Small Wonders

Our Exhibit is ready to be seen! Please join us for the opening reception on Sunday, September 7th from 1 to 4PM at the Etui Fiber Art Gallery in Larchmont, NY.

Here's the official invitation:

Diminutive bugs and birds, petite scale, delicate details of line and stitch – all in tiny treasures on view at Etui Gallery during the month of September, 2014. Eight artists brought together by a love of fabric and stitch show off their varied approaches to mixed media textiles in this exhibit of small works. Layers of machine and hand stitching intimately render buildings and homes both in Natalya Aikens’ works, which incorporate recycled ephemera, and in Kristin La Flamme’s fabric collages. Benedicte Caneill’s work incorporates impeccably sewn pieces of her monoprinted fabrics to create dancing compositions of color and line. Jane Davila and Gloria Hansen turn their focus on small-scale flora and fauna with an eye to graphic simplicity and macro photography respectively. Carol Sloan, Liz Kettle, and Beryl Taylor round out the collection with tantalizing layers of intriguing fabrics, delicate paper, painted textures, wee stitches, and tiny details that draw the viewer in for a closer look.

Here are a few photos to entice you to come see them in person!

Front facing wall with art by Jane, Benedicte and Gloria

Small wonders by Kristin

Corner view with work by Gloria, Benedicte, Liz and Natalya

Gloria's butterflies

Benedicte and Liz's work

Main wall with work by Liz, Natalya, Carol, Beryl and Kristin

A restful spot with work by Kristin, Natalya and Carol

 

Traveling Down Under - Inspiration Files

Travel is a most inspiring experience for artists. The memories and photos can provided fodder for years after a trip.

Last month I was fortunate to be invited by Cecile from Unique Stitching to teach at a paper craft and mixed media show in Brisbane and a big quilt and craft show in Sydney. First stop, Brisbane, a charming city with a lot of interesting street art.

The two abstract fern patterns above were metal work on concrete benches on the sidewalk.

The inside of the roof in the expo center in Brisbane had a beautiful pattern in the trusses, below.

After a few days in Brisbane we flew off to Sydney. The show was held in the expo center in Darling Harbor and we stayed in nearby Chinatown.

The wall along the walkway from Chinatown to Darling Harbor was sinuous and undulating.

There were mosaic sidewalk installations in the grassy areas in front of the expo center.

The expo center itself looked like a ship at berth. Sadly the building is being torn down later this year. I hope it will be replaced by something equally elegant and architecturally relevant to its location.

Darling Harbor is a revitalized seaport housing not only the expo center but many restaurants, cafes and shops. It is especially charming at night looking across the harbor at the city lights.

Chinatown had many fierce foo dragons including this massive guy and his twin.

The show was beautifully run, and had a varied, eclectic mix of vendors. Unlike most quilt shows in the states, this was a quilt and craft show so there were vendors selling supplies and finished goods in many, many craft disciplines other than quilting. This might contribute to the fearlessness that I noticed in Australian artists to mix their media and blur the lines across fields. 

The quilt exhibit was extremely inspiring. Not having the rigidity of the tradition of American quilting holding them back (no "quilt police" that I saw at all down under!) Australian quilters tend to experiment more than their American peers and worry less about how things "should" be done, or what's "correct". It was a really refreshing attitude reflected in the finished quilts and the students in classes. Another refreshing aspect of the quilt show was the music that was played all day every day - it really contributed to the energy of the show. There were mostly hits from the 70s and 60s, and each day the show opened with a dance party in the lobby with the vendors dancing (gangnam style, the macarena, even the electric slide) for the patrons waiting in line to get in. What a fun, happy, and original way to start the day!

After the show closed, Cecile, the most gracious host on the planet, treated me to a day tour to the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney that started with a bus ride to a wildlife sanctuary - where, yes, I pet a koala. We  paused for lunch in a chic mountain town, stopped for a ride on the steepest railway in the world, and ended with a ferry ride down the river and past the Opera House (plus even more in between). It was a magical experience.

The flora is so interesting and has sparked all sorts of ideas for surface design.

Crazy steep railroad - slightly intimidating but so so cool. You ride down to the bottom in cars in a nearly reclined position and then return backwards.

An amazing Aboriginal sacred site called the Three Sisters. The landscape was truly breathtaking everywhere we went. At one point we walked down a steep path to an overlook to see the valley and imagine it when the first European settlers arrived and learn about the trees, the periodic bush fires, and the history. The entire day (the whole trip really) was so educational and enlightening.

I came back invigorated and inspired and ready to hit the studio. 

Art in other forms

I've been so drawn lately to explore the boundaries of my art in other forms. I'm intrigued with the idea of applying the defining (for me) aspects of "fiber art" or "quilt art" to unexpected surfaces, shapes and materials. 

This fiber house book is an example of this idea - each page is technically a quilt with three layers held together with stitching, but in an unexpected shape and with an unexpected purpose.

These Spirit Flags use stitching, painting and printing techniques on a fabric (canvas) with a strong textural, woven presence.

A combination of etching and block printing on paper, printed on a press, celebrates the type of patterning that is typically seen in commercial fabric. And I stitched around the perimeter of the color field to bring another stitching/quilting reference to the piece.

And finally a couple of small collages that reflect the patterning found in commercial fabrics and with hand-inked stitches mounted on painted and stenciled canvas board.

Some of the pieces shown here are brand new and some are not as new, but all represent the direction I currently feel pulled in. Have you ever re-examined your medium to isolate its defining qualities and then applied those qualities in unexpected ways?

Empty Spaces (in my head?)

Jane Davila -
Usually I have more ideas than I know what to do with, more ideas than I have time to implement. Lately though (does the last 7 months count as lately??) the urge or drive to create has dropped way off. The ideas are still there, but the impetus is lost. I found myself in a creative slump, feeling insufficient creative energy to make anything, doubting every process and technique. I know most of us find ourselves there at one or another point in our artistic journeys. Knowing this doesn't necessarily shorten the torture, though it is consoling to know one is not alone.

One of the obstacles I set up for myself is that I knew I wanted my piece for this theme to be the second in a series that I've been wanting to pursue for a long time. In fact I had made a few false starts on a second piece any number of times in the last couple of years. Initially I had created a piece for a mixed-media exhibit a few years ago and, when it was done,  made a mental note that it was a direction I definitely wanted to follow and develop into a series. Subsequent attempts weren't successful from either a compositional or technical standpoint. I started to think that the first piece I made was destined to be a "one-off". I decided to give it one more go for this theme. Nothing like adding a little pressure to your stress!

Carmina Figurata -  the original piece in this series

It can be helpful, when encountering a creative block, to go back to a place where you did create something you were happy with and make another in that series. Because I had already attempted this avenue with this series and felt that the results were less than successful, I knew that this strategy wouldn't be as useful as it could be. However! Sometimes forcing and pushing through and around that block is possible with persistence.

All of this is a long way of saying that my piece is complete. I pulled fabric and paper for a color palette to work with (oddly, none of these made it into the final piece).

I returned to my beetles as subjects, gave them a sense of movement by placing in and out of the frame and in different directions, and aged or distressed them with ink and paint. I played with the "empty spaces" or negative space between them and also kept them as stark silhouettes where the positive and negative spaces of their bodies spoke to the theme as well.

Instead of the painted canvas that I used in the first piece, I choose an aged linen on a thick stabilizer as a substrate this time. I machine quilted arced lines into it and then added hand embroidery with a variety of coarse linen threads.

The beetles themselves are sewn onto a piece of Arches watercolor paper that has been heavily embossed with a variety of textures found in my studio. I collaged other embossed papers onto the watercolor paper as well.

The final piece invites the viewer to step closer to see all of the bespoke details. Now I am looking forward to creating more pieces in this series and hope that I have seen the back of this particular creative block!

Artius Vacuus

Introductions: Jane Davila

Hi, I'm Jane Davila and I live in southwestern Connecticut in a suburb of New York City. I started out as a printmaker long ago and still feel a strong connection to paper.

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I work small and very small in scale and enjoy working within the constraints of the self-imposed "limitations" of size. Working small enables me to explore more ideas and themes and the work I produce doesn't take up a huge amount of space. My husband is an oil painter and sculptor and he works in a much larger scale (6-8 feet on a side often) and let me tell you, they take up some serious room in his studio!

La Luna

 

Much of my work revolves around the themes of insects, leaves, birds, fish and other natural subjects. I am enamored of a Japanese printmaking technique called Gyotaku, which translates literally to fish rubbing. Although the technique is traditionally done with real, freshly caught fish, I use rubber replica fish (I have quite a collection!)

 

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 Often, the images in my work are visual metaphors for topics I am thinking about. For example, an ongoing series featuring beetles as subjects is all about exploring my dismay and concern about global warming and the harm we are causing the planet and all of its inhabitants.

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I am also fascinated by text and use letter forms of many languages to add texture and interest to much of my work.

I perceive letters as having colors (a condition known as grapheme-color synesthesia) and this perception adds another layer of discovery for me as an artist as I build a compostion incorporating letters, letter forms and text into my work, as well as the challenge of choosing titles for finished pieces that "go" with the work.

 

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I have written three books for C&T Publishing, two with Elin Waterston - Art Quilt Workbook and Art Quilts at Play - and one alone, Jane Davila's Surface Design Essentials. Elin and I also made a dvd for C&T called Elin and Jane Teach You Art Quilt Basics. I teach art quilting, surface design and mixed media workshops all over the world and have been fortunate to meet many interesting people in my travels. I am also the editor of two digital magazines, Quilting Arts In Stitches and Quilting Arts Surface Explorations. This emag format is so dynamic and exciting and exploring the possibilities of the ever-changing and growing technology is invigorating!

 

As a printmaker and former full-time studio artist, I gained a lot of experience with navigating the business side of the fine art world. I have prints in many collections around the world, I've worked with commercial galleries and print publishers for years and I've taken this insider knowledge and write a regular column in the Quilting Arts print magazine called Minding Your Business. I'm a bit of a kook in that the business, marketing and promotional side of being an artist is actually really exciting to me.

 

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