Just posting some various artwork done in the last 2 months. I'm prepping for my solo show at the Alpert JCC in Long Beach, CA, but I've completed the following pieces as well.
A close friend of 60+ years recently commissioned me to make a piece of art for her contemporary home. Her home’s bright primary colors, accented with lots of black, is not a palate I work in, so I was challenged. I made the work pictured here as a meditation on our friendship. I wove 82 hand-dyed and printed silk and cotton strips and added yellow “diamonds” to the piece to express our treasured relationship. Finally, I overlaid the piece with a black and metallic silver netting, an expression of the difficult and happy times we shared. The finished work measures 26” X 56” and is pictured here with a detail.
Working with a photographer can be a frustrating experience for me. I've put all the effort and momentum into the actual making, and more thinking is required when dealing with a photographer, at least, when it comes to photographing a sculpture. The photographer understands better than I what the camera sees, or can translate. This is the surprising story of a piece I had photographed ... (gulp) ... three times.
I had worked for months on the dyeing techniques of this piece, called "Before". Sidestepping logistics with mounting shaped this piece. An innocent comment early on began a cascade of rethinking. "No gallery will put 12 holes in their walls to mount a piece from one artist" I was told. I already had a carpenter cut wooden blocks, each with carved out spots for powerful magnets. I had completed 3 of the "pods" with appropriately sewn in magnets to mount as initially conceived when the comment came. Ouch. So, no more individual wall mounted pods. Well the benefit of being liberated from the wall-as-anchor was that now the "pods" inherited a "back". They were re-designed to be in space. "Not all galleries can offer a ceiling mount." Oh dear. I worked on different solutions, finally arriving at using an oval panel bolted to 2 wall mounted brackets (and from which the pods hang).
So here is the visual anchor, the "rug". The gray background seems so much nicer than the white: makes the gold rims glow. And pods are hanging lower to the "rug", relating to it better. However, something feels wrong though. It's all so ... constrained.
I dragged my poor art critique group through weeks (and weeks) of torture contemplating the making of the oval, done by weaving strips of rust and tea stained fabric through perforations, and the "rug" with hours and hours of work in its construction and thoughts about its color. Now, both these supposed assets were not helping. The pods seemed desperate for air.
Mindful Mapping was my submission to the ACN exhibition
Unfolding. It was inspired by two workshops presented by Textileartist.org by
Gwenn Hedley and Ali Ferguson.
The process begins by making marks on a number of fabrics
using a limited palette of black and one other color. I chose chartreuse because
it is one of my favorite colors. I used all sorts of things to make the marks:
foam brushes, the edges of a credit card, plastic straws, as well as paint
drips and splatters.
Then I ripped the fabric up into smaller pieces and pinned them together, adding a few solid fabrics that I dyed. When I got the composition, I wanted I began to stitch everything together using a running stitch.
I added some trim and pops of color to represent different ideas that might pop into one’s head. Then I tied the pieces to each other using lots of different hand-stitching. The stitches repeat, define, interweave like thoughts in a mind map.
The final cloth was fused to felt and some stitch in the ditch machine quilting was added mainly to hold everything to the felt.
I want to share a new piece that I made for our current call for entry "Layered". I print a lot of smallish fabric pieces on my gel printing plates. To assemble them into a larger piece is a challenge, but I'm happy with the outcome of my latest explorations and want to continue doing more work in that direction. Fingers crossed that the piece gets juried into our next show!
The piece is called "Late Night Conversations", w 25.5" x H 37.5".
My artist statement for this artwork is this: "Thoughts are swirling and deep philosophical questions are
pondered in late night conversations. We jump from one topic to the next,
sometimes without any logic, only guided by our semi-conscious trains of thought.
The world around us disappears for a while."
The machine stitching is very subtle and doesn't compete with the busyness of the fabrics.
One surprising discovery was that the reverse side looked really intriguing, I was seriously tempted to declare this the front side for a while! Another avenue to pursue, for sure.
I started making Wounded Sentinels during Fire Season in California in 2020. I have been making them with some regularly ever since building an expanding collection of about 20. They range in height from 10" to 7'. Fosshape is the primary medium. It holds its shape when heated. Each piece was created over a form from toilet paper rolls to giant tubes used to form cement.
Recently, I have been going back into some of the earlier ones to add more "ashes" to their outsides. All kinds of studio detritus serve as ashes which I hand stitch in place. These will be on display in my solo exhibition, as yet untitled, in January in Long Beach, CA. Stay tuned!!
From Deborah Weir FiberFly@icloud.com
It may be because its fall with the fading light and the increasing cold or any number of other reasons but I find myself in the throes of making decisions re my studio practice - yet again. I have been here before - when I question what is the purpose of creating more work? why does nothing seem interesting? why did I take that workshop, why am I holding on to these supplies, why, why, why.
And I definitely know that the whole creative process is a series of ups and downs. But - this time it seems deeper. Maybe this time I will really decide that keeping the studio is not a good idea. That I really should get rid of those supplies I don't use, that Sweet Sixteen handi quilter, those print making supplies, those old projects.
Maye it is really time to go to Palm Desert in a couple of months with NO projects. Could I walk away for 3 months? Could I walk away period?
I would love to hear how others have made their decisions in this area - what helped you make a firm decision instead of waffling back and forth.
Barbara Schneider
Fantasy Footwear show at Clarke & Clarke Arts + Artifacts, Mercer Island, WA
Barbara
Matthews
I spent over 40 years in a research career, which involved data gathering, information processing, statistics and modeling -- the opposite continuum from art. I learned the value of working in teams that made the effort fun and synergistic. Now expressing myself artistically by producing shoes for the Fantasy Footwear show provided a way to honor my earlier occupation. Work boots seemed natural, but certainly not stuffy old practical boots, these needed to impart some levity.
The process involves rolling the pile of roving into a roll within bubble wrap, rolling it back and forth, back and forth, hundreds and hundreds of times. The process is meditative. Finally, after rolling, opening, repositioning the fabric, and re rolling the roving the piece begins to shrink, a half an inch with each turn of the fabric. That is the felting process working. This piece became the focus fabric for the boot.
I repeated the process with complementary colors. Now with the fabric pieces in place, how do I make a boot?
Yes, it is possible to find a shoe pattern on online! This one on Etsy from TallerDeCalzado2 in Spain. My initial prototype helped me judge the final size of the piece.
This year Art Cloth Network met for our annual meeting in Austin, Texas and I made a delightful discovery right outside the door of our hotel. Greeting me and my fellow members was a patch of prickly pear cactus and riding their backs was a very special insect in the natural dye world, the Cochineal. Cochineal is a tiny, white scale insect that sucks sap and lives exclusively on this type of cactus. Because of its lifecycle, it is very exclusive and does not spread to other areas, so here was the patch and it will stay put making it a rare find indeed.
Here is the photo of the prickly pear I took in Austin, Texas
Why was I excited about this bug? The Cochineal scale insect is used to produce a valuable red dye that is still used in some parts of the world. When you squish one of these insects in your hand it stains it red or purple depending on the acidity of your skin. The dye industry will use an acid or a base to fine tune the desired color.
Oaxaca, Mexico still grows and harvests the insects and the gorgeous red color is greatly treasured. Here in the US, we have a variety of the insect that produces a red color, but it is often not as vibrant as that found in Mexico. Did I squish a bug to discover the depth of red color? No, I did not have the heart, but photographed it instead and am also offering in this blog photos from a trip to Oaxaca five years ago where I first encountered the insect.
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| The reds in these rugs was made using the natural Cochineal |
I was playing around with idioms we use every day and
thought about the expression “Killing Two Birds with One Stone.” What would a
bird think about this? This inspired me to write the following haiku “Know the
Expression – Killing Two Birds With One Stone? Birds are Not Big Fans. This is
the basis of the quilt Angry Birds
Haiku.
The inspiration for the piece was both the poem and the fabric with the feathers printed with thickened dyes.
Lots of hand stitching on the birds, feather fabric and the
text.
The final design element is machine quilting. They looked pretty
ticked off, don’t you think? Can’t say that I blame them!
