Small work

I've spent the last few days in the studio, and I've been pretty productive. I finished 2 pieces which were tops, finally, so that they can be juried for a group show next month.

Since June I've been making a small (8x10) piece a week. Well, that's the goal - I tend to get behind. I have some rules, or rather guidelines that I work from: one a week, 8x10, explore perspective, use scraps, aim for abstraction. So far, I'm pretty good at making them 8x10. I haven't kept up with them weekly, but I'm close to caught up for '06. Close. Anyway, this is the latest one. It's pieced.


I'm pleased with it. I did 3 this week, all of them trees. I'll post the others another day.

Today's Holiday Hint

I've discovered that you can freeze homemade pumpkin pie, but once it's thawed out, it's not worth eating.

For some reason (maybe there's a warp in the space time continuum) but things have been jumping out of my hands for the last week. Today, a spool of thread leapt across my sewing table and down the hall way. Friday, a bowl jumped into two mugs and knocked them onto the counter and then to the floor. A million pieces. And the list goes on. I'm glad I'm not carrying a baby around!

It's been a long day. I planned to work all day, but I found out that a big fabric store not too far away is having a liquidation sale. I bought more than 22 yards of fabric (he was very generous with ends of bolts) 10 spools of thread (6 metallic, more about which later) and 6 small rotary cutter blades for less than $100. Including tax. I can't dye fabric any more, and I'm not patient enough to paint it, so I use commercial fabrics a lot. This was a good opportunity for me to get some monochromatic pieces with texture, and the like. I loaded up the cart, and then went back through it to cull the bolts I really didn't need.
So here's what I bought.

That shiny piece on the end is silver tissue lame. I know, it's really hard to work with, but it will make cool purses.

The thread is Coats and Clark, and it works well. A lot better than Sulky metallics.

Then I tried to finish one little piece, just one! But the thread broke, I lost my place in the quilting (black on black, always a bad idea.) I don't know how many time I ripped stuff out, and I'm not that particular! But I persevered, and finally quit to go to yoga. Which I discovered I wasn't signed up for, after I drove through rush hour traffic. But enough people didn't show up so I got in, in the end.

Tomorrow is another day.

Here is a quote from Nancy Crow's new book: Nancy Crow, by Nancy Crow. It shows her work and has exerpts from her creative journal. Anyway, this one appeals to me because my husband thinks I over-react when he interupts me.



He gets really put out with me for being impatient, so Cathy sent me the quote. I showed it to my husband this morning, and he was not amused. But at least he knows now that it's not just me. I'm not sure what good that will do me, but . . .

New Drawing

My brother and I are encouraging each other to draw more. He sent me a drawing that he did of his workshop, and this is the drawing I'm going to send to him tomorrow. It's graphite, of a child's rocker that belonged to our Great Aunt Kitty. I see some things I need to correct, but over all I'm pleased with it. I think that the proportions are pretty close to correct, and I've made great progress in the use of perspective. Understanding perspective has been one of my goals for the year, and I have a long way to go, but not as far as I had to go 6 months ago!

Diane Rehm Show on Art Quilts

Diane Rehm had as her guest today a woman name Gayle Pritchard, who has written a book called "Uncommon Threads: Ohio's Art Quilt Revolution. I thought they'd actually talk about the art quilt movement.

Very little was said about art quilts. Penny McMorris was mentioned twice and Nancy Crow once. QSDS, zero. I don't remember any other art quilters mentioned. Oh, someone mentioned David Walker. I suppose the show sort of has to follow the lead of the callers, and they were all of the "my grandmother used to quilt" variety. I was so disappointed. I really thought there would be something substantive; that show is usually pretty good. They actually talked about t-shirt quilts and Holly Hobbie quilts, which are fine, but hardly fit the "art quilt" category. There was a little chat about Gees Bend, but even then, those quilts don't meet the author's (not my) definition of art: something made purposefully to express a concept. Pritchard also implied that only people with formal art degrees can be artists, and Diane said that she thinks all quilts are art. The discussion perpetuated the image of old women sitting around a frame. One caller even mentioned coffee cans for the women who dipped snuff. That image is about as far from most contemporary quilting, traditional or original, as it could get.

Makes me mad. If the guest had been a painter, you can bet the "my grandmother used to paint" calls would have been rejected.

Post Thanksgiving update

I had big plans for posting over the Thanksgiving weekend, but alas. We had a great holiday, 14 members of my family! It was really nice to be together. I made 9 pies, including a new recipe for apple pie. My family doesn't cotton to changes in the menu, especially their apple pie, but the new one went faster than the traditional one. I guess it's a keeper.



This is my latest. I've been doing postcards, but this is about 18 x 24. I like the curved piecing, and even though I rarely use browns, I like this a lot. I have several more tops finished, but not quilted. This one needs the edges finished. I'll probably face it.

I'm in a local group, the Fiber Artists of Baltimore, which is having a group show in January. I'll need all new work for it, so I've been busy. I will also have some postcards for sale in the Columbia Art Center's holiday art sale, so I've been cranking those out too. Maybe I'll get some of them photographed today, before I take them over.

Thanksgiving Tradition

Thanksgiving is here already. Our weather has been cold and clear, but today is gloomy. #2 son flies in tonight from Atlanta, and tomorrow we'll be joined by #1 son and my sister and her family. My father and stepmother will come on Thursday, with my stepsister and her husband. My nieces and nephew will join us too.

I love Thanksgiving. It's such a family holiday, without all the tensions and anxiety of Christmas. No decorating to speak of, just food. And I can do food. I'll start the pies in a few minutes. We have to have the pumpkin pies made by Wednesday, because our tradition (for the 4 of us) is to eat pumpkin pie for breakfast on Thanksgiving. It began when the boys were little, and we would drive to Richmond on Thanksgiving morning. I bribed them to get moving by saying we'd eat pumpkin pie in the car! And we've kept it up ever since, and the boys are 26 & 24. I hope we always do it.

New Drawing

This is my most recent drawing assignment. We were to sit in a dark room and draw a lighted space. I chose to draw in the den looking out toward the hallway.

Valley of Fire

Not being a gambler, Las Vegas has never been high on my list of places to go, but when my husband offered to take me along on a business trip, I went. We were only there for a few days, and it was not at all as I had imagined.

While he was at his conference, I took a tour to Valley of Fire State Park. It was really interesting. Since I'm a life-long East Coast resident, the landscape fascinated me. The color palette is so different, and there are no trees to speak of. There were some palm trees around the resort/casinos, but I don't think they are native species. Here are some photos I took in Valley of Fire.

This is what the landscape looked like.

There are lots of petroglyphs in the park, and this boulder fell off a high cliff, so it's more accessible than some of the other petroglyph sites.

Here is a close up. If you look closely, you can see the various animals depicted: a snake, a sheep, and a mountain goat.

This is another site, higher up. It's been defaced with spray paint (WHAT are people thinking?), but I don't think any of that is in the photo.

I like the places in the sandstone where the wind has created holes, or little caves. Once a hole gets to a certain size, the wind whips the sand around inside it and carves out a circle in the side of the hill. This cave is big enough to stand up in, and it curves around inside to a point where the wind has carved a window looking out over the landscape. Pretty cool.

This arch is tall enough for a person to walk through. I'd guess it's about 7 feet high.

We stopped by a hot spring, and this sign was by the water. Eeewwww!

Here is another petroglyph site. I loved the way the blue sky contrasted with the red of the sandstone.

And this is what the sky really looked like. I've never seen such a blue and cloudless sky.

More Trees

Yesterday, I made another small (8" x 10") piece with trees. These trees were free-motion embroidered on a light weight fabric, and then cut away using an exacto tool. Finally, I stitched them to the background.

After drawing the trees on sketch paper, I traced them onto the lightweight fabric, and put the fabric in a hoop. I used a straight stitch, whereas in the previous example I used a free-motion zig-zag. I like the way they look, but the free-motion embroidery is too labor intensive to use for anything larger. I'll keep looking for another way to make trees, so that I can make larger pieces with trees as the theme. I suppose I could just make simpler trees!

Trees

In my drawing class, we've been drawing trees. So, I figured I'd try a little (8" x 10") embroidered piece with trees. My goal was to make the trees recede or come forward in space. I think I succeeded.

Where I've Been

I spent a week with my sister in Jonesborough Tennessee, and she helped me (ok,ok, she did most of the work!) do this mosaic. It's called "We See You, Too." I drew the design on plywood, and we used broken stained glass to make the images. The black is grout, not leading. It's not translucent like stained glass because it's on a wooden support.


And I've finally finished and delivered this dresser. I donated the labor to a fund-raising auction, and this is what they wanted. The owner gave me a mug which had belonged to her mother to use for the design, and I'm pleased to say that it matches well. We delivered it this afternoon, and the owners are tickled with it. I always have palpitations before I deliver something, whether the owners have been involved in the design process or not!

This week's drawing homework

I turned in this drawing today. The assignment was to draw 2 boxes, three bottles and something else that starts with b. The bottles were to show how well we understand elipses, but I didn't know that and chose a milk carton, which is mostly square, and a big juice bottle (the black one; grape juice.) I didn't realize I needed 3 bottles until I had drawn in all the others. Hence, the bottle at the far right, almost off the page. I need to plan better - my bowl is almost off the page, too. And, in case you didn't notice, I've drawn "breakfast." Another b word.

Latest Piece

This is called Blue: Last. It's 40" wide by 29" high. I named it that because I'm trying to get away from using so much blue, and I just finished reading The Blue Last by Martha Grimes. I finished this piece yesterday, except for the sleeve. Mostly these days I use velcro and plexiglass, but this piece is going into a show that requires a sleeve.

Here is a detail. I used lots of different threads, rayon, cotton and specialty threads, such as metallics and pearly rayon.

This week's drawing

This is my homework for yesterday's drawing class. The assignment was to do a representational line drawing that showed the concept of unity and the effects of cropping. I chose the cups because I was fairly confident that I could render them recognizably. There are a lot of problems with this drawing (and the photo of it, too!) and it will be interesting to see as the semester goes on how much I improve.

Poppies

I've had an urge to use poppy images for a while now. Probably due to the war, white poppies being a symbol of death. Anyway, this is one I finished recently. I've been messing with it for a while, and finally decided that it was finished. The poppies are white fabric with white zig zag embroidery. The background is collaged, and stitched vertically.

One of my goals is to understand perspective better, and use it more effectively. To that end, I've enrolled in a drawing class at the local college, and I need to go finish my homework - class is at 2 this afternoon. After the homework is finished, I'll post a photo of it, along with a description of the assignment.

Home Again

My sister, father and I flew home yesterday. South Dakota is a pretty place, and everyone is friendly. Saturday was taken up with family things and the wedding, so Sunday Nancy and I did touristy stuff. We drove out to Mitchell to see the corn palace (everyone kept saying "It's really small.") Turns out it's about a half a city block, and the entire exterior is covered with a mosaic made from ears of Indian corn. I can scratch that off my list; only 999 left.

On the way, we passed the Porter Sculpture Park. Since we had no schedule to keep we stopped, and it was well worth the $4 we spent to go through it. The artist was there, and he walked us through the park.
That's my sister standing next to this sculpture of an Egyptian steer. I think the artist, Porter, said it was sacred to the ancient Egyptians, but I was only half listening, I was so fascinated. It's hollow, so we went inside, and the interior details are incredible. The sculptor's father is a blacksmith, so Porter worked in the blacksmith shop all his growing up years, and uses smithing techniques to make his pieces from scrap iron and parts of old farm equipment. And it's all just sitting on the prairie, next to the interstate.
This is a reproduction of a dugout. The settlers came for the free land offered under the terms of the Homestead Act, and often the first shelter they could build was one of these, dug out of the side of a hill.
This is the interior. When there was rain of any amount, it could take 3 days for the roof to dry out. It's no wonder they had consumption!
This is a claim shack, only marginally better than the dugout, in my opinion, but at least it's not a hole in the ground. It's approximately 8 feet by 10 feet, and an entire family would sleep in there.
And this is the view. Practically nothing but sky and grass.

Shoe Shopping

I went out today to do some errands before I go to South Dakota tomorrow, for a family wedding. Anyway, my friend Denyse has a saying (I call it Denyse's law) that if you don't buy something in the first 15 minutes of a shopping trip, the trip is doomed. And she's right! This time, my first stop was Lord and Taylor, and I didn't find what I wanted. Next I went to the library, where I was only marginally successful.

Dispairing, I went to the Designer Shoe Warehouse, hoping for some footwear consolation. No luck, but look at what I saw there!

These lovely green shoes are a thick rubber, and while I found them on the sale rack, they started out at $299. And no, there's no decimal point in that price. Now, though, some lucky soul (yuck, yuck) can have them at 40% off. They really aren't so bad, but $299?

But wait! Look at these next ones!

No kidding, these are fish skeletons attractively running down the wearer's insteps, cunningly topped off with rhinestone fish heads. And the price? Another bargain at $299, on sale for 40% off. That makes them $179, on sale.

I resisted.

Hair

Lady Godiva in South Baltimore by Helen Glazer; 48 x 52, acrylic on canvas, cropped.

Here is the postcard for the show I mentioned yesterday: "HAIR, a Juried Exhibition Art work Interpreting the Theme of Hair" August 31-October 8, 2006. Reception and Awards Presentation Saturday September 16, 6-8PM
Sponsored by Hey Red!, Inc, Laurel, MD, and presented by the Columbia Art Center, 6100 Foreland Garth, Columbia MD 21045. 410.730.0075

I have plans for the 16th already, a weekend away sewing with a group of friends (see archive for April) but I'll skip dinner Saturday night and come back for the reception. It's only about 45 minutes away. Of course, it does cut into my vqt (valuable quilting time) but it can't be helped.

Living Well

I'm back! I've been puttering around, happy to be home. I finally managed to upload this image.
This is called "Living Well" and I made it in response to a divorce in my family. She's 38 x 50, and will be exhibited in a show here in Columbia, at the Art Center, from August 31 to October 8.
This one is called "My Husband's Name is Art" and it will be in the show as well. It's much smaller, 23 x 22.

CRS

I have CRS - Can't Remember Stuff. It would be nice to check my messages while I'm visiting my dad, but no. I can't remember my email password, and I could just change it while I'm here, but then I'd have to figure out how to change it on my pc at home. I think I'm just too lazy. And if I'm not reading email, I might do something productive instead. Imagine!

I drove down yesterday after lunch. I95 from DC to Richmond was pretty busy, but there were only a couple of places where the average speed was less than 75, so it didn't really take all that long. About 3 hours, I guess. I took an exercise walk this morning, for about an hour. I grew up here, so walking around for an hour really showed me how much has changed. It's not the quiet country town it was years ago.

New Postcards

I've been using the postcard format to experiment with the t-shirt transfer method. The images are small enough to cut out close to the edges so there isn't discoloration around it. I don't really like the results transfer process. I'm going to try printing directly on fabric next.
This is a statue of Santiago high in the mountains in Galicia. The statue is at the highest point on the Camino, and it's cold and windy there. You can see how he is leaning into the wind. Incidentally, I read today that there have been fires, deliberately set, in the forests where we were walking.
The hand on this postcard is a door knocker.
The scallop image is everywhere on the Camino, and I've used it on several postcards.

I've been experimenting with photos that I took in Spain. I'd like to have a thermofax machine to make screens with the photos, but I'm afraid it would be something else to distract me from what I should be doing! So these are iron on transfers, on fabric postcards. I took the scallop shell from a photograph of an iron fence. On the Camino de Santiago, the scallop shell symbol is everywhere, since it's the symbol of Saint James, and the symbol of the pilgrim.

I used Photoshop Elements to lift the shell image from the photograph, and printed it on t-shirt transfer paper. Having long ago lost the directions, it took a while to get a good print. First I ironed it on the wrong side - results below.

As you can see, my goof left a sort of afterimage of the shell, which I like. Another important piece of information I did not have is that the paper needs to be removed immediately, or it won't come off at all. And the iron needs to be moved around, otherwise the steam vents leave holes in the design.

Maybe I should invest in a thermofax after all. . .

The end of July

Here it is, the end of July. I think August is a sad month. Summer is winding down, and all the fun things you did when the weather first got nice are sort of old hat now. The garden is tired looking and it's too hot to plant anything. Even if you could stand the heat, the plants couldn't. Even the dog is listless.

I didn't have any plans at all for August, until last week. My sister and I are going to Virginia to see our dad and stepmother for a few days, and then we, along with our dad, are going to South Dakota for a family wedding. And it won't be any cooler there, trust me.

Trying again

I managed to get one more photo uploaded. This is called "Get Over It!"

The first one I did was very colorful, and a friend wondered aloud what it would be like in black and white. I had to add the green shoes, and then of course the green lettering. I just couldn't make myself stick to black and white.

Here She Is

Here is the latest in a series of "Spokeswomen." I used to call them wild women, but it seems too trite to me these days.

In a class I took recently, there was a lot of talk about "the big idea" behind artwork. I don't think I have a "big idea." Hence, this piece.

I've been trying for 3 days to upload photos of her sisters, but Blogger isn't cooperating. Maybe tomorrow.

Another Chasuble

Here is another chasuble that I designed for a priest here in Baltimore.

The fabric is hand-dye European sateen, bought from Heide Stoll-Weber, from Frankfurt. The inserts in the sleeves are heavily stitched silk dupioni. The silk was green to begin with, but I put it in the same dye bath as the sateen, to be sure that it blended.


You can see from the detail that there is stitching in the background, too. This chasuble is lined with rayon, and the stitching holds it all together, similar to quilting, only without a batt. I think priests' clothing is hot enough without adding the batt. The stitching is green pearl rayon, in a grape leaf design. The altar set that this chasuble complements has a grape vine design. I'll post photos of it later.

Absence Explained

Back in the spring, I took a break from blogging. I was working on a commission pretty much all the time, and didn't really have anything else to talk about. Thinking that it wasn't really fair to show images of the commission to the blogosphere before the client saw them, I just took a break. But now the pieces are finished, and here they are, for the world to see.

I had been asked to create a 5 piece altar set for St Thomas Episcopal Church, in Richmond, Virginia. The stained glass in the church is from about 1910, and is a sort of prairie/Frank Lloyd Wright style. Each window has a simplified dogwood motif, and that's what I decided to use for the altar set.

This is a detail of the altar frontal. This is the right side, and the left is identical. The entire frontal is 72" wide and 7" deep. The dogwood is painted and couched on silk dupioni.

The chasuble is a festival garment worn by the priest. This one is made of raw silk, and the design is painted and couched onto heavily stitched silk dupioni.







Here is the stole, also made of heavily stitched silk dupioni, painted and couched. The other two pieces are lectern and pulpit hangings, and have the same design on the heavily stitched dupioni.

I worked constantly on these pieces for most of the spring, and delivered them to St Thomas right before we left for Spain.

Photography woes

Photographing my work is like a comedy of errors. Every time I set everything up, it begins to rain! Today is no exception. At least I got one piece shot before I had to quit.
But, first I used a gray card to get the settings. I set the camera for aperture mode, set the aperture at 8, and filled the screen with the gray card. Shutter speed indicated was 1/5. OK, I changed to manual mode, used those settings, and the exposure meter said +2.9. Naturally the image was wildly over exposed. I cropped this image, but didn't do anything else to it, not even rotate.


So, I set the camera back to aperture mode, and used the exposure meter to find the shutter speed. So this photo was taken with aperture 8, shutter speed 1/80, exposure meter -0.1. I clearly don't understand the gray card business!

When it stops raining, I have another piece to shoot. Let's hope it doesn't get rained on, too!

What Kind of Coffee are You?

I'm not sure that this is flattering!

You are a Black Coffee

At your best, you are: low maintenance, friendly, and adaptable At your worst, you are: cheap and angsty You drink coffee when: you can get your hands on it Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?