The OLD New Year

Remember last New Year's Eve?   The ball descending at Times Square?  My experience is that sometimes those balls fall and slowly dissolve like bubbles into thin air as the year unwinds.  Wishing one and all happiness into 2016 and beyond!!

Texturizers Round 6

Just finished my piece in the round robin series I'm working on with seven other artists.   As usual, I can't show their work, but I can show my response to it.   Lots of crisscrosses and gorgeous grays!

 

Just Finished Another Painting!

As a tapestry weaver and stitcher I am AMAZED how fast painting is - only a week to complete another one (vs. YEARS for a tapestry if the same dimensions).    And so much fun.   This one is layers and layers of acrylics, tissue, string, Angelina, snippets of this and that.   I'm going to do one more in the series as I haven't quite gotten the channels as deep as I want them and their walls as high and gnarly.

 

Painting? Textile? Mixed Media?

I've been experimenting with all sorts of media lately including paint.   Greatly influenced by Mark Bradford's brilliant solo show at the Hammer this fall.  This is a detail shot of a piece I just finished.  Lots more of this to come . . .  Oh, yea, did I mention Silly String?

Lamination: Gray/Mustard

Well, I swore I wasn't ever going to submit anything to the Palos Verdes Art Center's annual juried member show again.   It's a wild conglomeration of donors' artwork of varying quality.  But I had to run the work of a friend over so decided to add my own.   He got two realistic paintings in - lovely work.  The jurors definitely tip towards realism and a recognized medium like paint.  They must have had a few empty spaces on the wall (they hang stacked so there's room for a lot of work!) as they took my piece: neither realistic nor a conventional medium.  It is paper laminated onto hand dyed fabric then stitched and painted with water soluble media.  Maybe they liked the matting!  They've been good to me in the past when I curated a fiber show with over 100 pieces so maybe they are trending back that way.   Who knows . . .

Sirocco on View at Sebastopol Art Center

This piece is on view through early January in northern California in a wonderful large scale juried exhibition.  There are only 3 quilts in the show and I'm proud to have mine among them.   A wide range of fiber techniques including acrylic on paper, hmmmm . . .   Where do we draw the line?  Must we draw the line???

Sirocco is one from my Fierce Winds series.   It is dyed, printed, painted, fussy cut, appliqued, Angelina'd and felted.    Fun!

Image From Avalon

We were on Catalina Island last week and while I certainly could have taken scores of snapshots of the crystalline sky and the azure sea, I instead fell in love with this crazy old vine which has grown to embrace a phone pole.

 

Ore

This is a a piece of joomchi (Korean felted paper) I made several years ago.  Lately I've been reworking some older pieces and with that in mind I "unfelted" the original using only the top layer here.  I then painted, appliqued and embroidered it onto a piece of hand dyed black fabric.  You can see how the undulating surface of the joomchi adds real depth to the work.  I'm calling this one Ore for obvious reasons

 

Texturizers #5

I'm all about hand stitching lately.   I appliqued all kinds of fabulous bits and then did French knots and much else (even a little machine stitching - imagine!).   Again, I don't feel free to post the work I was responding to as it was done by other artists, but I'm loving feeding the threads through the fabric.  There's lots of 3D surface on this piece.

Success!

Well I managed to host the Art Cloth Network's annual meeting in Redondo Beach and open Confluence on the Pier the very same weekend and lived to tell.   The heat has been oppressive for weeks and weeks so I have not been as productive as I like to be, but a cooling tend seems to have attired and I have completed round 4 of the Texturizers series which I am doing with 7 other artists.   Here's my most recent contribution.  Not at all certain where this came from as it is NOTHING like my usual work.  Not an all-over pattern, an almost realistic image.  What's next???!!?

After the Fire

More Pages - still only a working title

These are done except the first two have not yet been burned.

Lava Flow

Dyed scrim (cheese cloth), painted Lutrador and lots of glittery bits (thank you Stewart Gill!) comprise this image.  A bit tough to photograph as there are so many reflective surfaces.

Pages

I'm starting to get a look that I am very pleased with for the pages - still no name for the piece - but now I know it will be an installation with the pages fluttering down a wall and ashes pooling on the floor beneath it.  Holocaust Art . . .  damaged books, unanswered prayers, horrendous suffering.

3D Shibori From the Back

Did some disperse dyeing and then tied in pie weights.   Steam set and off we go . . .   This piece is about 12" x 14", a bit bigger than the last ones.

CONFLUENCE Exhibition

It's a bit early to be announcing the show but I just can't wait.    There will be about 40 pieces: art quilts, framed textiles/mixed media and prints by the five artists who comprise Confluence.   All the work focuses on issues of WATER.   This will be the fourth iteration of the show in the last couple of years and it just keeps getting better and better as new work is added.   Please consider coming to the opening on September 26 if you are anywhere near Redondo Beach, CA!  Or call to schedule a visit before November 16.

More Page Experiments

I was going to rust, organic dye, bury, etc., some more fabrics to get a really beat up surface appropriate for the abandoned pages.   Then I got an inspiration:  disperse dye.   Haven't done it in years.   I tried it on both synthetics and silk.   I like both but think it will be more permanent on the synthetics and more easily ripped up, burned and otherwise abused!  I liked the color on both fabrics and now will test the silk for permanence.

 

 

 

Texturizers #3

This is my contribution to the third set of the round robin exchange I'm involved with which includes 8 fiber artists.   Focus on TEXTURE.  I don't post the work of others so this is all I can display, but we are hoping for an exhibit when the entire 64 pieces are complete next year.  Stay tuned!

 

 

More Experiments

Here are 2 more results of the techniques I've been working with to create pages/ashes of old religious texts left to moulder when their readers were imprisoned, persecuted for their beliefs.  The series is beginning to come together.  I'm fine tuning the techniques and have cut several barbed wire screens to overlay.   The next iteration is going to be a bigger.

3D Shibori

How much fun is this???   Dye transfer, wrapping and steaming.   Here they are before and after binding.