Seamless Skin

Learning Curves, Fall, Week 3

Monday:  I skipped class today and instead cleaned up images in Photoshop and then headed to The Basement and made several thermofaxes for printing.  The images came from the homework in Visual Languages (Benn & Morgan) on negative and positive space.

Also, I browsed through an older journal looking at my face sketches and discovered I was partial to sketching faces with the eyes closed.  I selected one that I would like to work with on cloth and will make some samples for painting and stitching.

Tuesday:  Woke up with a scratchy throat and apprehension and vulnerability...for years more than I care to count up, the week after TG marks the season of bronchitis/pnuemonia.  The unseasonable warm temps paired with sudden drops in temps is what my great grandmama called "fooler weather" and always admonished me to "wrap up" or at least put something on my head and around my neck.  In my youth though, in spite of the chronic asthma and sarcodosis in my lungs at the time, I still felt I had mind over matter and the benefit of my youthful energy that I didn't feel pressed to adhere to her folk wisdoms.  But as my mother still says "a hard head makes a soft behind".  

My goal is always to get through winter without being hospitalized.  I think my record since the early 80's is 2.5-3 years straight without having a hospital stay.  (So you can begin to understand or be reminded of my dislike of winter months.) 

Image Transfer (McElroy) is the on the agenda for today.  Since I'm still waiting to order some transfer mediums, I'm only going to read.

After Tuesday:  I just blew the rest of the week off and will begin again on Monday, the 29th.

The next Artist Interview is scheduled for posting on December 1st.  The Artist is Penny Sisto.

Learning Curves, Fall, Week 2

Monday:  I was not consciously in my art mind today but when I stopped by the studio to drop some things off, I plopped down and surveyed the room I left last week and tried to think about what processes needed to be done to which fabrics.  Feeling defeated, I dug out some black construction paper and begin cutting shapes out.  This is an exercise from Finding Your Own Visual Language (Benn, Morgan).  Image Transfer is on the agenda tomorrow.  

Tuesday:  The studio didn't happen. First, I had trouble getting out of the house, damp, wet, cold weather aggravates my mobility and breathing but did make it and after taking care of some business with my mother, I headed to Mellwood.  Made 2 attempts in heavy rain to get me and my stuff (I'm always carrying stuff from one point to another) gathered up to walk the 40 miles across the parking lot, I felt defeated and came on home.   Once back home, I reviewed the lessons for tomorrow's Learning Curve and watched Ricky Tims dvd on machine quilting.  Tims' method look cumbersome but worth it when decorative stitching is a definitive element.

Wednesday:  The chapter on Color Management (Hansen) woke up lots of dormant brain cells.  I spent one hour reading in front of the computer with PS Elements open...changed my computer monitor from a bright lime green to a neutral gray background as she advised and looked at color calibration devices on Amazon.  The prices are prohibitive and although all this is leading to wanting to create digital art into textiles, I'll have to work with what I have first to see where it lands inside my spirit.  This will be dinner conversation with Peter today.

Thursday:  LAFTA meeting was so inspiring that I left there and spent and hour in the studio just to touch up on the four small pieces pinned to the print table.  The piece below I painted in the white spaces with blue and red but I think the values will be too dark.  Will consider going back in with discharge paste.

Friday:  I'm getting ready to spend a few hours working from Digital Expressions (Tuttle).  The author provides a CD of images for working through the book as an option. The Madonna and Child are from Wikipedia and copyright free and the man is off the CD that comes with the book. 

1st attempt didn't quite understand, 2nd attempt with Tuttle's image, and 3rd attempt w/ better understanding.

 

MY THOUGHTS ON HOLIDAYS

Next week is Thanksgiving and next Friday is the onslaught of shopper's day.  F.A.T. Friday will be an all day affair and I'm planning to be in my studio for the anticipated foot traffic.  I said I was going to do more holiday themed post cards since they move really well for me and I'll string some lights in my studio window, but honestly the holidays always feel like "peer pressure" to me and I've yet to convince Peter of retreating during them...but for me, personally, I'd like nothing better than to go to spend them in a cabin, lodge, in the mountains or at the edge of a body of water surround by nature, mutual love with family and good food, music, good movies, and an all day Scrabble tournament.  That would be holiday bliss.  Most of these things do describe what we do except for the change in scenery.  As much as I'm an urban woman, sometimes the sights and sounds are an onslaught to my senses...and I feel it most around holidays, even when I was a child I was weird about holidays.  What I remember loving the most is basking in the fun of family get-togethers for what seemed to me, no apparent reason...it was just what one did on the weekends.  I'm kinda half-way recalling a theory by John Blassingame who attributed survival through the harshest conditions and  the flourish of creativity by what occurred in the few hours of down time and gatherings in the slave quarters away from the watchful eyes of overseers.  In some strange way that makes me feel off-center, holidays feel intrusive and like those watchful eyes trying to market my soul.

Peace,

Learning Curves, Fall, Week 1

Friday:  

Digital Expressions by Susan Tuttle is my assignment for today.  I almost forgot about doing my Learning Curves this morning.  I woke up filled with the joy of art date yesterday (which I will write about in a few days when I can come down off the high of it).  

I just stopped at page 19 right before getting into the projects which I don't have time to begin as I have 2 appointments today that require my energies and focus.  

Reading and working through 3 digital art books at the same time is layering the knowledge which so far is helping me to retain better.  I was a little apprehensive at first, thinking I should go through them in successive order.

The weekends will be snatches of time to review what I've already covered and to get a small jump toward next week's schedule.

Wednesday:

Digital Designs by Gloria Hansen filled the morning.  A lot of terminology to best understand files and input/output of images.  Very generally, I knew the info at a surface level, but know that it is the type of information I will need to reference whenever I actually have the need to employ the knowledge.

Will review ch. 1-4 over the weekend and start the next few chapters and pick back up with a review beginning with ch. 5 on Wed.

The afternoon I started Secrets of Digital Quilting by Lura Schwarz Smith and Kerby Smith read to page 21.  The strongest imprint on me so far is knowing the difference between jpeg, raw, and tiff files...the ppi/dpi is still fuzzy but if I can hang on to dpi being output (printed) and ppi being what is visible on the screen then maybe the numerical understanding will become clearer later on.

Tuesday:

I continued on dyeing and mixed  red, black and black cherry into print paste and used it to over dye 2 pieces.  I really had no rhyme or reason other than the delight in playing with colour today.  With results like these I had to force myself out of the studio today: (they both are still damp)

I did not get into Image Transfer today (Learning Curve Curriculum).  I need to order Transfer Art Paper (Leslie Riley's product) and Lazertran for cotton and dark fabrics which will have to wait.  

Monday:

For the last few weeks I've been working with Intense Blue, Chocolate Brown, and Aqua Marine...I know by now the potency of the dye stock is on its last leg but I just hate throwing it out until I'm absolutely sure its a total bust.  Its has stayed in the fridge in attempts to keep it as fresh for as long as possible, but today I think I've reached my personal exhaustion point with the colours and I'm ready to move on into quilt design/construction.

Before I left the studio today, I put some time into mark making (one of the exercises found in Finding Your Own Visual Language).  These fast and loose sketches were made using a sea shell dipped in ink.

2 page spread; the right side was the first one...lines and letters; the left side is pears and a banana still life..attempting perspective;

attempt at narrative; 

last one was an angel

At some point I might return to these pages and add some colour but for not the objective holds of just fast and loose line drawing with a sea shell.  

Do I speak a languid language?

I'm getting close to believing that pre-planning induces a deeper anxiety in me.  I didn't know that I'd end up with such a long stretch of time in The Basement, but I did.  Flowing from one thing to another worked for me today.  Just pick up something and go with it flow is what I did.   While there I did some exercises from Finding Your Own Visual Language and Image Transfer Workshop...

The transfer techniques involved allowing the image to dry completely in the gel medium and then spritzing with water and rubbing off.  If a solid filled image is important to the outcome then the culprit can be air pockets in spite of burnishing the back to get a good adhesion.  The larger image is on stretched canvas and the small image is a page inside a moleskin journal.  The desert image was a magazine photo and the crow was a laser printed on common printer paper.  Again, a techique that I'll relegate to altered books.

And right before I left I did this collage with some ink-jet printed fabrics that I'm in love with...instead of using them for some heavy message ladened art quilt, I just cut them into squares and rectangles and put them back together again.  Now I want to print off more of the same fabrics and just keep rearranging them into collages.  Ade, my youngest, called it "languid"...he meant it as a compliment...no, really, honest to goodness, he did...I think this is what I will title it.

And I'm lacking vim and vigor also, soooooo I'm taking my languid self to bed...Peace...

Scraps of Splendor...

sunshine, and warmer temps (it hit the low 60's today!!!!) makes keeping the faith a whole lot easier!

These dyed silk scraps came from wearable artist Laverne Zielbelski from Lexington, Kentucky.  Laverne had a booth set up this weekend at the Kentucky Crafted Market which I attended for a few hours on Saturday.  I met Laverne over 20 years ago when she lead writing circles and reconnected after discovering last year that she is also doing textile work for creating her poetic line of clothing.  Laverne is also doing Nuno felting and using the FeltLOOM created by the owner of Lan Mark Farms near Lexington.  It is a machine that takes the rolling out of Nuno felting.  The University of Kentucky Art dept. is looking into purchasing one of the machines...I wonder if UofL's Fiber Art dept. would get one????  Slim chance I think due to budget cuts in the last few years but one never knows, right?!

I worked about 2 hours today at The Basement.  I spent about 30 minutes cutting shapes as an exercise from Finding Your Own Visual Language and will work some tonight with mark making on paper using a variety of inks and pens and brushes.  I spent about an hour working on the quilt in honor of Crows and thinking about James Audubon.  Many times an idea will hit me and I can see it and I think "how brilliant that will be if I can pull it off!" and then weeks later I think the design has morphed into something "too simple" to reflect my ideas and I'm heading for the path of least resistance.  The conflict comes in when I create a focal point...when I create an image, in this case Crows, I loose the emotion for a piece.  I really like my backgrounds so much better which I describe as emotional abstractions.  The questions I posed today are:  Should I go for narrative?  Should I make the Crows larger? Should I make the background smaller?  Should I make the Crows out of felt and sculptural?  What if I wanted to return to a total abstraction about Crows...what would it look like?  What are Crows attracted to?  Should I make the background reflect an urban setting?  A practice I took from the Benn and Morgan Workshop back in '08 is to write the answsers to the questions down when I'm stuck...this is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. 

Peace,

The answer to the question, "what are you writing these days?"

The paper is a heavy textured cotton like paper that I just love to close my eyes over rub. The writing is done using Faber-Castell Artist pens that glide beautifully over the dimpled paper.  The journal size is about 14x11 inches. The writing I started while in the hospital with pneumonia in both lungs.  I have at least 2 weeks to be house-bound, at which, gives me time to finish it.  I thought about adding colour but I love the stark contrast of the black and white.
 

Maybe I should give a name to my curriculum...????

I'll start my 3 week in my self-directed curriculum this coming week.  Here is a peak at last week's activities:

Mindful Meandering

 

Visual Language

Machine Embroidery

I worked on a little machine felting and with the temperatures rising into the 50's I wondered if I should put the wool away and anticipate spring.  Mellwood has an artists' gallery that was formed by tenants who have formed a seperate non-profit council.  Annual membership is 40 and 20% goes back to the council.  I'm going to roll this around in my head for a bit but I'm thinking it would ease my dilemna of whether I want to aim to sell from my studio space.  

 

back of scarf

front 

 
  
  

Kicking off the year!

Well la ti da, looka here, looka here...this cold fluffy stuff that is so pretty to look at but whose reality is a bit harsh finally found us...the frigid temps wasn't enough, it had to go and snow! Its only a few inches but, still, ya know how I feel about the season that shall not be named. 

But I was not daunted! No, beloved, I managed to keep myself distracted and warm and worked my plan in spite of it all! 

FME Exercises (Shinn) 

VL (Dunnewold, Benn, Morgan)

 
MM (Fritz)  

What I've committed to doing this time around with my outlined curriculum (see previous post) is to stick with the exercises, ride them out so to speak, go a little further with them, versus rushing through them in order to get to the "fun" part.  For example, take the expanded shape exercises (middle image above). Instead of doing 10-20 of them and then moving to the next exercise, I'm going to overlap the exercises and continue to do the previous exercises while moving to the next one.  This will add some "depth" to what I do instead of moving through fast.  Afterall, the purchase of books is a serious investment and it doesn't make sense to keep adding to my shelves without really getting the benefit from them.  I'm even abandoning my approach to keep my books in pristine condition.  Why? For What?  No, this time I'm highlighting, making notes in the margins...really pushing myself to engage with the efforts that each author has made. 

Other happenings this week was finding 4 painted whole cloths that was my first intended series.  I didn't even remember doing them until I saw them and one of them just might become the background for the Audubon piece.  How sweet it is to look at something with new eyes, eh!? 

And another fresh discovery for this week is observing very little dye wash-out with acid dyes on silk which leads me to the conclusion that most of the dye adhers to the cloth.  Here are the scarves waiting for a 2nd layer of something...I'm thinking of some hand writing, any ideas for me?

Looking at these colours, I must have Spring on my mind :)

 Peace,

Ya know, I haven't dyed fabric all year!

I'm excluding the playing I did to see what the iDyes where all about and I'm excluding the painting on fabric.  I mean the get down and dirty, pull out the equipment, and just let go with yards of fabric kinda dyeing.  Well all that is about to change starting tomorrow.   I have a free day over at MACA and I'm going to anty up for an additional day and I'm going!!!!!!!!!!!  Ade went with me this evening to finish loading my auto.  I was going to "FOCUS" this time and not try to squeeze in every single surface design technique known to humankind.  I was almost there until the last hour of packing when I went through that "I'll take this just in case.  I might need that!  Well I can work this in too" and I've over packed...a real clear clue was when I opened the door and my 2 glass jars of thickener (sodium alginate) fell and broke.  If I remember to take a picture of my vehicle before I unload it, I'll make sure to post it here. 

I decided not to dye at my workshop.  The water source and the rinse out methods that I have to use makes it too too labor intensive and uncomfortable.  Plus too much other things are going on in the space and going outside leads back to being too laborous for me to enjoy it. 

Monday and Tuesday I spent time decluttering and replacing items and taking inventory.  Partly in preparation for the Benn/Morgan workshop coming up.  I vascilate between excitement to jitters.  Excitement due to the preparation of having to put a design board together prior to the class and bringing my intent while remaining open to new ideas; jitters due to hoping I can keep up and meet the demands of being in a group setting versus working solo at my own pace.

Yesterday I worked on cutting stencils from file folders as is demonstrated in the book Complex Cloth by Dunnewold.  I used copy-free designs just to practice and will do some more later on tonight if I don't get too tired.  I'm thinking I better try to turn in early though...yeah, better turn in early and not fool around with sharp tools this late at night.

Peace,

 

Carving and Bloggers Who Make My Day :)

I've been carving almost daily since I started this last week...I will have to replenish my stash of carving supplies soon.  Commentor, Sacredartist, sent me this link, McClain's Printmaking Supplies.  Printmaking, I glimpse, has it's own culture, similiar to Quilting.  The danger for me is I do have a fairly addictive personality that has been tempered by my growing will and discipline with age.  Ah, but there are moments when I succumb, out of the blue, for no rhyme or reason, just as I did one day last week when I wandered into a yarn store solely to fill time while I was between errands and guess what?!  No, guess...I'll segue-way back to my carving while you guess.

These are my attempts at representational, or somewhat rep...the stamp on the left was inspired by an older sketch I did of the artist Willie Cole; the one on the right was inspired by a photo of my cousin, Sterling. (Rita, if you stop by and read this, leave a comment cuz!)  I'm going to try another one of my cousin.  I attempted to take the photo and filter it through Photoshop first as a guide to carving the image...somewhere along the line I became confused about whether I was carving the dark or light areas and then thought it would make an interesting image to mix it up...but would that confuse the gaze?  I'm not sure.

Deborah sent me the link to Elin's blog,  Will Love Logic, where she is documenting a stamp a day for 2008!  Very fantastic!  I'm going to attempt a couple at least a week up until April at which time I'll have a month of studio time at my favorite place on earth.  (Oh, for anyone who orders pfd fabric by the 100 yards, just how big, as far as dimensions go, is it?  I'm worried about storage space if I order that much, but I want to get the cheapest rate per yardage that I can find also.)  100 yards should last me a very very long time since I'm a slow worker.

MAKE MY DAY AWARDS...

Gerrie nominated me for her Make My Day Awards:

Here’s what the guidelines for this award say: Give the award to up to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel so happy about Blogland! Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so that they can pass it on.

1. Cherryl
2. Juanita
3. Kyra
4. Gerie and Acey
5. Olga
6. Sonji
7. Jude
8. Deborah
9. Kristin
10. Judy and Judy

This could have went on and on...but its noon and I've scheduled my lunch and a lesson in Photoshop.

This is only the beginning.

Later today I'm going to attempt to carve representational images.