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.

MIA Post

Carol here, back after falling down the winter's rabbit hole.

I've been working on a few new things but mostly resting up, reading and drinking hot tea (and coffee).

One of the things that I do in the warmer weather is to rust fabric and different fibers so that I have plenty to play with in the cooler months.
I've been playing around with creating collages out of bits and pieces of rusted and naturally dyed fabric.
I do a compulsive amount of hand stitching on them in the evening when my husband and I sit together. I have to have something in my hands or I go crazy.

I thought I would share a photo of one of the most beautiful pieces of rust fabric I have ever had the pleasure of unrolling in my rust bin.
The photo really does not do it justice.

It looks like a sunset, doesn't it?

I don't think I can bear to cut this piece up.
So it will stay on my design wall for now.

I'll close with a couple of close-ups of a new collage I am stitching on.
I'm almost ready to call it quits on this one.

I still haven't decided what to do with it when I do finish the hand stitching.
I'll try to remember to do a follow up post.

Collage Fodder

Carol here.

My husband and I have been rusting fibers for several years now.

I love the color and texture that the rusted fabric offers.
I've made several wall pieces that began their life as bits and pieces of different rusted fabrics and fibers. It's a great base to build wonderfully textured art on.

This formula also works for felted backgrounds.

After working on the last two projects (Kindle cover here, here and needle case here) that had felted bases, I decided to use the same approach for a collage that I have in mind.
I wanted to create a palette of rust fabric on which to hand and machine stitch.

I am approaching this project much as I do most of my projects - with an open mind and a vague plan.
My vague plan is to felt the base, hand stitch on top of this, then add a machine stitched image over that.
I must admit I'm a little nervous about risking the hand stitched base when I add the machine stitching.
But my "fly by the seat of my pants" attitude is that I can always redo the base...just make another one, right?

So far I've felted two small pieces and managed to get some hand stitching done on each one.

I've also machine stitched a copyright free image (that I re-drew) on one of them.

I haven't done any free motion machine stitching (or would this be free motion embroidery?) in a long time.
As soon as I began stitching this small motif, I remembered how much I loved doing it!
So I definitely will be doing more of this.

I have one other section almost completed and I'll show more next time.

I hope that you all are creating every day.
You gotta flex those creative muscles if you want to keep them!

Stitched Felting

Hi all - Carol Sloan here.

I love hand stitching even though I don't normally do a lot of it.
But recently, it seems to have taken over my studio table.

When I visit my friend (and group member) Liz Kettle in Colorado, I love to play with her felting machine.
This year I thought about it before I went out there and wanted to create a couple of base pieces to stitch on at my leisure.

Well, you know how that went...I got so involved in the creation of the small piece that I quit working on everything that I was supposed to be doing!

I wanted to make a cover for my electronic reader for a couple of reasons.
One- because I hated looking at the plain black vinyl cover.
And two, because I could.

I love handmade items like that.

So I used the machine and felted down a few pieces of silk, torn scarves, roving and bits of this and that.
Good friend that she is, Liz let me pick out thread to use too!
I added a lot of mine when I got home too.

Once I started stitching, it became a tiny obsession.
I spent hours (lots of them) stitching on the cover or thinking about what I would do next.
Well, I guess that I thought more about what thread or what color I would use next as opposed to what I would do next.
The doing part seems to work itself out when I get out of the way.
Here's a few shots of the completed cover.

I decided against adding beads since I would be holding the Kindle in my hands while reading.
I figured that the beads could become a problem if they were in the wrong place.

And, I was ready to finish the project as I had another one calling to me.

Now, where is that rusted fabric...?

playing with plastic

Hello Natalya here, typing with gluey fingers after the latest experiment. Lately I have found myself working with plastics once again. Those horrendous plastic bags that are still used in all the big box stores around here. Somehow, even though I mostly remember to bring my own cloth bags, I still wind up with tons of the plastic in my house. Occasionally I'll use them for texture, clear layer or shine in my work. But recently I endeavored to create a whole piece just from plastic.

In the past I have simply layered the plastic, pinned and stitched right thru it. But plastic tends to slide and that does not achieve perfect placement, which is usually OK by me, except that this time I was looking for something more precise. So I decided to experiment with matte medium.

I drew my basic sketch on paper and started cutting and layering the plastic right on top. Between each layer and the paper I added a light wash of matte medium. I smoothed things out as I worked, and all seemed to be going well. Until it dried. First off, I rediscovered that glue trapped between plastic sheets takes an awfully long time to dry... And when it does dry - it puckers. I was a bit worried that I'd have to scrap things..

I thought I'd outline-stitch my buildings first and then see how I feel. Things were still puckery, but I wanted to keep going.

By the time I stitched the details, the puckers did not bother me so much. I kind of liked the extra texture they added.

I moved on to the hand stitched details and the puckers were not an issue at all. Now hand stitching consumed all my attention and demanded more and more.

Here is a detail of the finished piece. See the full picture on my blog here. 

I am continuing with my plastics experiment: there is a sister piece to the "Glass Bridge" above, which is about to get its hand stitched details. It had a lot more time to dry, so I am curious to see if it'll feel different to stitch through. And for the piece after that, I intend to try fusing the plastics together. My only worry is about the fumes...glad spring is here...all my studio windows will be open!

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

Finished but Nameless

 
Liz Kettle posting. My piece for the Empty Spaces theme is finished. I decided to mount it on a canvas because the two parts of the diptych are small and I was worried that they would be lost when hung directly on a wall. Plus, it was important for me to have the space around and between the two pieces to be white which you can't always count on in a gallery setting.

Hopefully you can see some of the stitching in this detail photo. The left side of the diptych is stitched along the black lines in cotton thread. The right side is stitched in the white spaces with silk and rayon threads. I hope this piece evokes the question of what is 'empty'.

I haven't decided on a name yet. Usually, when I hand stitch so much on a piece of art I have plenty of time to mull over a name but this time I didn't come up with one. I will have to make a list of ideas and see what resonates. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Listening To Myself

Liz here this beautiful Spring Sunday. I have been madly stitching away on my Empty Spaces piece and all the while questioning just what the heck I am doing! I am hand stitching white on white. Is that insane or what? Why am I compelled to do this intensive amount of stitching when it isn't even obvious unless you are looking closely at the piece?

I have to confess...this isn't the first time I have caught myself doing this sort of barely visible stitching by hand. Each time I ask myself why. Why is it important to me do this sort of stitching? Do you ever talk to your art in progress? I do. All the time. Not out loud of course! Well, actually, now that I think about it I do sometimes talk to myself and my art out loud.

Here are some examples of what I mean--of the stitching not the talking out loud:

 

 In this one I even used beads that blend!

This isn't new, I have been doing this for years. I just sort of went with what my intuition told me and while I wondered why I needed to do this I didn't think too much about it. Though I have to admit to telling myself I am stupid for working this laboriously on my pieces.

While working on this  Empty Spaces piece the last couple months I have been traveling a lot; away from home about as much as I was home. This crazy need to add so much hand stitching was on my mind a lot.  Why couldn't I just quickly machine stitch this and be done with it, I asked myself over and over. I have a deadline and I didn't really have time for all this hand stitching that is hardly visible!  Then, on one boring flight (can't remember which one) I was mulling this over when I remembered what my friend Terry White said about my work. She said that what she loved about my work was the details. All of a sudden I had this big thought shift! I realized that these details are my way of inviting the viewer to slow down and look closer. All of this stitching is my way of saying: stop, be here now, allow yourself a moment to be, think and simply breathe. Wow...my work was talking for me. My work is (hopefully) telling the viewer what I would tell them if I was standing there next to them.

Now, unfortunately, this piece has also told me that it isn't finished! It doesn't care about the deadline. It wants to be a diptych. I started out to make one small piece but it is insisting on including the questions I asked in my previous post; is empty space the positive or negative, the black or the white? And, of course it is insisting that a lot of hand stitching be included.  I could ignore it, call it done and spend the day reading outside but I would never feel right about the piece. As you can see in my sneak peek photo above that I have a bit of stitching in my immediate future.