rain quilting

I'm watching a video over on Stephanie Forsyth's Fiber Nation, in which she demonstrates free-motion stippling; and I immediately notice, since the volume is up, that the sewing machine makes a very comforting noise -- like rain falling, a sound we go without for months and months in MN. No wonder my son used to love being in the sewing room while I worked -- it's probably the warmest room in the house, and small, and that sound.... The "white noise" effect, so calming when is just a nice steady straight stitch.

drat

Four projects on the table all of a sudden...stalled out on the bed quilt for the moment...a deadline of This Saturday, another at the end of the month...and the journal blocks a bust too...my mind bouncing around and the past three days, not much to show except YET ANOTHER new journal (Japanese book Moleskine, mmm) and a sketch for one of the works in progress... I drive myself nuts, I really do. Drat.

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.

...