Daylily

Yesterday, I sold this piece, Daylily. It's 16 x 16, and framed, though not in this photo. I've had my work exhibited in a retirement community's gallery, and one of the residents, Mrs. H, bought it. When I went over there yesterday to take the work down, she was there checking her mail. She said "Are you Martha?!" and proceeded to tell me how lovely the piece is, and how happy she is to have bought it. Mrs. H and her daughter were looking at the work, and when they saw it, they both started to cry.

It turns out that Mrs. H's best friend, now deceased, was also the daughter's godmother, and grew daylilies the same shade as the fabric in the piece. When she died, Mrs. H and her daughter took some of her bulbs and planted them in their gardens to remind them of their friend.

Today, the daughter is bringing her husband home from the hospital to die. He's 48, and has been struggling with a brain tumor for 5 years, and there's nothing left to do for him. Mrs. H will hang it so that it's the first thing they see every morning. I am so honored.

I made Daylily in 2003, using commercial and artist-dyed fabrics, embellished with machine embroidery, oil pastels, and beads. It has been exhibited locally and in Cergy/Pontoise, France.

Art Consulting

I met with an art consultant this morning. She has owned a successful gallery for 35 years. The goal of this morning's meeting was to get started thinking about what I want to do, what my goals are, and how to achieve them. She is very enthusiastic about my work, although it doesn't fit in her gallery.

So I came home all jazzed up and ready to work. I painted 10 pieces of fabric when I got back, but they are still curing so I can't show photos of them. Instead, here is a piece I did recently:

I collaged fabric and painted it with Lumiere, Setacolor, and Shiva sticks. Then I cut it up and collaged it again, and painted it one more time. I used the grids because I wanted to create a sense of looking through a window.

Notan

The new Quilting Arts Magazine came the other day. Jane Dunnewold has an interesting article in it about the positive/negative exercises called Notan. So I decided to try it, and this is what I came up with:

For the above, I cut a blossom shape out of the dark paper, and reversed it for the positive/negative effect. Very lacy, and the black and white squares are very quilt like.

Next I tried a more involved design, of a Christmas ball. Unfortunately, after a considerable amount of work, it looks like baseballs to me. I like the pinwheel effect caused by the roundness of the image.
Read the article and try it. It really is fun and it's way different from the way I usually work. I remember that Jane taught a weekend workshop in Notan a while back at QSDS. Now I wish I had taken it.