Skating on Thin Ice

September 27, 2008

So here’s the final drawing, ready to cut into fabric. I always feel so much better when I turn the corner on a project and feel it’s headed in the right direction. You can see how I was working towards this in my sketches in this previous post.

An artistic project is a process, and it’s funny how my ideas can change during the process. I make the art, and the art changes me.

Originally I wanted to do something about how our dependence on technology that at times seems so fragile, how it’s like skating on thin ice and was planning to put words below the ice to demonstrate system glitches and technology failures.

But I was having trouble figuring out how to do words-below-ice imagery. So instead I decided to just use objects, and quilt patterns of skate-tracks into the ice instead of words. Then as I drew, the story came to be more about how with our eye distracted by technology, we sometimes we lose our way. PaMdora is off-balance even though the man in black makes it look easy. The dog with the GPS is trying to point the way. And the snowflakes become stars. As I was drawing the snowflakes, I was thinking about how people used to find their way by the stars.

Sometimes I guess we need to turn it all off and look at the stars.

Filed Under drawings, process | 14 Comments

Once upon a Line

September 26, 2008

I’ve always liked telling stories, now I make them in my art. Here’s how I started one in a project called “Skating on Thin Ice.”

Sometimes I have this feeling that the technology that I depend so heavily on is so fragile and my knowledge so limited, that I have to keep skating across the surface really fast, otherwise I might fall through the cracks. Okay, that’s a long overblown description, but how to put it into a story?

I usually start with lines and do a lot of quick sketches using different approaches, different perspectives, different people. There are so many different ways to portray things — have to think about what to include in the story, what to leave for the viewer to figure out on their own.

How large to emphasis certain elements, how create depth, how to show several events over time.

And dogs!
Lots of drawings of dogs, because it always helps a story to put a dog in it.

Filed Under drawings | 4 Comments

Cakes and more Cakes

September 22, 2008

The other night I had a dream that I should draw some cakes. Not just a few, but a whole lot. Here’s all I got started with, then ran out of ideas, so I’ll have to look up some recipes. And I don’t know where that silly elf in the chef hat came from.

Here’s probably what inspired the idea of a massive drawing (although not sure about the cake part.) This is a huge drawing by John Himmelfarb that I saw in a private collection in Nebraska. Not sure about the scale? Look at the reflection in the glass — that is a spiral staircase for scale.

It’s made up of hundreds of little scratchy drawings, sort of silly like mine, but of course more organized and thought out in the layout. I really love this guy’s use of line, which Angela noted, “drives my work.”

We were up there, Lincoln and Omaha, for some International Sculpture Centers meetings and as a consequence, got lots of art saturation — the Sheldon had a really lovely Elizabeth King retrospective, a Christo and Jeanne-Claude presentation at the Kaneko, and a sneak peek at the artist residencies of the Bemis. Enough to make one feel very small and awkward in a world of huge talent and inspiration.

Filed Under Inspiration, drawings, exhibitions, other artists | 6 Comments

Collages for the Creamery

September 18, 2008

When our studio flooded, a lot of framed art got ruined. Since the Creamery Arts Center has lots of odd spaces, I cleaned the old frames and designed some collages to fit into them for the show.

Here’s the finished quilts in the show, but for fun I included some framed pages from my sketchbooks to show where the ideas come from.

“Paris - wish you were Hair.” The old vintage postage from my collection is from 1904 and someone wrote their postcard message on the front of the image.

“Seattle, the Space Needle - wish you were Hair”. Haven’t done the quilt for this this idea yet.

Actually, I drew this idea for “Twin Bridge”, then happened to find the postcard that matched. ooohwaa!

We had this really huge frame, so I put my actual pattern for “Athens - wish you were Hair”, with alternations into it. There was a little extra room, so I added some sketches and graphic inspirations at the bottom.

This one I called “Elements of an Art Quilt” because I included a stitch test for “St. Louis - wish you were Hair” to try out the effects of different thread colors on fabrics (and left the edges unfinished so that the astute observer could see the top layer, batting and backing), some graphic research and inspiration images, a pastel pencil practice for stitch patterns, and a wad of thread I picked up off the floor of my studio.

The little drawing in the corner gives a clue what “King Tut” (a variegated quilting thread) is because I used the reference in the labels on the stitch test on the left.

Filed Under exhibitions, mixed media, process, quilts | 11 Comments

Jason Pollen workshop at studio

September 15, 2008

The weekend of the ThreadLines opening reception, Jason Pollen led a two-day workshop called “J-o-i-n-i-n-g-F-o-r-c-e-s.” Each day he led a series of different drawing exercises on black and white double-sided paper.

This was the most complex exercise, prefaced with discussions of astrology and self-control, a random drawing and a self-controlled analytical response. This was probably the thing that I most took away from the class — a strong reminder that in drawing, every mark should be a response to the previous marks. I later tried to apply that also to some of my experiments in fabric.

Drawing with graphite and chalk were followed by creating small experiments in texture with this clear gesso paste, which were then painted, stitched and otherwise altered any way we wished.

Clearing out the space for twenty people to work in the shop was a job, but created a great creative environment. And having one of Russ’s neon sculptures flickering in the background probably played into our minds as people often used works like “charged” and “electric” and “shimmering” during wordplay exercises.

We brought my pin boards out the fiber room to pin up and look at the drawings. And the most wonderful tool of all is hard to see, but check out the black cast-iron 100+ year old paper cutter — great for chopping up big drawing papers into excercise-sized pieces for the group. Russ got that at an auction a few years ago when a school tablet and sketchbook factory up the street went out of business.

For a wrap-up, I cleaned off one wall of the gallery so everyone could tape up their work and discuss it. (except for the squiggly aluminum wall piece - couldn’t get that off the wall.)

Jason didn’t much like our fluorescent lighting, but really we just got the floors and walls done, lighting is next on the list.

Jason was amazingly good at challenging each one of us and providing a broader context to think of working with fiber — a weekend well spent. For photos of some of the work done in the class, check out the Uncommon Threads post here.

Filed Under drawings, mixed media, studio | 11 Comments

ThreadLines 2008 and other opening nights

September 12, 2008

ThreadLines opening last week was a huge success. The gallery was packed all night long, and the show looks amazing thanks to MSU Art & Design Gallery director Robin Lowe and her staff and of course all the wonderful artists who made and shipped their work. Jason Pollen was there to judge the quilts in person, to award the prizes and to honor us with a exhibition of his recent work.

Here Jason Pollen is talking about the Best of Show by Deidre Adams, as Arleta Johnson, our prize chairman (very important person!) looks on. Told you you should have come to the opening, Deidre! Of course we didn’t know until 5 p.m. that night that she was a winner. Here’s a post about the rest of the award ceremony.

Several artists traveled to the opening, but the prize for farthest goes to Barbara Winoski from Canada. Here she is on the left, discussing her quilt with my friend Sue, who happens to be a seamstress but not quilter.

The Creamery Art Center usually doesn’t get as much traffic on First Friday Art Walk since it’s off the path. But here I’m giving an artist talk right after Emmie and Lettie gave theirs in the Creamery art library. You can just barely see my new quilts from the Wish You Were Hair series through the windows to the exhibition space. All together, I have 20 quilts on display and 11 framed drawings and mixed media collages.

And this is one goofy grin I just couldn’t wipe off my face at the end of the night after surviving a month I thought I wouldn’t survive. Remind me never to schedule two show openings including visiting artists for a two-day workshop on the same weekend as Quilt National deadline ever again. Thanks for the photo Russ — it really sums it all up!

Filed Under exhibitions, quilts | 9 Comments

Skating on Thin Ice

Once upon a Line

Cakes and more Cakes

Collages for the Creamery

Jason Pollen workshop at studio

ThreadLines 2008 and other opening nights

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