Drastic Measures

Kristin today.

One of the art lessons that has made a lasting impression with me was an experience my dad had when he was in art school. He told me that after laboriously drawing the day's model, the instructor had all the students erase their work, turn it upside down, and start again. The moral of the story is not to think that your work is ever too precious for improvement.




I have been working on this quilt on and (mostly off) for over a decade. The whole tale is on my blog today. It had changed in meaning for me, and I have tried to bring it up to date. After much laboring, I have come to the realization that it is just not working, and I have to take drastic, art school type, measures.




Sometimes (probably more often than we are willing to admit) there comes a point where something just can't be fixed and it has to be tossed or completely reimagined. I decided for the latter and painted my heirloom quilt and then cut it up. I plan to stitch some bolder designs over the panels and mount them on canvas as wall decor. It still may not work, but at least I will have been bold and tried; besides, it's not like the original project was going anywhere anyway.



Interestingly, I just read an article on Ragged Cloth Cafe this morning about creativity and fugitive artwork. It's worth checking out.

Articles on Making Stuff

Carol writing today.

A few months ago, I received word that two of the article proposals I had turned in to Interweave had been accepted for the newest Pages magazine.

Imagine my delight when I saw the publication for the first time and my artwork was on the cover!

I wrote an article about creating artful niches for miniature books.
It is a really fun project that is not that difficult to create.
The carving and painting portion is my favorite part! And, if you mess up, it's very easy to "erase" that area and start over.

I also wrote an article about creating a triptych out of canvas, plaster and molding paste.
Add a few lines from a poem, some of your favorite natural items and you have wonderfully textured piece to sit on a shelf or a desktop.

"Forest Symphony"

The back side of
"Forest Symphony"

Pop over to this site and purchase your own copy of the Pages magazine.
This is the fifth edition and I have all of them. They really are chock full of wonderful projects.

playing

With plastic in my case. Hi, Natalya here to declare that I have fallen into a deep dark hole that is called experimentation. What if I try this? What if I now do this? What if.......

You would think that after playing around with a material for a while, let's say a year, you run out of the "what if's". Not true in my case.  At least not with the recycled plastic shopping bags. Or dryer sheets for that matter. Here are few detail shots of my recent experiments:

layered with packing material batting, stitched and painted with acrylics

dryer sheet painted with gesso

plastic drop cloth, drawn on and stitched

translucent plastics layered and machine stitched

layered, stitched and sponge painted with acrylics

It's a good thing that there are some deadlines looming, as they make me finish my experiments and draw conclusions. But the experimenting goes on even with the deadlines, it's so much fun I can't help myself. I must find out what if.....

What are you experimenting with?