Seamless Skin

If you've been reading Seamless Skin at least through one season of winter then you might recall how I feel about the season as I do my very best to express my indelible opinion.  However, in light of the blue sky I enjoyed yesterday and what looks like another break in the seasonal reminder that winter is a'comin', I'll hold back sharing so early how I feel about winter until the bitter cold sets in.

This past weekend I took a 2-day workshop with the lovely Lisa Engelbrecht and enjoyed myself with the Kentuckiana Calligraphy and Paper Arts Guild.  The week prior I was nearing exhaustion and almost decided to lose the workshop fee and stay home to rest but I forged ahead and this week I've been taking it easy.  Lisa is a very generous and beautiful spirit and the group is very warm, funny, and creative lot.

The piece with the yellow background, top center, is mine.

I've missed deadlines upon deadlines and meetings but between finding balance in self-care and addressing The Basement (new photos added under Beginning Again album) I have some super-fantastic news forthcoming that I can hardly wait to share...but patience is a virtue and the vision needs more shaping until I can share...but its a good thing, a very good thing!

Smallview of Mega-Artist Date

 

glue drying in screen, auditioning fabric, gelatin plate in the making, reference books

I ended the week feeling very productive.  I did push it to the limit though but feel it was worth it every second!  I did some brush calligraphy, continued with graffiti and writing on cloth, set up some buckets of soda-ash solutions (one for over-dyes, the other for white cloth), made a gelatin plate, mixed dyes for dye painting, and set up a screen with glue resist, and held steady with 3 hours in the gym.  I increased my time on the reclining bike from 10 minutes to 30 last week.  All which has brought me to today: the hardest thing I'm doing today is rolling in and out of bed.  The humidity has increased which is horrible for me so going out I'm not!

My social highlight of the week was an artists' date with friends, old and new.  Here is Emma, Pat, myself, and Juanita inside the theme hotel 21C.  The theme is 21st century art.  The C in 21C could stand for Cutting Edge and Conceptual also.  The hotel is a series of gallery spaces.  Below we are standing between the elevator interacting with a video tech. exhibit.  When you walk around the corner there is this wall screen/camera that puts you into the image of fallilng cascading letters...the letters bounce off of you or your body acts as a blockage to the letters falling.  This is highly entertaining!!!!!!! and addicting!!!!!!!!!

This is the lobby of the hotel and the 2nd picture below is a projection on the floor in front of the hotel desk of a couple in bed trying to get comfortable.  It is in video format so if you stand there long enough you see them adjusting pillows, checking the clock, tossing, turning.

The man and woman at the desk where just as stoic as the figures above their heads, as if they, too, are figures in the art.

  The art in the hotel is not just compatible or complimentary, the hotel is more gallery space from every nook and cranny, than hotel.  Even the bathrooms provide an ecletic artistic experience with projected video words in the mirror and one way mirrors that allow you to see out in the hall ways of the hotel.

Local artists are represented along with internationally known artists. 

 

digging this white on white embroidery

one of the galleries held a solo exhibit of lithographs by Kara Walker's grotesque antebellum imagery.  This is the 2nd exhibit I've seen of her work. I've read a dissertation turned book on it and I'm sorry to still say, the full meaning escapes me.  For work to be so intense and disturbing, and it is to me, I still can't fully grasp the intent of the artist.

We also headed to the headquarters of the Embroidery Guild of America to see the LAFTA show. Here are just a few shots from the show:

 by Joanne Weiss

And sometimes it all boils down to a sense of humour! This is a bust by Alyce McDonald:

 

 

We ended the outing at the Carnegie Museum of Art and History in New Albany, Indiana where Penny Sisto's newest solo exhibit is hanging.  I'm always so engulfed and interested in her work but this show, a series of portraits of faith/religion, left me feeling mediocre.  Even hearing her give a gallery talk some weeks ago did not tie me into the work beyond a cerebral/academic connection.

I'm looking forward to returning to my workshop next week...it will be my first time doing a gelatin plate and using glue as a resist.

Peace and blessings, immeasurably.

this is what I'm talking about

Our weather has been really nice the last week...humidity not as high and temps in the 80s with dipping into the 70s at night.  Some spots of rain but nothing troublesome...even the gray overclouding we had I found relaxing. 

I can actually say now that going to the gym is habit.  I don't feel right when my routine breaks as it did on Saturday.  For those who know how I feel felt about exercise CAN I GET A WITNESS?!  Last week I went up to 30 minutes on the reclining bike with the programmed hills.  The exercise aggrevates the fibromyalgia but not to the point that I can't move or don't eventually feel better on the days I don't go.  And it really all boils down to my philosophy of "if I'm going to be uncomfortable or in pain, I might as well be so while doing something I want to do or have fun anyways".  That waiting for the perfect time or when things are just right or all the lights are green just doesn't happen...

Congratulations are in order to MudMan, my brother.  But I can't say why because there is the need to keep it hushed for reasons personal to him.  I've been bursting at the seams wanting to share it here since it relates to his life as an artist.  pssst, family and friends, email me for the news on the downlow ;)

As for me, I'm working into a groove but not quite there yet.  I've made this cover for my iPod and was proud of myself for figuring out how to put the snap on.  Its a project from Alissa Burke's book, Canvas Remix.  It (the case, not the book) is coated with polyurethane which makes it feel coarse.  I'm going to make another one without the coating.

I'm still playing with the graffitti look on canvas and the combining of techniques from the online class, Graffitti Chic, taught by Alissa.  I love the Ning format for taking online classes compared to the other formats I've taken.

Taking this class has got my eyes tuned to graffitti as I drive around town.  Yesterday I found myself wanting to make a sudden spontaneous stop to get out of my car and walk across a large gravel parking lot of a industrial business, cross train tracks to get a closer look of some very ornate lettering on parked train.  I didn't.  But I experience that urge daily whenever I come across graffitti now.  I like to think of graffitti artists as calligraphers who think really big.

I cut this stencil out from a photo of Peter when he was a young fierce teen-age warrior for the revolution. ;)  (incoming divergent thought:  we already know that the revolution will not be televised...but, will it be blogged?)  I might do another stencil of him as the now aged fierce tomato grower.  I get a daily tomato plant report with such detail and passion.  He is so cute with his serious passion for his tomato plants.  Reminds me of the days when we spent hours sitting in the Afro-American Reading Room solving all the social and political ills of the world when I decided he wasn't as square as I thought he was.  Oh my words, I'm cracking myself up here.

This piece has gone through some changes.  The base is silk paper.  Its been beaded 3 different times.  Yesterday I removed the beads and painted inside the squares with pearl-ex powders mixed into a textile medium.  In spite of really liking it just as you see it here, I'm leaning toward making it a cover for a journal.  It is 3 layers, but the edges of the silk paper which I didn't want to tame extend beyond the bottom 2 layers which end at the sewn line.

Right before leaving my workshop yesterday I sat and took in the space that I've been in now for a little over a year.  I sat reflecting on the on-going challenges of health, finances, deferred dreams, family conflicts, etc. and felt thankful for the Grace which is allowing me to have a space and abundance of materials to explore my imagination and artistic heartbeats.

To top it off, I came home to Kyra E. Hicks' new book!!!! I waited patiently to open the package while I listened to Peter's tomato report but just as soon as he finished I ripped it open and was like "look, look, look"!  I had to explain who Harriet Powers was to him and why the book was signficant and then I saw the pink sticky notes...couldn't contain my excitement...Kyra is kind enough and gracious to have blessed me by mentioning Seamless Skin.  Seeing myself and my blog referenced gives me an ethereal feeling.  Do you ever ponder humanity from a soul-physics point of view?  My mind is too small to grasp it but I do ponder it often...even tring to conceive how each individual small inhale and exhale we take effects change across the globe and if one breath has impact then what can be said of our breaths compounded.  Have you ever seen the African cylinder sculptures of humans interlocking to form a tower?  Maybe this is the way that particular culture or artist(s) understand what I ponder...how our small individual lives connect to form spiral cylinders that increases our humanity for the greater.  Lord know that scholarship on Harriet Powers is not exhausted and I never could have imagined or envsioned that my small breath would ever be of assistance.  But we can only see what we can see and living life larger means keep trusting the process and stepping out on belief (i.e. what I cannot see but know to hold truth).

I'm going to commune with some trees today with a grand-sistah-poet and tomorrow will be hanging out with Juanita, my quilt guru, who is here teaching some classes! All praises to the Most High!

Peace, 

 

I'm just a simple peasant woman

so why do I attempt to multi-task?  No, I haven't completed a quilt; no, I haven't started Color & Composition with the Debbie Babin's Yahoo group; no, I haven't scheduled the PT for the sciatica (since its gotten somewhat better, trying to wait it out); no, I haven't photographed the rest of the quilts in order to complete my website; no, I haven't completed One Hundred Years of Solitude (have 25 pages to go and I don't want it to end...I'm really gonna miss the crazy Buendias and the village of Macondo)and I'm sure there are some other things I could answer no to...BUT, yes, I've discovered Ning (see my sidebar) and I love the sites for the complete integration of all social networking on the net; yes, I found a way to get the critiques of my work on the Fiber Focus site via the Awful Truth (for the thick skinned); yes, I've talked to 2 different men on making the sewing table from the plans I ordered from Keepsake Quilting (waiting estimates so I can yea or nay the idea); yes, I'm still in love with casual forms of Calligraphy as opposed to the highly decorative scripts; yes, I've discovered Photoshop Elements (came with the scanner but I wanted to learn its big brother Photoshop which I haven't done); yes, I'm enrolled in an online workshop, Creating Custom Digital Brushes with Gail Schmidt at Creative Workshop (another Ning group); yes, I've started one of the art marketing books; and yes I have a give-a-way and a trade!!!!

I have the Premier Issue of Where Women Create, a Stampington Publication:

 

I'll draw a name from a bag this coming Wednesday night from commentors to this post and announce the winner Thursday with a new post.

And I'd like to trade something for the book that led to the creation of the magazine.  What you ask do I want in trade?  I dunno...make me an offer here or via email at seamless_skin (at) yahoo (dot) com for something.  I'll announce what I chose from any offers that I might receive on Thursday...if I get nothing, it will go into the grab bag at the next LAFTA meeting.

 

And I like to unveil one of my stamps created in PSE...for me this is a big deal!  I call it "Do you remember when we were in Paris?"

Casual Lettering with Laurie Doctor

Loved LOVED LOVED IT!  I was dipping into this in order to push my brain to imagine even more possibilities for writing on cloth...which it did do even with only eight hours total of instruction.  I found myself listening to the instructor while simultaneously pushing my tight little brain to "take it further" and "what if?".  More than likely, because of this, I probably am retaining little, but what I'm retaining I'm working it! 

The font she shared was a basic line script using a straight point nib.  But that hasn't stopped me from spending at least 10-15 minutes with daily practice or playing around.  I've purchased new nibs, picked up a book recommendation she gave me from the library, purchased a few more varieties of brands in ink, and ordered a copy of the Letter Arts Review. 

My supplies occupy a shelf by the kitchen table and after the house is quiet at night or early in the morning when the troop is gone I find it very relaxing to practice what I learned from this workshop.  What is most appealing is how my body slows down internally and externally and how my concentration and visualization skills magnify and intensify.  Its the same way with hand stitching when I compare the activities that create the same sense of meditative sensation. 

My goal isn't to become a calligrapher but more than anything else I want to increase my command of visualization and retain my abilities to concentrate.  For now it will stay a daily practice.  I also find it much more accessible, intimate, and personal than drawing. 

Here are photos as evidence of my journey:

 

above: experimenting with value and design using a variety of pens and pencils in black/grey on water colour paper.  (since I first wrote this post, I added colour to the above project with Derwent watercolour pencils.  The b/w filter was applied to the photo)

 

black on black writing (used a shell for writing, felt very earthy and womanish) colouring with pencils and water colours and white gel pen on black cover weight paper.  behind the black pieces of paper is a "what if" with colour and layering using inks, markers, and pens on paper.)

 

front of hand-made book

 

back of hand-made book:  2 types of white gel pens-one layered writing; black on black shell writing; coloured with prismacolour pencils.

 

first opening,

seconing opening,

 

third oepning,

 

front of pages, accordian fold, little momentos of practices tucked inside pages. china marker, walnut and sumi inks.  (note give Ron a bucket to collect walnuts)

 

back of pages.

 

Friday's daily practice using acrylic ink, straight nib (feather quill makes me feel like Phillis Wheatley, I like to strike the pose of the image of her with quill sitting at the table in contemplation).

 

And here is a very small section of a quilt I assumed was complete and which I liked very much but wanted to dare myself to go back into using block letters and in a different colour.  Once I started, I gasped, but then what could I do...cut it down? nope! I decided to continue on to see where it would lead before I made such a drastic decision.  I think next time I will make the block lettering smaller and more squished up and my cursive on top and larger.  I'm okay with the outcome but I like it more prior to this layer.  Hopefully soon I'll settle down to get good overall photography of the full quilt. 

 

 

Its been a year of Growth, Blessings, and Grace...and for that I'm mighty thankful!

Winter is not officially here, but its here...this will be my first winter working in my basement workshop and even with the vents open and the ceramic heater going it was a tad on the chilly side making me decide to cut back to 3 days a week.  I set up a small area on a shelf by the kitchen table here at home for sketching and mark making...taking the calligraphy class has kept my wheels turning about writing on my quilts.  I plan to continue studying with her for a little bit just to see where I can take this writing on quilts.  I'll also add this to my altered books which I'll resume here at home now that I'll be spending more time at home due to the season.

In the calligraphy class we've worked on simplified letters since it was only a total of 8 hours over 4 weeks.  She has emphasized expressiveness versus strict adherence to the letter form since the time was so short.  The end product will be a handmade book which I've enjoyed working on at home and will show here later when its finished.  Here is a sample of play-practice:

 It will prolly get some colour and torn up to be placed inside my book...

Here is the 2nd quilt in the Poetry series (yes, I'm still working on the 2nd one) that is 2/3rds of the way quilted.  My love affair with my circular attachment is coming to an end.  The 3rd one will get hand quilting but I'm still creating the fabric for it.  I need at least 2 more of me cloned in order to churn out these ideas rolling around in my head.

 

It was my plan (laid to rest) to enter this one and the one below into Form, Not Function but I couldn't get myself together to get them properly finished and photographed by the time the deadline rolled upon me.  2009 is designated for the year to focus more on submissions and selling work.  Although, I didn't complete the 4-5 quilts for 2008...its been a very productive year for me full of growth, blessings, and grace.

  Although I was pleased with this one, yesterday I thought it needed more writing, more graphic layers going on, particularly on the left side in the upper half.  I'll work on it next week so that I can let it go and move on.