Red Lines on the Brown Dot

The Brown Dot is getting its embellishments on the shore of Keuka Lake. I think if we were not traveling so much this year, I would never have started and continued all this hand stitching. And it is so much fun!

Lots of small fabrics collages were completed on this trip too. They will be either matted or framed under UV glass, most for the Made in the Adirondacks festival in Blue Mountain Lake on July 19th.

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.

Have You Seen an Art-O-Matic?

This girl is admiring the little piece of art she got from the refurbished old cigarette machine purchased a few years ago by two forward-thinking artists in our town - Todd Smith and Matt Burnett. in this photo, it was placed on the sidewalk for one of our summer art walks, and the crowd was literally lined up down the street to put in their $1 tokens to get a piece of art created by our local artists. Artists were asked to create little works of art of a size to fit into a little box the size of a pack of cigarettes. Great fun for all, and a nice PR machine for all of us in the Saranac Lake arts community. In some places it is called an "Art-O-Matic". We named ours the "Smokin' Art Machine". Very Cool.

This summer, Matt is going to set up the Art Machine at the Wild Center - the natural history museum of the Adirondacks. Another Very Cool part of the Adirondacks. The pluses of having the Art Machine there include having the machine indoors all summer with someone trained to maintain it (i.e. knowing when it needs a gentle nudge to get the tokens down the chute and when it needs a vigorous kick).

So, the reason for me to even bring this up is that Matt invited local artists to make more little pieces for the machine. I didn't have too much time, and I decided to try something I kept thinking about but have never done - making some fabric collage and cutting the collage into little pieces to fit into the Art Machine boxes as I was preparing for our long trip in April and early May. Here was my process:

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I fused fabric scraps to a canvas backing.

Then I stitched over the fabric pieces.

 Once stitched, I flipped the collage and marked the sizes I needed. Then I cut them apart with my rotary cutter. When I turned them over, I was delighted with the little rectangles. Each one was a little work of art! I packed them up for our trip, along with my embroidery supplies and decorated each piece as we covered the miles. Can I part with them now?!

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!

My Process

Today I was viewing the blog of a quilter and saw that she had taken the "Process Pledge." I'm all about the process and love to see the processes of other artists of all kinds, so I took the pledge too. I hope you'll enjoy hearing about what I do to get me going, keep me going, and what happens as a result.

And I am continuing in my current process of making a daily art practice a real habit. I missed a day - last Sunday - when we went out in the morning, took a long walk, and had guests while whirling around getting the house in order after a crazy week. I didn't feel too awful about it, as the previous several days were filled with art projects, plans, and commitments.

Wild grape drawing

April 6

I attended a print making class, using Silk Cut Lino sheets at Bluseed Studios in Saranac Lake taught by Robynn Smith. This material was lovely to work with, although still hard to find in  the U.S. (made in Australia). Several of my arty friends attended too and it was great fun. I carved two plates, both from drawings I did awhile ago of wild grape. I need more practice, but here is the result.

Our instructor, Robynn, is a wonderful teacher and an impressive artist. Brave too, coming from California to the slush-embedded Far North of her own free will!

Two finished prints

I plan to use these plates to print on fabric soon.

April 8

Red-eyed Owl

April 9

Detail of small quilt "Ice Moons"

I have been playing with this photo printed on cotton for awhile. It was taken in early winter when the pools of water at a marsh edge were beginning to freeze, trapping lots of air bubbles near the ice surface. This little piece is finished now.






April 10

This morning, I pulled out this tiny watercolor. It was a student's practice sheet from a few semesters ago, and it looks like a landscape with an arc or rainbow moving across it. It is a lovely little "accident" that gave me another way of working toward a piece I am planning. I used it on a journal spread that I played on to make a similar landscape (not as graceful as the original, I think) and to do some other "designed accidents" - all tiny - that apply to the project.

Landscape with arc and rocks

Watercolor print with a photo fragment

Fragments and Imaginings

April 4

 Today I sorted through more fabric fragments to find some combinations that worked for more fiber collages. Many of these are upholstery and drapery fabrics from decorating projects in former homes. The sources are long-forgotten, unfortunately.

April 5
I used my daily practice time this morning to look at the work of Charlotte Ziebarth. I have seen her wonderful art quilts in Quilting Arts magazine and wanted to see more. I am very attracted to her grid format, her altered photos on fabric, and her natural subject matter, Here is a detail from her quilt "Marsh Morning Mists." I think we live in the same Universe.

Finding My Birds

April 2
Thinking about Birds for some fiber collage pieces. I found a photo of a Scarlet Tanager from a birding trip brochure, then I found some drawings I made for a Partners in Flight brochure some years ago, in black & white for the printing process we used. Colored with watercolor pencils and blended with my waterbrush. Love that red and black.














April 3

Here is the tanager with my fabric selection. Might work.

Little Fiber Collages

March 31

Today I played with some fragments that seemed happy together. A little fiber collage series, perhaps.  But I feel a little stuck now. My sweetie put an old necktie in the discard pile, and it sat around for awhile until I decided to put  in  my stash because I love the birds on that black background (below). Then he decided he might wear it again, at just about the time I decided those birds would be perfect additions to my collages.

What would YOU do?! He IS retired now .....

One of the charming birds on the disputed necktie

April 1

Since I first looked at the book Quilting: Line + Color by Yoshiko Jinzenji I have been itching to try some of the beautiful and simple designs - reserved bursts of color on white cotton.
This is my initial attempt at the "fracture" line on white made by reverse applique. Another piece of white fabric to be laid over this, basted over the red line, and cut to reveal the color. A bit challenging.

Still at Work

March 30, 2013

 Two small projects from a morning in my studio.

Free-motion stitched plant forms on patterned organza over batting. Fun!

A pale printed border made from a photo with mirror imaging designed for an old project. I printed the original photo with some images of plants that grew near this beaver dam. I am playing with placement, repeating images, and other fabric for a quilted fiber collage.