they say people are looking for big art, not small. So I'm working bigger for a while again. Individual pieces may take longer (and thus priced higher), but they certainly have more impact on the wall. Small pieces are good for working out problems and learning techniques, but in the end big may be better. I'm not sure about that--I could argue both sides. Time will tell.

All of the painting and playing I have done lately is in pursuit of a challenge I issued to my fellow River Road Fiber Artists--make something based on this picture I took last summer in Ames, Iowa.



So far I have four pieces in progress that I can trace to this one photo. Inspiration is truly all around us.

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.