Seamless Skin

Quilted poetry, (sit back and relax with a glass of wine or tea and read on)

Julie and Gerrie helped flush out the narrative in Quinlan's quilt that I discussed in the previous post below.  And I emailed Quinlan because I when I get a bee in my bonnet I need to get it out and move on.  Quinlan's response: While the last administration, I felt, used a lot of diversion tactics to keep the public and press misinformed as it pretty much tried to dismantle the country as we know it.  A kind of "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" Oz like feel. Also, you can read into it a slipping away of our natural resources, and this country's power in the world as well as our children's future. Yes, not a very happy quilt. Thank you Shawn for taking the time to reply.  I also spoke briefly with Kathleen Loomis who sponsors the award and she read it as an overall uneasiness and discontent with the actions and decisions of the former presidential administration.

The other two quilts that I deeply vibed with were Caesura #3 by Marina Kamenskaya...big swaths of solid rich colour in Red, Black, and Green...just vibrated; and a calmer meditative one, When September Ends by Peggy Brown...a softer palette of blues, grays in cotton and watercolour on paper.  The actual quilts I couldn't find but the links are to images of other work by them. 

The two quilts that intrigued me the most by virtue of construction were Crossover by Mary Ruth Smith and City Grid III by Valerie Goodwin.  They where both visually complex but spoke order.  

Form Not Function exhibit blesses me with the opportunity to see quilts of high caliber right in my own back yard and I always look forward to this annual show. 

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And from the workshop:

  I love sewing bindings...this is where I sigh with relief  of being finished and reflect on my processes and fall back in love with the fabric.  Most of my quilts still require sleeves and labels which for some reason are pains in the butt for me to do. 

The threads at the bottom in the top photo, the red thread and and the green,yellow,blue thread will possibly be added as embellishment...not sure yet.  The red fabric I'm still writing on it.  The piece below is something I started playing around with Monday.  I'm thinking I'll write with thread, hand or machine, I'm not yet certain.  The man is my FIL who passed away in 1995 but like my great-grandmother, he is still very much present with us.

 

One of the poems included in the community arts publication was written for Peter, Mo, and Ade to honor his passing.  Here is an excerpt:

2. Ten

One season in ten years

I witnessed your tears twice.

First, at the beginning of the Harmattan

When the nine were executed.

Moral decay of my people, it could have been ten

You whispered and swallowed.

Second, in the middle of the season, Christmas Day.

The call went through.  The line clear.  Your sister spoke.

Father passed away three hours ago.

Unexpected.  Sudden.  Distance.

From his bedroom windown he was looking for you.

Standing at the gate of the compound

He was looking for you.

    Rare does death not bring regrets.

Your manhood is not murky; your soul does not wane.

I have seen people unable to look you in the eye,

Who want your smile on your teeth instead of in your heart.

What you hold is what he has given you--intense light.

Benin masks of eternity reflect

Your piercing gaze and sealed lips.

This of your father in you

Needed to be here in Kentucky with me.

(The editors of A.I.R., Artists in Revolution will be looking into get more books published for circulation sometime in the future.)

Here is another painted quilt:

My soul rests in my quilts, the process of making them...I think it shows in my preferences for low contrast...other areas of life have enough drama. 

A.I.R.

I can't locate my notes for Form Not Function so the review I wanted to share will not happen, at least not today.  What I do recall is being totally perplexed by the quilt which received the Award for Social/Political Commentary given by Kathleen Loomis.  I've taken 2 different friends on 2 seperate trips to help me figure it out...both who are socially/politically aware and neither of them could grip the message.  The quilt was made by Shawn Quinlan and can be seen here on Quinlan's website.  Ya know it bugs me when I don't get something that I don't want to miss.  Does the flag in the water imply the U.S has drowned? or staked the territory?  Are the children looking for the "fairy tale" of America with themselves not representing America but too naive/self-absorbed to know?  Do they represent stupidity/innocents?  I hope to see Loomis later in the week to get to the bottom of it all. 

Last night was full of nightmares...most related to violence against women.  Peter had to wake me up twice during the night.  They all were the type of nightmares that I wasn't inside of but outside as if I was watching television.  I remember I was banging on a clear thick window that was soundproof trying to yell to warn a group of women not to hide in the back of a truck...crazy sh*t...but I did watch briefly last night Joy Behar sitting in for Larry King and the topic was domestic violence. 

Also since my last post, a friend sent me a link to a NYT review about Jenny Holzer's exhibit at the Whitney and then Jenclair (Jenclair blogs at Bayou Quilts, see side bar under The Neighborhood) sent me video links and a Huffington Post article about her work.  Also I discovered a book I have on my Amazon list was actually a memoir by Faith Ringgold and also found these video links interviews with Elizabeth Catlett which thrilled me!   The Sharecropper inspires me to consider working in realism.  This has been a long recognizable print long before I knew who Catlett was.  I like what she had to say about why she does art..."to know what others think about what I do"...a view that roots the artist within the community. 

One of the books, okay truthfully, I've been vegging out on 2 of my poems included in a community arts project, a book of poems, essays, letters entitled Artists In Revolution (A.I.R.).  There isn't an ISBN number as it was a community arts project initiated by Estella Majozo to create space and place for writers to be present together.  I made a brief mention about my experience here.  I'll get to the rest of the writers in the book in the coming weeks.  The 2 poems I selected where chosen because they reference my children and I thought it would be good for them to know how much they've inspired my work.  One is the often mentioned 725 West Saint Catherine poem that frequent readers here will know I'm currently writing on cloth and the other is a poem in 3 parts entitled Soulful Symbiosis that pays tribute to Peter's father who made his passing on Christmas day in 1995.

I've not set goals for being in the workshop next week...so my plan is to show up and see what happens.

Peace,

Eat, Pray, and Stitch

Outside looks inviting with the soft blue clear sky and the soft brightness.  Based on appearance I could think it is pleasantly warm outside.  The temps actually read too-cold-for-Karen-to-be-out.  My goals today included 3 things; eat, pray, and stitch.  I've been successful.  While sewing on a binding I reasoned that what I do well in my quilts is create good backgrounds.  When I start I aim for the entire quilt to be an all over focal point (it has a name but I can't recall it at the moment but remember it from Lorraine Torrence's book on design) but and once it is finished I become unsettled thinking it needs a more easily read focal point.  Here is a section of the quilt that I scanned.  The entire size is 24ish x 30ish.  I placed a 1/4ish binding around it. 

Some options I'll consider is adding beads in blues, a couple of circles in metallic or light blue threads in blue, and words from the poem in larger lettering using Scribble paints in blueish/grayish.  Also on tap for next week is picking up my Janome Jem from the repairman (don't ask, sad story), and selecting some hand-sewing I can do here at home and practice some calligraphy on paper and working through the artist's workbook on marketing.   

For all who might be interested I've started a Calligraphy and Creative Lettering group on Creative Souls (see sidebar).  It is for anyone at any skill level who has an interest in the graphic possibilities of writing, script, by hand or digital.  Also, I started reading Cherryl Floyd-Miller's latest book of poetry, Exquisite Heats.  Cherryl is also a quilt artist and her blog is here.  A beginning review of the book has been started on by book blog (see sidebar), My Eyes Have Seen the Coming of the Word.

Sekou Sundiata and Shephard Fairey

thinking about how some artists in being true to their ideas of what art is and should be will challenge corporate ideologies and law and attitudes of the mainstream...sometimes what they do is unlawful or appears so until others who share their beliefs redefine (sometimes through the legal process) what is acceptable and then the change they've ushered in becomes mainstream and a new wave of radicals, outlaws, activists enter the scene once again...ahhhh, the fluidity of history.

I've had the sticker of Obama's image created by Shephard Fairey on the back of my truck since last summer.  Since recent news of the copyright controversy, I've been more interested in understanding why behind his graphic art and if I'm correct, based on what I've read, I'm in agreement with his stance that mega-corporate entities should not always have the last word in defining our laws and culture.  And I think extreme abuses have occured under corporations defining thems as WE the people for an entire nation and world and trumping the rights of people/individuals.  And it does concern me that inviduals will often times place their identities and opinions as if they are or will be or wanna be included in the philosophies and definitions of a nation ruled by corporate culture.  In this, I'm reminded of a segment from Ishmael Reed's novel, Terrible Twos, where Macy's Department store has the copyright on Santa Claus and there are arrests happening all over New York City of radical Santa Clauses...hehehehe...I dunno, I just can't imagine Amira Baraka or Allen Ginsberg not writing with the intent to provoke or challenge commonly held beliefs.  Maybe for contemporary textile artists who are unknowingly steeped in the "idealism" of sweet, civil, sharing women around the quilt frame, Fairey's guerilla tactics with his graphic style is enough to make the stitches become undone. 

Making quilts marks time

In comments to the previous post, Karen made the suggestion of using shear fabric for the auditioned letters...I was thinking transparency in either a sheer or using (the brand of inks I can never spell or say but begins with a t and has the word sun in it) inks. 

 I also thought about having the letters cast shadows to create even more depth which I think would work because of the glowishness of the yellow in suggesting light.  To quote from my lil' brotha's critique, "no...hell, no" on the letters...he thought it was too pretentious.  But as he also reminded me, its all up to me in the end, and he is right because the last time I checked I was three times seven and then some.

After more time spent Saturday meditating on it some more, I temporarily decided to wait some more...how profound, uh?  But that is all I could do, so with trusting the process, I moved onto a new piece that I wasn't feeling until I added the whiteish lines and then that opened me up to add the faces...there is a line in the poem that goes: African ghosts cry in sunset hours.  The faces appear ghost-like and also embody communion/community with the multiple prints. 

  The metallic-ey green is just too heavy at the top so I do know for sure that this piece will be cut up instead of keeping it a whole panel.   The names you see in the bigger letters are names found in the cemetery where many of my mother's side are buried.  The underlying poem written on the cloth is about a visit there some 18 years ago.  I was newly pregnant with my youngest son then.  The poems, the quilts, the children all help me keep and mark time, I don't trust my memory alone. 

 

The Story In the Work

I was asked about my motivation behind the 725 series and the short answer is a poem I had written years ago...a poem that is part of a manuscript of poems based on my family's mythology/genealogy.  The long answer which I'm going to flush out more here because I'm borrowing an adage from a friend's poem that says "tell them so I'll know".

First, it starts with my love, love, love for processes that alter the surface of the fabric, you name it, I want it close at hand and available in my workshop so that I can work spontaneous with ideas.  The second thing, and I can't really say that it happens in a consecutive order like I'm laying out here, but for now, I'll say the second thing, was asking myself how I can make what I do look like me, say my name, come from my heart...a yearning to make my complex cloth speak beyond just techniques used.

Back in the winter I had a poetry reading and inspite of not having any new work in a long while, the process really opened me up and took me higher (hello sly stone).  Most of the poems where from the manuscript I mentioned and I feel it is my strongest set of work and I then pondered how I could reflect that sense of intimacy and energy in my quilt.  I was already armed with the insight of how excited I became whenever viewing quilts with text, especially text that was slightly obscured, hidden.  This is where the idea enters to align my poems with my quilts.

725 West Saint Catherine street was the home my great Uncle M.C. purchased for his mother, my great grandmother around 1945ish or so.  It was the first house I entered after my birth and it was a place I practically lived due to my parents both working either 2 jobs or lots of overtime until they purchased their own home when I was five.  My great-grandmother didn't pass on until I was in my mid-20s and her and her home where major presences in my development.  I wrote a poem entitled 725 West Saint Catherine after I took my 2 oldest children then 14 and 5 by the house to photograph it and to explain to them what it meant in my life.  The poem became the backdrop on the cloth.  I hand wrote stanzas as the first layer and then with consecutive layers I tried to strategically keep areas open for certain words to peep through.

The circles as layers are representative of wholeness, history and time as fluid.  The lines crossing through the circles represent oppositional energy that compliments and enhances and gives power to the personal and the collective sense of identity.  It is my attempt to make sankofa (an Akan concept that translate to looking back to go forward) a visual experience.

I initially saw them as very large pieces, larger than anything I've ever made.  But because I found myself with the emotional attachment that I have with the poem, the energy and connection, I wanted to work out all the symbols and design and techniques out on smaller pieces first. 

I'm placing the binding on them this week and finished one yesterday while at the eye doctor.  I gave a brief show and tell right there in the waiting room after several women wanted to see and touch. 

Rolling Over Myself with Joy!

Ever get those days when you think your heart is just going to explode from all the joy squeezed into one day!!!!????????????  I couldn't get out of bed quick enough this morning...not just because I was looking forward to voting in our state's primary but on top of that, my daughter voted for the first time!!!! And what a memorable election to mark such a monumental threshold!  I told her that she voted today on the shoulders of ancestors and in the not so long distant past, our people where loosing their lives, being bombed out of their homes, being beaten to death (HELLO FANNIE LOU HAMMER!) just to do what she did today...Mo in turn needled me for always turning everything into a history lesson and quickly thanked me for reminding her...which in turn caused me to stir some more...history is living and not a dead, the ancestors are looking at us right this moment and discussing amongst themselves what we do in their name.  Now don't get me wrong, you don't have to disturb those "no-count" ancestors that need to stay rested but those who personally inspire you, be it in your blood line or not, can be evoked and called up.  Those that are about love and justice, ya know what I mean? 

I'm on a roll today...right after voting with Mo and Ade hanging out with me, we picked up Petra and went for breakfast at Toast where we met Valerie and Juanita who had her son and 7 year-old grand-daughter with her...Obama and Quilting are the words for the day!!!!  Mo said we where speaking another language when we spoke of deadlines, hanging shows, workshops, techniques...all I know is that I was even more eager to get to my workshop today to start on my second quilt in the Poetry Series.  This series was inspired by these (click and click again) pieces no bigger than 10 inches square.  All the quilts in this series will use an original poem written on it in my own handwriting, have a circle motif, use fabric that I dyed, and greens, yellows, and reds will be the focal colours.  Each one will become larger than the previous one.  Here is a peek:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The discovery I made yesterday about how I prefer to work is this...instead of making the top then getting it quilted, I want to make all the tops first, then quilt them all, them square them, bind them all, etc.  I like having the single focus.  This seems to intensify my concentration, my skill development, and my creativity.  But this is only when I'm working on something that speaks my name.  Sometimes I work on pieces just to keep my hands moving and my discipline going.  But today! Ha! I thought I needed a dance floor in my workshop just for times when I'm working it like Katherine Dunham. Here I am considering my next move:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I keep to my schedule I will not get back into the workshop until next week.  On Thursday I'm going to take the Meaningful Marks and Images workshop with Juanita Yeager which I know will be another day filled with joy!