Pink House 5th Anniversary Celebration

Here is my invitation to each wonderful person who has been a part of the success of my business during the past 5 years. Thank you!!!

If you have:

• taken a Pink House class or workshop and have a piece you made here or made later from the techniques you learned, please submit it!
• shown your work at the Pink House in one of my early exhibits, please submit a piece you showed or something similar!
• bought art at the Pink House made by me or another artist, please submit it for temporary display!

This exhibit will not be juried and there are no fees - all submissions will be accepted. For that reason, please submit one piece only. I would like to have an image of the piece you plan to submit, so I can start planning the space. And also let me know if you want to try selling your piece or if it will not be for sale. I'm requesting a 15% commission on work that is sold. Plan on bringing or shipping your piece to me between August 24 and 28.

I plan to have this exhibit up for the month of September, with appropriate social distancing and face masks for visitors. There will not be a formal opening but I will choose a date on which I will open an online view of the exhibit and will post the hours when my gallery will be open.

If you can participate, please call (518-524-0533) or send an email (PinkHouseGallery@gmail.com)

How to See PINK on the Radio

Mammoth sunflowers and pink coneflowers greet visitors to the Pink House in Saranac Lake. Photo: Todd Moe

A lovely thing happened today. The interview recorded with me last week by the fabulous Todd Moe of North Country Public Radio aired on the "Eight o'Clock Hour" program. If you ever wanted to know a little more about Art at the Pink House and my view of this business, click HERE for Todd's audio interview and some photos.

I am SO grateful to every person and every organization that brings my business to the public with such good wishes! My Humble and Everlasting Thanks!

Cris Winters enjoys being surrounded by flowers and art, creating fiber designs in her home studio and tending her front garden at the Art at the Pink House in Saranac Lake. Photo: Todd Moe

Gotta See it

Perrella Gallery

On my way south through the Adirondacks last week, I stopped at the Perrella Gallery on the campus of Fulton-Montgomery Community College near Johnstown, New York. My mission was to see the new fiber art exhibit - Fiber Currents/Current Fibers - which includes the work of a few of my favorite art quilters. Well worth the trip!!!

Having a high quality fiber art exhibit in my part of the world is uncommon (although the annual Quilts Unlimited exhibit is open now at View in Old Forge). I'd like more of that, and that is what my Pink House Gallery in Saranac Lake is about.

For now, yes, I'll drive to see the work of Betty Busby, Wen Redmond, Pat Pauly, Judith Plotner, and others! You should too - so much better in person than via my cell phone photos. Nice catalog for sale too.

"Retia" by Betty Busby

"Pink Leaf 4" by Pat Pauly

"Remembering the Wind" by Wen Redmond

"Brooklyn Ensemble" by Judith Plotner

Gallery at the Pink House

Mixed media by Susan Andrews

More by Susan Andrews

I'm having so much fun showing the work of my artist friends at my gallery. The exhibit "Arrivals & Departures opened on Friday, featuring the work of Susan Andrews. Here are some highlights:

Art by Lynne Taylor, Deborah McDonald, and Carol Boyer (r to l)

Art by Pat Pauly, Cris Winters. Carol Boyer, and Lynne Taylor. (r to l)

Art by Pat Pauly and Cris Winters (r to l)

Zen rocks by Chad Pattison

New Directions

My first experience with deconstructed screen printing. I took Kerr Grabowski's workshop at the Schweinfurth in Auburn, NY last week, and my work will probably never be the same! Above is one of my screens with dye and thickener ready to be pulled down the screen, along with part of a previous print just showing above. We printed mostly on cotton fabric but I did a few experiments on paper and sheer fabrics. Below is a different print on sheer silk organza, after several passes with the same screen. Love it!

Happy Information Overload

On Friday I drove to Essex Junction, VT with Pat Pauly to view the Vermont Quilt Festival. The image above represents my experience there: loads of color, spectacular techniques, fresh ideas, and a lot happening all at once! (Apologies to the artist who made this masterpiece. We were about to leave and I forgot to photograph her tag. Love it!)

It was fun to go there with Pat. She pointed out many pieces, techniques, and artists I couldn't quite put into context because of my inexperience in this little universe of quilts. And when we left, she asked me how I would view the event if (or, more likely, when) I come again. A great question! I answered then and have thought about it since then. I would

• Buzz through the entries quickly then go back and spend more time on a few favorites (usually in the contemporary abstract category).
• Spend more time in the special exhibits area and attend more of the talks there. Loads to learn from the experts there.
• Make a better shopping list before I go! Now that I know I can buy almost anything related to fiber art there, I'll know what to expect. I did pretty well though - found several things I want for the workshop I'm taking at QBL in a few weeks, including silks at this very inviting booth.

Big Brown Dot

Taking one of my little business card size fabric collages and making a larger piece with the same design. What happens next?!

Showing Off

Showing Off

That's the name I chose for this new piece - "Showing Off." I realize now that maybe you think I'M showing off! Not really. It's this male Red-winged Blackbird who is showing off his red wing patches on his territory. In fact, using a new technique is often a lot of pleasure and a little fear, especially when it gets hung on a public wall immediately. It's headed to the Birds of a Feather Exhibit at the the Paul Smith's College VIC today.

Detail Showing Off

Detail : Showing Off

Since attending my first meeting of Studio Art Quilt Associates in early May, I am more resolved than ever to work hard at this relatively new art career of mine. My choice to work with fabric and images puts me into a category that is not exactly on everyone's radar. I (and my SAQA colleagues) see it as making fine art with a wonderfully rich and flexible medium. Others may view it as just messing around with quilts that didn't quite work out. Some of local exhibitions I have entered have prize categories that consist of Painting, Sculpture, and Photography. Not even a Mixed Media category. I am entirely left out of consideration.

Still, I have received recognition, including a recent Honorable Mention in one of the more prestigious juried art shows in our region for a fiber collage piece. And that has happened before. But I think it's time to expand the geographic area where I show my work. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to do that these days. And there are many generous artists who are willing to help.

A Bird, A Book, A Show

 I'm thinking about birds a lot. It's the season for that. On our recent trip, my husband took some bird photos that I love. This one - a Red-winged Blackbird - really grabbed me.

Then there's the annual Bird Art exhibit that is part of the Great Adirondack Birding Festival at the Paul Smith's College VIC the first weekend in June.

Mix those things up with Jean Wells' book - Journey to Inspired Art Quilting - that I have been exploring, and I have something to push me along with a new piece.

Stay tuned for how the bird fits in.









I also have to tell all my Adirondack buddies that we now have a greatly expanded selection of beautiful fabrics right here in Saranac Lake, at Beth Gallagher's Piece by Piece Studio. Go see for yourself!

Synergy Pieces 3 & 4

 

I've been traveling for the past two weeks. Loads of inspiration and images to work with. But as Ron drives (how nice is that?!) I've been stitching. Cathy and I continue with our small art pieces based on photos that we take turns sharing. This lovely fall photo from Cathy was tweeked a bit by me to increase the color saturation, which sent me right to the polka dot fabric in my stash. I fused the tree trunks on then couched some old rayon floss for the branches. More small colorful pieces of fabric were fused on for the colorful leaves. Fun!

The photo below is one of mine that I have been playing around with for awhile. I love those contrasting colors in that sweet Japanese mortar.

And this is what I am doing with it - embroidering those lines in the bowl.

Synergy Piece #2

 

Here is Cathy's photo for our weekly Synergy project. I was leaving for a couple of days, so I experimented in the car with a glue stick and the only piece of junk mail I had. 

 

Here is what I tried in my sketch book. It's a blurry photo - early spring roads! It was helpful 

to work with the design issues this way. Below this is the nearly-final piece, embellished with some embroidery. The butterfly needs a little work.

 

Interpreting a Photo in Fabric & Threads

Between a wonderful trip to Oaxaca, Mexico and the more mundane stuff of life, I have a head full of ideas and images and a calendar too full of To Dos.

But a friend and I started a weekly project together, as we try to generate ideas for our joint exhibit coming up at our gallery, NorthWind Fine Arts, in September. The idea is that each week one of us chooses a photo we have taken that we really love and share it on Wednesdays. Then she interprets the photo in watercolor and I do it in fabrics and fibers.

The photo here is one I took of the ARIPO gallery doorway in Oaxaca. The sight of that blooming jacaranda tree at the back of the gallery's courtyard  against that blue sky woke me right up one morning as I walked to my breakfast cafe.

I loosely interpreted the image with several fabrics and some hand embroidery, which I have been itching to do recently, incited by the fabulous blog "And Then We Set It in Fire..." The lavender jacaranda flowers are done in French knots - a favorite stitch.

Daily Practice Redux

I'm back to a Daily Practice (How do I let that slide? So important!!), using the exercises and gorgeous images from Jean Wells' book Journey to Inspired Art Quilting as my initial guide. The photo above of the orange peppers and knife with a Japanese dish was already in my journal. I drew some of my ideas on how I would turn the photo into a fiber piece, using Jean's exercise on Journaling to get me started.

Lots of other projects happening now as well, which I will include here in bits and pieces. Below is a fabric and digital photo collage I completed last week, now framed under glass and hanging in our gallery, NorthWind Fine Arts. The beginning of this piece - the torn-and-sewn pond lily photos on fabric - began as one of my Daily Practice experiments last March.

Putting It Together

 The four pieces of printed photo are now laid out on turquoisey blue cotton, layered over thin cotton batting and a heavy cotton backing, and I have stitched along the flow lines of the photo with grey, turquoise, and lavender thread.

I'm learning lots from this project about how my sewing machines moves - or not - over different thicknesses and textures.

Below is one of four grey linen borders. I layered the same cotton batting beneath. I sewed the first two borders on first, before quilting them by machine. Then I learned something else - do most of the quilting on the borders BEFORE adding them to the central panel!

Only a couple more steps to go!

Transformation Underway

The image above shows the textured stabilizer I made with my edited stream photo printed on top. I make this printing substrate by coating medium to heavy weight stabilizer (a.k.a. interfacing) with either acrylic molding paste (like art-grade spackling compound) or - in this case - fiber paste. I spread on a thin layer with an old credit card. When it dried, I lightly sanded it then painted on thin layers of acrylic paint thinned with matte medium. I mixed some pearl medium into the paints this time for some snowy luminescence.

After the paint dried thoroughly, I ran the stabilizer through my fancy inkjet printer to print my photo, now transformed with contrast, saturation, and hue enhancements with Paint.net - my favorite image editing software (easy, free, on-line, although I send a donation about once year, since I love it!). The image was then trimmed and deconstructed. Ready for for layering and stitching.

Any questions so far? Guess what happens next!

Now You See It

Earlier this week, I went for walk to see for myself whether the lake near my studio was still frozen after all the ridiculously warm rainy weather. Yes, still solid. But other waters were flowing, including this tiny stream next to the dirt road. The off-balance cruciform shape appealed to me.

You are invited to follow along as I take this plain photograph on a transformation journey!