happening

The bed quilt is coming along very slowly. Partly because I just do bits of it at a time. And in the meantime, I'm doing something else (see above, and below). But, I'm trying to keep it small, that something else. Some-things... 

No orientation decided upon yet for these... bottom is a detail of the upper image. Transfer medium, still drying to the consistency of flexible plastic, and paper/inkjet on something linen-y... 

 

awesome link

Able Embroiderers at HandEye Magazine

making progress

I spent yesterday afternoon limbering up my professional muscles, getting in shape for a year of conferences and connections. A continuation of last year's resolution to make more of an effort -- while I still have no strong desire to sell work, I need more incentives to show -- and to learn, to meet people, to give time to the art practice rather than always setting this important part of my life on the back burner. So, I joined the Textile Center of MN; renewed my SAQA membership; joined Minnesota Quilters; and dropped a sorry amount of money on my credit card registering for the Surface Design Association conference here in Minneapolis in June. But I'm so excited to attend! Too bad it's five months away...

It's important to make this commitment now; my work year will be quite complicated again, and there's a chance renovations on the Center will begin in June. They can do without me for a week or so. But if I don't make the commitment -- a financial commitment -- to progress in my other career, I know it won't happen. So I'm getting it done. I'm proud of myself. Given my "temporary" pay-cut at work (we all took one), it gives my self-esteem a boost to invest in this part of my life. Credit card balance or no. Just don't tell my husband what these conferences cost...

We all have to balance our own needs with the expectations of others. Meanwhile, I want to see myself playing more of a part with my professional associations. And therein lays joy. You have to give yourself the gift of time, my advisory pals assure me, and it's true. As someone who has spent most of her adult life promoting other people's artwork, rather than making her own, it's a shift in thinking. But it's not too late! And, in truth, most of the women artists I know don't reach mid-career until well into their fifties, or later -- because they've raised families, taken other responsibilities, in their younger years. I have the average sense of entitlement for a Midwestern woman my age. My spouse, on the other hand, has a well-developed sense of entitlement that has served him beneficially throughout his career. I always used to hate the saying, "Blessed are those who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed." I understood the meaning of it, and now that I have the Biblical backdrop I understand the context -- the meek do indeed deserve to inherit the earth. But by expecting nothing in our earthly lives, we're most likely to get just that. Balance....

So I keep going forward. It's not so difficult.

meant to post this a week ago

Another journal square.

Commercial batik, silk flowers, beads, thread, ink.

query

Where should my work go? Where is it going?
It occurs to me that this time spent cutting squares into triangles could be a good time for meditation on these questions. It's enough that I have the beginnings of a style and some construction preferences that I can describe and defend. Where am I headed?

It's enough to wonder, for the moment... because I want less to be forming images as a kind of word-association game. Less to be coaxing content fully-formed out of texture and abstraction. I like to work that way, but it's strenuous and it makes for too much back-tracking. Time to get a little bit more intentional.

...

something new

December 31, 2010 

I caught a glimpse somewhere of someone's "journal quilt project," not for the first time -- it's a common enough endeavor among the artists I follow -- but this time it grabbed me. Maybe I liked the small, square piece I saw, its crowd of faces, each printed on nickel-sized buttons and sewn to the quilted fabric, a tiny circus of images. I was inspired to start something like that myself: one small "journal" square per week, more or less, to alleviate the boredom I sometimes feel while cutting and assembling pieces for a traditional quilt like the one I've started recently.

The square above, roughly 5x5 inches, was pieced at its foundation level from scraps of the quilt cloth I'm cutting. I added a small muslin teabag I used recently to steep some hibiscus-ginger tea; I was taken with the violet-reds of the stain left over. I added a few other items for texture: some sky-blue waxed linen thread, a few hand-dyed scraps purchased from Gerdiary (see link on the right), a ceramic button, a bead, a washer, a scrap of silk flower picked from the grass at a local cemetery.

2010 "Was the year of not giving up, and Not knowing when to quit."

looking and looking, and cutting out triangles

Making squares into triangles... the darks are cut and stacked. I'm half-way through the mediums. Lights still un-ironed in their pile. I'm loving some of the batiks, the infinite variety and the mysterious voluptuousness of the colors... the abstract patterns in some of them, reminiscent of geological maps or kimono... most of the darks are leafy batiks, plus a few birds. The mediums strongly favor green, which is good since the recipient of this quilted throw has a STRONG preference for greens. Fewer batiks, more prints, in a certain shade of grasshopper-green; and in fact there is grass, as well as flowers, pebbles and a vaguely Polynesian pattern... the lights are mostly batiks again, plus some birds and dragonflies.

I remember when I was a child...my mother sewed, mainly clothing and functional items when I was younger. The patterns of the fabrics she chose often captured my imagination, and I couldn't help visualizing worlds within the colors... magical gardens, dangerous mazes, a curtain of live flowers that might conceal a secret passageway to a beautiful, enchanted place where girls had special powers and mythical friends to help them along the way -- a world like the ones I read about in books, an imaginary world, full of beauty and safety. I could pack a LOT of imagining into a piece of cloth! And still can... I buy too much lovely fabric, as much for the pleasure of seeking, and viewing, as for utility. But it feels good to move away from scraps and collage for a while (my normal art-quilting mode) and use these quarters and half yards for their intended purpose -- to cover someone in color and warmth.