Catch Up

Been on a tear both creatively and travel-wise. Out of town each of the last three weekends to learn to enamel (very cool) and about soy wax batiking (surprisingly fun and effective). Exhausting but worth it. Now I'm home for the entire month of September - YIPPEE!! Value of Art is for a B/W challenge and is my exercise in forcing myself to pay attention to value in my work. A couple of pieces I did earlier this year fell a bit short in that category. Blue Paper Collage will go off to Spoonflower to be printed on fabric eventually where it will join my new Fractal series. I'm posting Fractal 1, too.

Tree of Life

The Tree of Life has been a recurring theme in my work forever and here is appears again in tile on the wall next to our front door in the breezeway. We've been working on it off and on for more than two years. Not perfect, but it shows the hand of the makers. Thanks to Judith, Jeff, Robyn and Jessica for helping get it up. It feels like a blessing on our home.

Summer Creativity

The Hubster was on a backpack in the Sierras last week and I cranked! Worked 'round the clock - so much fun. Here are some goodies I completed. The Copper Ground Cloth will probably be the basis for an embroidery though I like it enough to just let it be; time will tell. Santa Anas is just pieced with a lot of the hand dyes and prints I've generated in the last year or so. Could be the beginning of a hot summer wind series . . . Nice to put all these bits to use.

Rya Rug FINISHED!!

After about three years Jessica, my fearless studio assistant, and I have finished the hand dyed, hand tied rug. It's about 4 x 7 feet.

Where Art Meets Science

Hint: They converge in Birmingham, England; Pfizer Labs in NYC; Quilt Visions in San Diego; and at the Center For Disease Control in Atlanta over the next two years. My piece, Wood Cells, seen here, is part of this international exhibit. The entire show can be viewed online at http://www.saqa.com/store.php?cat=22 Some mighty fine work!!

Red Embroidery

This is a piece I've been working on slowly over the last eight months, or so. Finally finished. It's done on felt, screen printed, then stitched. There are lots of cool goodies couched onto the surface. I just mounted it on stretched canvas as it's going off to the framer tomorrow for a very simple black (red?) frame.

Small Study #11

This is a fun piece I did a few months ago and just photographed today for the website. Enjoy!!

Terrain

Last day of the Alternative Media class. This is my final piece - all about texture and metallic surface. There's stitching hidden in the crevices though not much. I'm taking it to the framer tomorrow so it will have an edge, not just disappear into the wall. All and all a pleasing experience which I'd recommend to anyone close enough to Palos Verdes for a class with Jill Keifer to make sense!

Alternative Colorants

Here's a small piece I did in the class I'm taking at the Palos Verdes Art Center. Besides the Tyvek (which I taught the others) there's crackle paint - turquoise with copper and gold over. The class focuses on work on canvas but as I always say: canvas is a textile, so I did this piece on a bit of cotton, not stretched, backed by felt for stability. I may frame it to clean up the edges. My favorite item in the course at the moment is plaster cloth. Yes, it can be easily needled!

Slag Heap Series

I'm working on the next four pieces in this series. Cloth - Roses is an example of where I begin with dyeing and over-dyeing. I will try to post various stages in its development.

Jessica at the loom

Jessica, aged 10, has been working on the multi-colored rug on my big Glimakra floor loom for well over a year. We have decided that she will be done this summer! She's been tying rya knots. Next up, I'm going to teach her how to weave tapestry. She comes once/week and is a joy to have around with her creative imagination and story telling talents.

Opening Day Uncommon Threads at AJU/LA



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Cabbage Leaf

I've been doing some joomchi (Korean mulberry paper felting) again lately as I've been invited to submit some work for consideration for a show in Korea (!). This is my favorite of the new pieces. It represents hours and hours of rubbing by hand. The previous piece I made I threw in the dryer three times just to avoid getting worse arthritis! It got all beat up so of course I stitched into it and made a collage. This one is a bit more delicate.

Orange Art Cloth

Got my piece done for the Art Cloth Network's 2010 challenge: Very different from my usual work. A bit Asian, yes??? It's 80" long which is why it's all over the ground. No other place to photograph it till it's properly hung in the gallery!

Fun with Mixed Media

Just enjoying the hell out of my alternative media class with Jill Keifer at Palos Verdes Art Center. These are Day 3's results. I'm working with crackle paste which I never mastered last year when I did a zillion experiments trying to get great crackle, plus rusting and gold leafing. The white piece is various wall and ceiling textures on cotton treated with porcelain slip. The goal is to eventually use these techniques with textiles (besides the obvious - canvas! Soooo old school).

Painted Aluminum

Turns out I hadn't posted that bit of painted aluminum last week after Jill's class, so here it is.

Monday Class

Once again I met with Jill Keifer at Palos Verdes Art Center and found her class on alternative painting media fun and useful. Last week I posted a painting on aluminum sheeting. This week I finished a collage of interesting papers and metal paints held on with Modge Podge while above it floats a sea of rust. This rust business will definitely find its way into my textiles!

Spent the WHOLE day, yes, the entire day, sending out pix and docs about my work for potential exhibitions. This is the less fun part as MAKING is, of course, what it's mostly about. But it's important to me to get it seen, and days like this always pay off. Here's a piece that hasn't been seen yet; I call it DeconRecon as it is comprised of several pieces of fabric I deconstructed screen printed and then pieced together.

Hope you can be there!

A couple of unexpected views of Big Sur. Plus plenty of time to sketch and cogitate (and eat and drink well at Ventana and the Bakery!!!), see art and even buy books!

Riverside moves to Camarillo!

Reinventions: San Francisco, 2010

The SDA Reinvention Conference in San Francisco this weekend was informative, visually and intellectually stimulating and a bit depressing as my jealousy of those who 1) have 30 years of full time art making behind them, and 2) have seriously large studios in which to work put me face to face with the result of having chosen to take the "safer" road. I've been pedaling as fast as I can for the last almost four years, but there is no "catching up." Live in the moment, be thankful for what I have, keep making good choices, etc, etc.

I can't post pix of others' work on the blog so am just putting up a few images that are iconic of the event. As you can see from the photos, the Art v. Craft paradigm was knocked about once again!

Thanks to all the great people I got to hang with!!! You made the weekend way special for me.

Slag Heap (in process)

Worked and reworked: dyed, over-dyed, printed, painted, felted, hand stitched, foiled, cut, stamped, burned, with Tyvek, tulle, felt, cotton, rusty metal and probably about six other things. I've been working on this since October and finally feel that I have control. Yippee! Another month and, I predict, it will be finished.

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New Art Cloth Blog

I just created a new little blog with my art cloth. Check it out at FiberFly.posterous.com There are lots of groovy visuals. No quilting, no embellishing, just dyeing, printing, painting and foiling on a single piece of fabric.