Seamless Skin

Stuff!

We, as in all of us generally speaking, have just too much of it! STUFF!  We, as in all of us generally speaking, are a disposable culture.  Capitalism depends on it.  But our saving, hoarding, collecting, keeping, whatever word makes you comfortable, of stuff is leftover from our days when individuals were inventive out of neccessity and some great grandfather made stuff by hand and made it to last through 10 generations and we inherited and utilized items of our dead relatives stuff.  But in this day an age, too much is too much...and how long do we keep hauling around our ancestor's stuff while accumulating our own stuff??  

All that to say this...tomorrow is moving day for my 80plus years young mother.  It has been long hard tedious road filled with stress, anger, relief, tears, and tempers...but tomorrow, August 1st is an what I hope will be true emancipation day for all of us.  Her new space is light and airy and I hope she will feel less burdened in it.  My brother managed to come and salvage his cassette tapes from the 80s and his primitive literary journals, my sister managed to salvage her graduation gown, drill team uniform with the go-go boots, and a beloved niece I hope will become firmly grounded as she matures into the new changes and using a 60 year old dresser drawers she is getting from my mother.  All the stuff that didn't get sold, salvaged, or reused, is going into storage.  and me?  well, all my sewing "stuff" is boxed, bagged, and rolled ready to go into storage tomorrow.   Although, I wish I could have come up with a better alternative, surprisingly, at the moment, I'm in a good head space.  

This morning I rose and got out of here before 8 and headed to the solitude of my wet studio.  I spent the time weeding out "stuff" to take to the next grab bag giveaway at the LAFTA meeting and throwing out "stuff".  I also, straightened and cleaned off my print table and just had to snap a pic, because it has never looked like this:

looks inviting, doesn't it?

But after leaving my mother's tonight I dropped off 2 boxes of "stuff" that came out of The Basement Workshop, so it doesn't look like this anymore.  But come Tuesday, I'm going to find places for the relocated "stuff" and get to doing something to some fabric heah!

Deconstructing

Someone asked me today that I hadn't seen in a while if I was still writing and I took too long to answer until I remember yes! I've been writing a blog for seven years! I added a brief intro to my textile work into the conversation.  Do you have difficulty explaining what you do and how you do it?  Textile work is so process driven before one gets to the final creation and I still haven't found a way to describe it when in casual conversations.

I have a demo coming up this Saturday.  I was going to make silk paper but can't put my hands on my supplies which has thrown me for a loop.  Then I was thinking about doing freehand cutting and strip piecing, but now I'm thinking about bringing the slow cloth piece and showing hand quilting.  But for viewers that might be like watching molasses pouring.   How about making yo-yos?  But I'm not sure where my yo-yo makers are...I'm also deconstructing my sewing space, a.k.a. The Basement Workshop, and have slowly been breaking it down the last few weeks and fitting what can fit into the Chitlin' Circuit studio and the rest will go into storage.  Painting cloth and dyeing will be my main groove for a while longer.    Here is some of this week's results:

3 different deconstructed screens on 1 piece of cloth

the beginning of something...see below the sophisticated tool I used 

 

I wonder if Beauford ever heard the whoosh?

Since the end of July I've been on a creative high but yesterday in The Basement Workshop it just wasn't happening.  I forced myself to finish quilting a "practice" piece that bottomed out when I attempted to add another layer of painting after I finished quilting it.  It is somewhat of an abstracted landscape.  I brought it home with me to continue pondering to see if it can be saved...even though it is a practice piece for free-motion quilting, it still was discouraging to have ucked it up in the last stages.  I could hear the flushing of my time going right down the commode.   Of course logically I know that even the failures are investments toward skill, but emotionally I heard that long whooshing sound when all felt in vain. Here is a sectional view of where it went all wrong-

Actually, I know it can be redeemed, it's just going to push me harder to wrap my head around colour control and painting technique.

Weather wise we are catching a big break this week.  Cooler temperatures and low humidity.  I'm staying home today but will enjoy the weather from the balcony.  Will try to finish the bio on the artist Beauford Delaney.  Peace,

Altering Quilts and Awards

This quilt belongs to the poetry series but I wasn't happy with it when I completed it and over a year ago. I'm still not happy with it.  For one, I've ironed the heck out of the middle section at the bottom and that crease will not come out.  Two, the vertical seams are not straight and that bothers me for this piece. Third, the horizontal strips need to be narrower and the colours are slightly off for what I intended.  Maybe if they had been narrower they wouldn't distract me.  What I love about the piece is the fabrics I created  (with the circles and writing) and the colours of those. 

These are the thoughts I have: One, cut them into three individual pieces, (see below). Two, cut it into postcards; or, three, make my first journal covers or small purses.  Since I'm not attached to this piece I'm open for suggestions.  (There is prolly someway to add a poll feature, but I don't have the time to investigate).  Leave your ideas in the comments...and peace :)

Postscript:  The above post was a draft I wrote yesterday for posting today but since last evening, my fantastic news that was announced at the LAFTA meeting is my quilt, Urban Egression, won the LAFTA award in the Fine Arts division/Constructed Textiles category.  The jurying process was a blind one with 3 jurors from the organization.  I haven't attended a meeting in months so it felt like divine guidance for me to have the energy and inclination to attend.  I instantly had goosebumps from head to toe.  I have the image upon my FB photos, but I'm on a different computer right now and will upload the image later.  Again, Peace...and have a super fantastic weekend!

Meet my youngest son

He is the spitting image of his father!

Ade, Mo, and Carter were in The Basement Workshop with me yesterday.  I worked on a design project and did the stitching and fusing on it today.  It will get a few seed beads and a stone (when I can find the ones I'm looking for).  This is the 2nd one...I'm calling it 2304:2...or thats what I'm calling it today.  If I stick with the title, then the previous one will have to be titled 2304:1  I could call it *therapy work.   

Ade took this picture of me working at The Beauty of Holiness Studio on Wednesday.  My art making time is regular sporadic snatches of time.  I walk in and look around and ask myself what can I do...I think I'm getting more done this way or at least if feels like it.  Today before I left the basement I soaked fabrics in bubble jet and another few pieces in Golden digital ground and hung them to dry...if I was actually working on "goals", taking the time to soak these fabrics or doing something like 2304:2 would have been pushed to "another day".

He signed up to enter into the Nature category in photography at the state fair.  You go man!  Okay, I'm off to dream land!  Go out and do something fun thhis weekend!

 

Crowbonics 2

Lucky for me, my washing machine went out and yesterday I went to my parent's house to do a couple of loads of laundry and thus had an extended time period at The Basement Workshop!!  I auditioned fabrics for what will become Crowbonics 1.  It will include one of the laminated fabrics created at the Crow Barn.  I found the perfect medium gray fabric and I'm thinking about doing a little bit of discharge on it to get some subtle colour change and movement behind the laminated sheer.  Discharging is a technique I personally do not want to use much to avoid health risk.  Jacquard's discharge paste is my tool of choice whenever I do.  And up to this point I've only used it to experiement with and then used it to create a design on a 1/4 yard of fabric.  I've seen a colour remover by Ritz but have not experimented with it to know anything about it.  I'm needing to remove just a little colour without any hard edges in order for the gray fabric to work for me.

I also spent some time quilting the piece shown at the top of this previous post.  There is still 2/3 of it left to quilt but as B.B. King sings "better not look down...just keep it moving".  One day I'll look up and have a plethora of quilts I love and will not know what to do with!

Here are 3 more laminated pieces that I did while on retreat...pieces that I hope will become focal pieces in the Crowbonics series.  (I have at least 3 series that are on going and just flow in and out of them depending on where my mind and heart are and what my body can handle.  If you create series work, how do you go about it?)

 Please keep in mind that these are all in process or experiments and not viewed at completed.

Yesterday I started burning into the piece below which is where the white shows through.  The white is from the lid of the scanner.

 

Lesson Learned...

I started out using an embroidery needle to make these seed stitches and after a very short time my palm started to hurt and stitching was painful. I switched to a sharp and the pain subsided to the point of being gone.  The fabric is cotton painted with acrylic and the backing is a heavier canvas which is also painted.  I thought the embroidery needle would be better because it was stronger than the sharp...the sharp is thinner but goes through the layers with more ease.

Basting

Basting, it has to be basting. When I ask myself what is the least favorite thing about quilting...I believe it is basting.  Its important but tedious...tonight I went with 505 temporary adhesive paired with saftety pens (pins?).  Quilting the stones is my favorite pattern for the texture it creates although here on the screen it looks flat...could be due to the circles not being tight enough, thread colour too close in value to the background, or that the middle layer is commercial felt instead of batting, or all of the above.  

This working intuitively with little to no pre-visioning on the outcome is working for me of late.  It might change again sometime and I might go cerebral at some point but just flowing when I am here in The Basement is working.   The painted fabric (above photo) is one that was eliminated from consideration for the Crows.  Its my aim to have this finished by the last Friday in the month for F.A.T. (Frankfort Avenue Trolley Hop) Friday which is designated as the Derby Hop.  I'm not sure if Mellwood will do anything special but I'm expecting that they will...a tenant's meeting is coming up next week and I'll get the scoop then.  I'm feeling a little gutsy (or just crazy enough) to hold a "Grand Opening" that night which gives me three weeks to plan.  I spent yesterday, pretty much all of yesterday, trying to recall how to create and merge layers in Photoshop in order to produce one mock 4"x6" postcard...if you click on the page heading for The Beauty of Holiness you can see what consumed me in time and energy....darn near an entire day squeezed into a 4"x6 piece of paper!!!!

 
(sectional view) 12"x12"

Sorry, Ade, but I'm not going with Languid for a title.   Try again.

Peace...

Gel Transfers using ink-jet images.

The transfer technique using gel medium is too unpredictable. I transfered onto paper, cotton, and a stretched canvas.The application of gel medium leans toward a thicker application then I expected in order to get a better transfer.  In this case, for the outcome, the use of materials seems a waste.  This technique gets moved over to altered books, fabric postcards at best.

I'm now trying a similiar image with a magazine page and a toner-based imageon paper and the stretched canvas.

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,

Just remembering what I was doing in pictures before what I'm doing now...

My lungs are clearer than they've been in a very long time! My doctor released me yesterday from being house bound and I thought I'd return to The Basement Workshop today but the temps have dropped below freezing and after yesterday's running around I found myself good for nothing but sleep when I returned home. 

 I'm in dire need of a hair cut but as always when it begins to grow out I entertain the thought of doing something different with my hair other than my signature cropped close to the scalp afro.  But I've turned into such a really LOW maintenance chick that the thought of keeping any sort of regular appointments with a braider or beautician makes me go NO WAY! But I really could do a little better.  Wish barbers made housecalls.

Remember the art journal I had lost?  Well I found it buried under some things at the Studio. This is a page from it for materials to be used in the above piece.  Looking at it now, it feels like it will be a "safe" piece...no risk taking here. 

Today will be filled with reading.  Yesterday I picked up the latest SDA journal, Studio, and Legacy magazines. I've started another book by Zades Mda, Ways of Dying with the same protagonist, Toloki, the professional mourner, but this one takes place in his home country of South Africa.  Also I'm continuing to scribble and work with colour in the design writing that I began while in the hospital...all this should keep me out of any trouble for a day or two...

Hurry up Spring!

Small joys; Great happiness...

Most of my handiness goes into the making of art that when it comes time to get it properly photographed, hung, and even submitted to exhibits, I find I'm left deft and confused and tired.  Multi-tasking has never been my strong suit and in fact I find it over-rated.  The ability to focus and concentrate deeply on several closely related tasks is my gift (although in the last few years this has been challenged).  I'm a slow thinker...it takes my brain a while to shift when its time to move on to another topic, task  especially when it is a shift from generating creativity to pragmatic matters at hand.  Thats the way I'm wired but I keep trying to learn to re-wire some parts that will allow me to complete the cycle of productivity.  I don't know why I'm talking about this here other than to say I've spent most of the day thinking about how to display 4 small pieces.  I want them matted and framed but without glass covering them.  From there I think "I should learn to mat and frame my own pieces".  From here I jump to "but damn, thats just another thing to learn and there is only one of me".   I know, I know, I make myself crazy this way...but it always comes back to the thrill of the process of making the art and this is where I want to use my time and resources and all else let come what may and I'll deal with the consequences. Its is especially sweet and its own reward when I create pieces I love such as the pieces below.  I forgot I had a 12"x6" series going back in the summer...it gave me joy to uncover them.

Crossroads

Sunset (how cliche a title?)

 
Copper Sun

Kindling

Peace,
 

Laid Back Sewing and Design

After clearing off my paint/cutting table, which didn't take me that long, there was no need to wait until Monday to start sewing.  I meditated first and then selected some blocks that I've had for some time and dibbled and dabbled with for a few years.  I purchased these hand-dyed 2 inch squares from Wendy Richardson at AQS in Paducah.  I loved them so much I came home and ordered another box of them.  I used some of them to make placemats for a girlfriend who was having a show of her hand-made dinner works in clay,...but that was at least 3 years ago if not longer.  So these gems have been around at least that long.  Over the past summer when I hung out for a day with some quilt buds I sewed them together in a 4-patch just to have something to sew.

What was important to me today was just to work calmly and steadily and sewing the squares together provided me this.  Once I started arranging them, it became about colour and value...nothing more.  Then after I was satisfied with the arrangement I wanted to introduce another fabric which was a soft entry for me to start thinking about design.  Here is where I left it:

b/w filter applied to check for value placement
 

I'm not going to make any plans for it before I return on Monday but will design in the moment as I go and see what occurs.

Peace,

Muddied Mind Needs a Good Cleaning.

Monday at my workshop I did a lot of piddlin'.  I couldn't open up a clear path of thinking on what to do.  I had cut stencils over the weekend but wasn't focused enough to work with them...I used up the rest of dye paint that was left in a screen from last year but no pizzazz...the colours ended up as muddied as my mind.  I did remember to get the gelatin mold out and was really surprised at how solid it formed.  I thought it would be slightly mushy but it felt rubbery.  My reference books for the gelatin printing were Rayna Gillman's book, Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth, and one from the library, Making Monotypes Using a Gelatin Plate by Nancy Marculewicz.  I managed to ignite enough brain cells to do these fabrics but afterwards my brain went to sleep so I followed suit.  I used Jacquard's screen printing inks and regular block printing ink and extender with the screening and gelatin mold.  The glue resist worked very well, so I'll be investing in more blue glue and gelatin powder...does anyone know if Costco or GFS (restaurant supplier) carries gelatin powder?  

top-bottom: gel print, gel print, screen print

 

both fabrics gel prints

When I return I'm going to be about damage control on the red and green graffiti panels shown in the previous post.  I wasn't thinking and what I did to them on Monday showed it.  I've invested too much time in them to just chalk it up...hopefully the super hero within will come to the rescue.

I rested all day yesterday...my concentration was still poor and this morning feels the same...but neverless, I'm going to venture to my workshop for a little while and see what I can do...hangeth in people!

 

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, 

 

Its A Miracle!!!!

 

Well, lookahere, lookahere, I can upload pictures!

This is another 6x12 completed (for the most part).  Do you think the fringe should stay...I was planning to trim it but looking at it here, I kinda like it.  I went through at least 7 bobbins as I experimented with thread painting.  I received Carol Shinn's book in free motion embroidery and decided to thread paint this one...she uses heavy canvas also which takes thread painting beautifully!

These are just me auditioning possibilities at random.  The green fabric is my continued writing on cloth in readying fabrics to continue with the Poetry Series.  Writing on cloth is time consuming but I decided to do the writing on multiple pieces before doing successive layers.

Back in 2003 when I jump started this journey of quilting I saw myself doing picturesque quilts...human faces in fantasy/mysterious settings.  My attempts were not enjoyable...didn't enjoy the realism in applique.  The image on the left above was done using a stencil I cut from a picture of one of my great nieces...the one on the right was based on a free hand drawing in my journal of an artist whose name I can't recall but he uses found objects and old pressing irons in his work.  The stitched image was done using free motion drawing. 

Here are some images from some of my journals:

young man-child w/ dreadlocks

 

aborted pod from magnolia tree

 

art from others that I find appealing.

I found a video that Melanie Testa did (on YouTube) of her studio...I've been wanting to delve into doing short videos...I think I'll make it a goal for the month of July...with the first one being a view into my workshop.  Hopefully the learning curve will not be too deep.

Hurricanes, Swamps, and Magnolias.

 

Yesterday I started with what I thought would be a few circles around the moon but I was really caught up in the building up of colour with the stitches that I did not stop and loved the ending result.  Peter saw a hurricane...I see a swamp at dusk.  The edging is hand stitched with thick linen thread.  See how flat it lays?  I wasn't expecting this either but if must be the acryllic felt as batting that is responsible for the flatness.  Behind the moon are 3 layers of felt which makes it rise up...its not visible in the photo but you can see it a little bit on the back-

 

 

A Huge Thank You to Dr. Paul Cappiello from Yew Dell Gardens!

He must flag the name of the gardens and I'm so happy he did!  He answered the question about the pods I picked up from the ground in the comments of the previous post.  Here is his reply:

The little "pod-like cones" are actually the fruiting structures from a magnolia. The specimens you picked up from the ground did not set any seed and that is why they were shed by the plant. The structure is actually an aggregate of follicles - if anyone cares.

Yew Dell

I care I care!  I've started drawing these pods and I'm watching them decay still.  They have turned to a blackish brown colour and have shrivelled in size.  Reminds me that 'one needs substance because beauty doesn't last and is often fleeting'.

If I'm understanding his answer correctly, they would have tunred into the flower if they had seeded? 

Retrospective in Photos

 

First, a cuppa tea. 

 

My assignments from online workshop, Graffiti Chic with Alisa Burke.

 

And I thought it was finished.

 Six by Twelves in the making.

The 5 images below summarize our staycation week activities.

 

Jefferson Memorial Forest

 

One of the many toys made by Marvin Finn for his children when they where young.

 

Another early Finn toy.

 

This is a small representation of what Finn is famour for.

 

Mr. Finn, I believe painted by his son, who carries on his legacy in wood.

 

Such an elegant shape in glass.  The five above images were taken at the Kentucky Musuem of Art & Craft.

 

Family Funny Business at Lynn's Paradise Cafe.

  

A day trek to the Columbus Zoo

And finally...what is this?  I picked them up from the ground at Yew Dell Gardens.  Some type of conifer?  I'm in love with the shape and colours.

The effectiveness of old dye stock

I pulled out old dye stock and 2 strengths of thickener from the fridge and allowed them to come to room temperature over night for use last Friday the canvas.  Since I didn't feel like bothering with soda soaking I used Afterfix which goes on after the dye is completely dry.  The Afterfix is brushed on dries in about an hour.  It has to completely dry and then the fabric can be washed to remove the Afterfix and the dye remains.  

The dye and thickeners are 9 months old and have not been removed from the fridge since I put them in.  There is no odor to the thickener...seems like I remember reading in Complex Cloth that an amonia smell indicates the thickener is bad. 

I hand-washed the pieces in warm as my hand could stand it water with synthrapol.  I was satisfised with the results and plan to use the remaining dyes for dye-painting.  Here is what I painted today. 

The dye is still wet and will be good and dry when I return to paint on the Afterfix. 

I also tried ink-jet transfers using soft gel medium...the top was on a lighter background and the image was in gray scale.  The image directly above was in colour and the background fabric was darker and I'm thinking the values where too similiar resulting in the lost image.  While I was doing these samples it dawned on me to have my journals either dedicated to "transfers", "embroidery", for example, or either divide up a journal into sections so that I will not have to flip through journals to find (or most often, rediscover) previous samples.  What can I say?  Always slow but sure.

Memorial Day is starting out gray and wet...we are not trekking to the "country" cementary this year but I have fond memories of tradition of going with my Aunts and cousins.  For my mother's family, Memorial Day morphed into remembering the ancestors and not just those who served in the military.  I always used the time to collect family genealogy and stories which I entered into Family Tree Maker, a software program which has since been lost.  Even if I find the back up disc I'm not sure it would even open in the operating systems we have now.  I've thought about re-gathering, rebuilding the information but genealogy is much like quilting for me...enjoyably consuming in time and attention where anything else ceases to exist.  I loved the hunt involved in digging up records (of course much can be done online now) and oral interviews.  Even though I anticipated picking it back up, I don't think I can do it without stressing myself out which would take the pleasure from it.  I don't know if there are any young people in my family who are interested or not...its kinda entertaining to think of the 2nd (3rd?) wave hip-hop generation undertaking genealogy research.(what age demographic is that btw?  15-25).  I think of the first wave being my brother's age in their early 40's now.  The group that was weaned on it.  My 17 year old is writing a paper about the history of hip-hop.  He sees Rap as a sub-genre in Hip-Hop.   He has been struggling with the paper because I can't get it through is thick head that strong research paper goes beyond just citing historians and views of others but should at the heart be his own thoughts, ideas, and impressions of what he has learned, or what he thinks of the thoughts and ideas of others.  When we are talking about it, his self comes through, but he struggles with transfering his spoken words to paper.  At this point I've stopped bumping my head against the wall and I'm leaving him to his own devices and see what transpires between he and his teacher about it.