Art With a Needle

Back at the sewing machine

2012-02-10T06:34:00.000-05:00

If the man from Mars started reading my blog in October or November, he would probably wonder why I use the word "needle" in my title. To judge from my recently reported activities, I've been doing everything but fiber art. To an extent that's true, partly because I lost almost the entire months of December and January to travel and illness. But I am happy to report that I am back at the sewing machine in earnest on a totally new project.

Although I consider my "serious" work to be the creation of fiber art for exhibit, I do love to work with beginning and intermediate quilters, encouraging and enabling them to develop more self-confidence in both design and execution. I've often said that my mission in life is that nobody should ever have to use somebody else's pattern to make a quilt.

In aid of that mission, I am writing a book about quilting without patterns. It's about using the traditional Rail Fence block as a launching pad for many variations and experiments. We hope to have it published this spring -- electronically, not on paper, because the process of finding a conventional publisher and getting a book done is vastly more complicated and time-consuming than the exciting new world of e-publishing.

I found writing the book to be the easy part. The hard part is coming up with the quilts to illustrate it, and that's what has been occupying me for the last couple of weeks. None of these are quilted yet; I've been in piecing mode, cranking out top after top, one every day or so (hey, they're mostly small!). I must report that it's really fun to whip out little quilts with minimal agonizing -- quite a change from my usual time-consuming and tedious processes that might keep a quilt on the design wall for weeks.

Here's the traditional Rail Fence, with the prominent color at the side of the block so it forms zigzags:

Here's the traditional block again, but the prominent color is in the center of the block so it forms over-and-under weaves:

Here's a variation in which the block is rectangular, not square, and one of the rails is made up of smaller piecing:

Here's one in which the blocks are small, rectangular and stacked into long columns:

I'll show you more in a later post.

Helpful hint for February

2012-02-08T06:30:00.002-05:00

So which way do you like this quilt?

Vertical...

... or horizontal?

Although I made the quilt in 2002 I haven't laid eyes on it for several years. I took it to my neighborhood quilt shop to display because I was going to teach a class in this technique of piecing, and after the class never got around to collecting the quilt. I kind of liked having it hanging in the shop to keep my name out there. But the shop has closed, and the quilt has come home.

The other day as I was putting it away I noticed the back of the quilt, with a little detail that I thought might be helpful to share.

When I made the piece several years ago my first idea was to have it vertical, and that's the way I put the sleeve on. But for some reason I subsequently decided that it would also look good in the horizontal orientation. So I put a second sleeve on.

Because each sleeve is sliced off on the diagonal, you can insert a hanging rod in either direction and still have it support the entire width of the quilt.

Package project update 8

2012-02-06T06:46:00.003-05:00

My very first bundle of 2011 was kind of an omen: it was a handful or two of fabric bits wrapped up in some tulle. I love fabric bits; my motto is "if it's big enough to see, it's big enough to save."

It always hurt me to throw away bits, and for many years I have saved any scrap more than an inch wide, pressing and sorting them and often sewing them into quilts that I named "Shards." Four years ago I had an exciting artistic breakthrough when I started making my postage stamp quilts, using even tinier bits of fabric to make little compositions on the small pieces.

From that point on, of course, I had to save even tinier bits. I put large plastic bags at my cutting table and at my sewing machine, and started depositing scraps and thread ends into the bags instead of throwing them out. Since the bits are so tiny it takes a LONG time to fill up a bag, but I do have a good collection of bits in case I want to make little postage stamps --- or incorporate the bits into a bundle.

So to make bundle 1-1 I just dug into my bag and got enough bits to fill up the tulle.

As the year went by I used this concept several times.

Here's a videotape cassette stripped of its tape and filled with fabric bits. The tape got braided and used to tie up the bundle.

Here's a pile of polaroid film cassettes filled with fabric bits.

Here's a plastic tube.

Here's a piece of translucent fabric.

Here's a bundle of threads without any container at all.

Still lots of fabric bits left in the bags and the package project is over. What will I do with them now? Guess I need to make a new postage stamp quilt.

Photo suite 6 -- spectrum of stairs

2012-02-05T06:31:00.004-05:00

Uunfortunately, I haven't been able to find either purple or orange steps. But these ought to be worth half credit:

Where is it?

2012-02-04T06:30:00.001-05:00

In December I posted a photo and challenged you to identify where it was taken. Perhaps the gods didn't want me to do it, because that very day I was struck down with what turned out to be serious gall bladder illness, and in the course of recovering from surgery I neglected to ever credit Silvia Dell'Aere for being the first with the right answer.

But now that I'm recovered, I have another mystery place. If you know it in person that will trump those who know it through Google Images.

Spool mania

2012-02-02T06:05:00.000-05:00

Zipping through the aisles at Hobby Lobby the other day I was astonished to find this product on the shelf:

That's right, it's three tiny wood spools. You can't see from the photo, but each one is wound with some kind of threadlike material, not actually thread but larger strands, some metallic, some that looked like plastic coated wire.

I didn't examine them closely enough to swear in court, but I'm sure the spools are new, made in China to resemble real spools. This stuff is sold as "mixed media artist materials."

I am a wood spool aficionada and when I see my favorite things on display I perk up. Back in the day when all thread came on wood spools, I was careless. I threw them away when the thread ran out. Or I would use them as craft bases, sometimes painting them, sometimes gluing yarn or paper to them.

Oh, I shudder to think of the spools that I disposed of or ruined. I don't remember exactly when it dawned on me that wood spools were things of the past. At some point thread started to come on plastic, and to my credit, fairly soon I realized I should be saving the wood spools. I still owned many from my own stash, and I commandeered all I could from my mother, my sister and unsuspecting friends and relatives.

I'd grab them at grab bag. I also started buying them at flea markets. A decade ago, on a good day, you could get a bag of spools for a dime apiece, some empty, some with thread still on them. Then the price crept up and up, out of my range. Occasionally I'd score a batch from some back alley source.

For instance, once I was visiting a sewing circle at a church and the ladies showed me a big pile of stuff that they were going to sell at a bazaar the next week. Including four shoeboxes of thread, some on wood spools -- you could tell it was very old because spools and thread alike were stained. I tactfully pointed out that thread that old wasn't good to sew with, volunteered to separate the wood spools from the plastic, and had to force them to accept my money so I could take the wood spools home.

I bought two old thread display cases, which hold many but not all of my spools, and I enjoy arranging the spools by color and size. You can almost imagine how the case looked in its first life.

Bet you didn't know that the standard Lily spools are a hair shorter than Clark's; I didn't know either until I realized that I had to sort by brand to pack my cases.

Many others go in old type cases; large spools are arrayed on top or on cords.

Considering that my price point for antique spools has been ten cents, I had sticker shock looking at the faux spools at Hobby Lobby, $1.86 apiece. Of course that included a little bit of faux thread that had to be wound onto the spool by a slave laborer in China.

Of course the "artists" who buy this stuff probably wouldn't know the difference between a faux spool and a real one, but wouldn't it be nice to think that I could disassemble my collection, package the spools in little bags of three, and get two bucks apiece?

Package project update 7

2012-01-31T06:27:00.001-05:00

As I contemplated my 2011 package project, I started to think about what went into the packages.

Many of my packages were bundles of like objects -- a lot of broken pencils, a lot of strange metal objects, a lot of styrofoam packing forms, a lot of selvages. These were the easiest bundles to make, because you wander about and notice a bunch of the same thing lying around, and what comes to mind but to put them together.

And to take a lofty critical look, repetition is one of the hallmarks of modern art. It resonates with our modern mindset of mass production and abundance, and with the modernist sensibility that rejects hierarchy in favor of equality, or perhaps we should say interchangeability.

Often I made rather than found my identical things, cutting up a big piece of plastic or cardboard to make a set of bits that could be bundled together. This was fun; I like to sit and make fussy little constructions out of a bazillion little pieces, as witness most of my quilts. I enjoyed the decisions of how to cut and arrange the pieces as well as the actual binding or tying.

But I didn't always limit my packages to identicals. Often there would be two sets of objects put together: some metal surrounding some cardboard, or some plastic surrounded by cocktail picks. The two sets would usually seem to go together because of size: just enough cardboard to fill up the space between the metal brackets, the plastic folded to be the same length as the picks. I found that matchmaking was a lot of the fun of making these bundles.

Toward the end of the year I put a shoebox on my worktable called "bits for bundles." When I came upon a little something I would toss it into the box, and eventually the box started to yield collections. It was like a freshman mixer: guys who arrived forlorn and alone would find friends as time went by. As a result, I occasionally made a bundle of totally disparate objects that seemed to want to be together.

Maybe this was my favorite bundle of the year: the beautiful green top of a silicon spatula that divorced from its handle, a piece of a venetian blind slat, some strange screws and bolts, including one in blue. It's tiny but everything seems to work together. Hey, just like art!

Photo suite 5 -- lawn animals

2012-01-29T06:44:00.002-05:00

Camera update

2012-01-27T05:57:00.000-05:00

My good old Nikon 6000 is on its way to the service center again -- its fourth trip in the last year -- to see if they'll fix the latch. On its previous sojourns to be repaired I have used my second-best camera, my old Olympus, which has coped with easy tasks but isn't up to anything serious such as tricky focus.

But this time I decided to buy a new camera instead of just coping. After 23,000 photos, who knows how much longer the Nikon may hold out. Kim the world's greatest camera salesperson told me today that camera hardware does sometimes give up the ghost. In particular, the gears that open the lens and then extend it to the proper focus are subject to wear, and we're talking about many tens of thousands of operations already completed. And that's not to mention this Nikon's propensity for breaking.

When I looked at new cameras I decided that what I basically wanted was the same thing I already have -- a small camera that will fit in my pocket. Kim suggested I look at the idiot-proof models guaranteed to survive being dropped, submerged, nuclear-bombed, etc. but none of them zoom more than 5X, and I've been spoiled with the 7X on my Nikon and don't want to trade down.

So we looked at Nikon's next plateau up, the 8200, a little bigger, a little heavier, with a 14X zoom. But then I wondered whether I might be happy without going up the food chain, and looked at the Nikon 6200, which is basically my old camera in its 2012 guise. No new bells and whistles, but three improvements over my June 2010 version: a 10X zoom instead of 7X, a better sensor, and a lower pricetag.

When we put the 8200 side-by-side with the 6200, the choice was easy. In buying the larger model, I'd pay $75 for a longer zoom, but wouldn't get any more pixels, any better sensor or any fancy new features. And it would be a bit more cumbersome to shlep around.

So here are the Nikon twins. On the top, the old Nikon 6000; on the bottom, the new Nikon 6200. The new one is a hair smaller in size (a plus), better in capacity. And it's red!

I hope 6200 will be as good as its brother in terms of photo quality and ease of use. And I really hope it will never acquire its brother's bad habit of visiting the Nikon service center with every change of season.

Sign of the week

2012-01-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

right across from the dumpster

Package project update 6

2012-01-24T05:51:00.001-05:00

When you do a long, multi-part project with a couple of constant elements you realize that the way you handle these constants takes on a life of its own. In my 2011 package project each package or bundle had a label to tell when it was made. Because the project rules called for at least one package a week, I decided to number the weeks as the primary identifier. For instance, this package was the third one made in week 23.

This label is what I came to think of as the kissoff style, where I just found a piece of paper and wrote the ID number on it. I'm not particularly proud of this kind of label. The ones I like more are those where I used a little imagination.

This one was marginally above kissoff level.

Sometimes I sewed the ID number onto the label.

Sometimes I put the label "under cover."

Here's one I was proud of -- the fabric bolt was printed in white ink with the 2 you see at the right. I drew the 24 on the left in white pencil, then outlined all the numbers in red.

Sometimes I turned to found objects for the ID number.

But late in the year I realized the best possible source for found numbers -- the yellow pages, which is a riot of color and every font known to mankind. And the phone numbers are usually the largest type in the ad!

It's easy to find separate numbers to make up whatever ID you need.

But if you're feeling obsessive compulsive, you can search out phone numbers, complete with hyphen, for the entire ID.

Just when I was really hitting my stride with the labels, the year was over.

Photo suite 4 -- food on the ground

2012-01-22T06:10:00.002-05:00

Sign of the week

2012-01-21T06:02:00.001-05:00

the official jewelry of the National Rifle Association

Package project update 5

2012-01-19T06:54:00.001-05:00

A year ago I embarked on a project to make bundles or packages every week. I had been intrigued by reading about bundles as a popular format for early fiber artists in the 1950s and 60s, and thought it would be interesting to explore this method of working.

My rules were simple: find some stuff lying around, bundle it up, and label the package. I had to do at least one bundle a week, but more would be OK. The stuff could be lying around in my own home and studio, or someplace else, such as outdoors. The only times I incorporated new material were occasionally to cut a length of thread, cord or wire to tie the bundles, although many times I could find preexisting cord lying around to do the job, such as this big wad of tangled fishline (given to me by a frustrated fisherman).

As with any daily or weekly art project, it took a little while to find my rhythm. Some of the early packages were a bit awkward and self-conscious, but I gave myself permission to move on, knowing that they'd fade away in the large collection of better work.

There were 53 weeks in 2011, and in 33 of them I made only one package. In 11 weeks I made two packages. I did three packages twice, four packages twice, five packages twice, six packages twice, and an impressive eight packages once. Total for the year was 99 packages.

Of course, themes developed. Many of my packages were made from packaging materials, testament to our insatiable consumer appetite for stuff, inside of other stuff. Many packages were made from leftovers from quilts and other fiber art projects -- all those strips of batting and quilting sliced off the quilts in the final square-up, all those selvages sliced away at the start.

Although my rules allowed stuff lying around outside, I was choosy in what I used for the project. I didn't want my art to bring bugs and critters into the house, so I rarely used plant materials (once some acorns and maybe a nice bare stick).

But I found ample supplies in the pencils, plastics and metal bits that litter the streets.

Travel always yields debris that makes neat little bundles.

Now that the project is over I realize I want to think about it more analytically. I'm taking photos of every bundle, and plan to also photograph theme groupings, and hope to have everything documented and posted soon.

New year, new camera issues

2012-01-17T14:23:00.000-05:00

If you get a lift out of schadenfreude, you've probably enjoyed my recurring tales of woe regarding my Nikon Coolpix camera. I bought it in June 2009 and it has traveled with me to five of the seven continents and staunchly taken 23,000 photos. A real trouper -- that is, when it isn't in the shop.

Twice it's been in for repairs when the eyelids failed to retract fully and expose the entire lens. (It still took pictures, but they had black triangles at northeast and southwest.) Once it was in for mysterious spots on the lens, which congnoscenti thought were specks of dust on the sensor but actually were serious enough to warrant a new lens.

The last time it came home from the shop I made a wry comment noting that it still had several months to go on its warranty and wondering what might happen next.

Well, here's the answer.

There's a little door on the bottom of the camera that opens up to reveal the battery and memory card. When you close the door, you slide a button to close the latch. The latch consists of a metal tongue that slips underneath a thin ledge of plastic.

Except that this morning I found the little ledge of plastic on my desk, right underneath the open door of the camera.

Perhaps if you were designing a camera you would have the latch mechanism made entirely of metal for greater durability, but you obviously didn't design this one.

So here's the camera in its new getup. Much classier than duct tape, don't you think?

Although it takes pictures just fine, I hate to see those four months of unused warranty go to waste. One of these days I'll have to visit Kim my favorite camera salesperson and see whether she has the chutzpah to send this back to the Nikon service center yet again. Or maybe I'll just make lemonade and buy a new camera, one without a jinx.

Photo suite 3 -- women at work

2012-01-15T06:01:00.002-05:00

While the tourists gawk, buy souvenirs and get sunburned, the permanent residents of tropical paradises have harder lives. Here are some of the women I spied hard at work on our recent trip through the Caribbean to Brazil.

Sign of the week

2012-01-14T06:34:00.002-05:00

We've just returned from three weeks at sea that took us a thousand miles up the Amazon River. Our internet access was sorely limited, so I apologize for making no response to many of the comments left on the blog recently. I'll try to catch up on any loose ends in future posts.

If you've ever taken a ship voyage, you know that the first order of business is lifeboat drill, in which everybody gets decked out in their warm clothing, life jackets and hats and assembles at their boat station. Although many of the passengers ignore Mandatory Rule No. 1, go to the wrong place, fail to respond when their names are called, and obviously are thinking only about where cocktails will be served, experienced travelers always listen up.

We do so especially diligently in my family, because we can never forget what happened to my parents in 1997. They boarded the Cunard Vistafjord in Florida headed for Portugal, went to dinner and sailed at sunset. Late that evening a fire broke out in the kitchen and the crew did not perform as a well-oiled machine; instead they left their stations and passengers were left to fend for themselves as smoke filled the ship and confusion reigned. I'm not sure whether the lifeboat drill had been held, but if it did, it hadn't accomplished much.

My parents, in their 80s, became disoriented in the smoky corridor but fortunately a high-ranking officer stopped to help and accompanied them on what seemed to be an endless climb to the deck. Once everybody was in the open, things improved; it was warm enough for people to sit outside through the night in their nightclothes, and the fire was quickly put out. The ship was diverted to the Bahamas, my folks got two nights in a luxury hotel (their cabin had been right above the fire and was uninhabitable) while the company dithered about cancelling the voyage, and eventually got a free trip to Europe on a later trip.

But the dining room steward who served my parents, and whom my mother had already become friends with, died of smoke inhalation. Apparently many of the kitchen staff were not clear about what to do in the emergency; Mom's steward and another briefly argued over the best way to escape, and Mom's guy, who knew a shortcut, never made it.

Fortunately our voyage had neither fire nor death nor dereliction of duty. Although many of us who got sick did occasionally consider the second alternative. Ken and I both suffered from bad colds, which haven't yet left us after two weeks. I began the voyage with enough Sudafed to start a meth lab, but we used it all and then some.

I'll have some pictures for you soon. Meanwhile, it's not too late for a new year's resolution: always pay attention at lifeboat drill.

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden 2

2012-01-12T06:19:00.003-05:00

More about our visit to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

When we turned the corner into this section of the garden, walled off by tall hedges, I got the long view of this sculpture, just as in the photo below. It had to be by Richard Serra, the master of rusted steel plates, I thought, but this was so SMALL! And then I realized that I'm just spoiled.

Richard Serra, Five Plates, Two Poles, 1971

Everything of Serra's that I've seen in the flesh has been on a monumental scale. His torqued ellipse pieces, for instance, which we've seen in New York and Los Angeles, are made from steel plates 16 feet tall. So the "little" sculpture here was a surprise and seemed a bit modest, quietly occupying a corner of the garden. I think I've read that Serra took a long time to figure out how to work with the steel in huge pieces, and this is a relatively early work.

It was fun to walk around the piece and peek at the back side.

Here's a life-size skeletal bronze horse by Deborah Butterfield, looking very much at home in the snow. I've only seen her sculptures indoors before, where they command their space with height and attitude. Outside, this one is just as big but less pent-up, probably because he could canter away towards the lake if he felt restless.

Deborah Butterfield, Woodrow, 1988

Butterfield started making horses out of sticks and mud. Later on, she still made them that way, but had them cast in bronze. I think the character changes as the material gets more noble, even though you can still see the wood grain and stick forms.

The entrance to the garden is marked by two huge stone pillars, cut from a single piece of granite. I liked everything about them except the title -- Ampersand. I thought if you wanted to name this work after punctuation you might better choose exclamation points, especially in Spanish where you write ¡Ole!

Martin Puryear, Ampersand, 1987-88

My favorite piece in the Sculpture Garden was made by somebody not generally considered as a sculptor -- the architect Frank Gehry.

Frank Gehry, Standing Glass Fish, 1986

Gehry explains: "when I was very young, my grandmother and I used to go to a Jewish market on Thursday morning. She would buy a carp for gefilte fish. She'd put it in the bathtub and this big black carp -- two or three feet long -- would swim around and I would play with it. I would watch it turn and twist... and then she'd kill it and make gefilte fish and that was always sad and awful and ugly."

The glass carp is anything but awful and ugly. It's 22 feet tall, rearing out of a shallow pool in the conservatory's palm court, getting payback on Frank's grandma on behalf of its species. Living large is the best revenge.

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden 1

2012-01-10T06:20:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago we got to spend a couple of days in Minnesota and managed to see a lot of art in a very short time. Minneapolis has fine museums and I found lots of familiar artists on display.

Our visit to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden came after a bit of snow had fallen overnight. Few people were out doing art that morning -- we could tell from the lack of footprints.

I'll start with the picture postcard shot, a sculpture commissioned for this spot. The brochure says it's a fountain as well as a sculpture but there was no sign of running water that we could see. Turned off for the winter? This is one of those Pop Art crowd-pleasers that bring a smile to the lips of everybody but Scrooge and must be a big hit on school field trips.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Spoonbridge and Cherry, 1985-88

I was surprised to find a piece by Ellsworth Kelly, one of my favorite painters; I hadn't know that he did sculpture as well. But once you find it's him, you can recognize the simple but elegant shapes "drawn" in exactly the perfect balance and relation to one another.

Ellsworth Kelly, Double Curve, 1988

I'm not a huge fan of Henry Moore, having seen a lot of reclining nudes that I find difficult to tell apart. If not for the snow adding a nice counterpoint, I might not even have shown you this picture.

Henry Moore, Reclining Mother and Child, 1960-61

I was more impressed by his upright figure. It's aptly titled; the knife edge dividing the man from his sketchy lower parts is the focus of the composition.

Henry Moore, Standing Figure: Knife-Edge, 1961

Here's a nice granite piece by Tony Smith that reminded me of a much bigger piece we saw last year at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Again, the snow lent a nice touch, emphasizing the edges.

Tony Smith, Amaryllis, 1965-68

I'll write more about the sculpture garden in another post -- too much good stuff for one day!

Photo suite 2 -- riverfront

2012-01-08T06:32:00.000-05:00

I had occasion to visit Evansville IN recently because I have a quilt in the 42nd Mid-States Craft Exhibit at the Museum of Arts, History and Science, through February 5. Many nice scenes along the riverfront wharf, especially of the many stone spheres that make up the landscaping motif.

Yes, that's exactly the way I found it. And I left the glasses in case their owner returned.

Show tales

2012-01-04T06:46:00.001-05:00

Don't you just love it when your quilts come home from a show packed wrong?

Most quilt and fiber venues know that quilts need to be rolled right side out, so the right side stays as flat as possible while any scrunching wrinkles the back layer. But museums and galleries that focus on the more mainstream mediums often don't understand how fabric operates.

But this is not an essay of complaint. The good news is that in practically every circumstance, you can revive your wrongly rolled quilt, just by laying it flat on the bed for a while with some other quilts on top. If that fails, stretch it out on your clean rug or design wall, give it a good spritzing of water, and let it dry.

I've had some close calls with quilts away from home. Once I sent off a quilt to a Mancuso show in California, but it never arrived. I was upset, of course, but persuaded myself that it was a quilt I didn't particularly love. Three months later, it resurfaced! The show had been held at a hotel, and the quilt had somehow turned up in the back of a closet long after the Mancusos had departed. We could never figure out exactly when or how it got there.

Curiously, some years later that same quilt had another show mishap, and again, I could never figure out exactly when or how it occurred. I was getting ready to ship it off somewhere and when I hauled it out from the bottom of the pile on my guest bed, realized to my dismay that it had horrible stains on both front and back.

None of the other quilts on the bed had any problems, so I tried to think of where the quilt had been. Realized that it had last been hanging in a show at a local university gallery, and surmised that a sprinkler head might have leaked over the quilt, as the stains seemed to spread downward.

I never have gone back to see whether there is in fact any plumbing in that corner of the gallery (and haven't done business with that gallery again...). Because the stains were less prominent on the front of the quilt, and I had taken it down in a hurry, it's conceivable that I had not noticed the stains. But maybe the stains migrated to the surface later as the quilt aged?? I'll never know.

So what to do? The quilt had to be on its way the next day. I figured there was nothing to lose, and put it in the washing machine. The stains disappeared. I backed the cars out of the garage, laid a sheet on the floor, spread the quilt on the sheet as tautly as possible, covered it with another sheet and set some fans to blow over it. By the next afternoon it was dry, flat, and ready to go out in public again.

This quilt has clearly gone through several of its allotted lives. I realize that all I have are slides, which I have not converted into digital images, so I can't show you a picture. But it's one extremely lucky quilt.

Photo suite 1 -- taking pictures

2012-01-01T06:26:00.004-05:00

After two years of posting daily photos to this blog, I'm changing the rules for 2012. This year I'll post a group of pictures each week, chosen by theme. It seems appropriate to start off the year with photos of me taking photos.

a shiny panel in Untitled, by Anselm Reyle, 2006, Minneapolis Institute of Art

Stuttgart, with posters for the Color Improvisations quilt show, summer 2010 -- my quilt in the center panel

Dan Graham, Two-Way Mirror Punched Steel Hedge Labyrinth, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

Daily art for 2012

2011-12-31T06:52:00.000-05:00

We're almost to Happy New Year!  The first of January is a time for resolutions and plans, and for several years my plans have always included an art project. Since 2001, with only one exception, I've always performed "daily art" -- a project in which I sew, make, photograph or do something every day. I have found that the discipline of making art all the time according to defined rules has improved my eye, juiced my creativity, helped me through dry periods -- and been a lot of fun.

Part of the fun, as we hit November and December, is thinking about what I'm going to do next. Sometimes I rehearse my ideas to see if they will really work, and have abandoned some that didn't. Always nicer to find that out in December than on January 5 when it's too late to start a new plan. (Well, it's never too late to start a new plan, but I do like having the complete year.)

So here are my plans for 2012.

First, my daily art project is going to involve hand-stitching. I've been doing a lot of hand-stitching in the last year, spurred by a collaboration with Terry Jarrard-Dimond.  Although embroidery was the first needle art I ever did, taught by my grandmothers when I was five or six years old, I hadn't done much of it in recent decades.  But I've rediscovered it, and decided I love it.

So, this year's project will be to hand-stitch a piece of solid color cotton each day. I'm going to start with four-inch squares, but reserve the right to change the size later. No rules on how much or what kind of stitching, what kind of thread, etc., and I'll wait till the end of the year to decide how to join and display the 366 pieces.  I'll show you some of the pieces as I make them.

Second, I'm going to continue posting photos to this blog. I started the blog two years ago as a vehicle for my 2010 daily art project, which was to take a good photo every day. In 2011 I changed the rules so that I continued to post every day, but didn't require the picture to be taken that very day. This made life easier, especially when we traveled out of easy Internet access. It also allowed me to do some "theme weeks" in which I chose groups of photos.

I learned that I really loved the theme groupings. For a long time I have been shooting photos in groups, keeping my eyes open for favorite subjects. And I enjoyed four weeks of collaboration with Linda McLaughlin last year in which we each posted photos on a theme. So I've redefined my photo project for 2012. This year I'm going to post a group of themed photos every week. I think I'll enjoy choosing the themes, and maybe you'll help me by suggesting others -- after all, we've got 53 weeks and that's a lot of themes!

Stay tuned, and I'll keep you posted on my daily art as I make it.

And remember, it's not too late to start a daily art project of your own for 2012.

Photo du jour

2011-12-31T05:34:00.002-05:00

palm view

Photo du jour

2011-12-30T05:34:00.000-05:00

chapel

Photo du jour

2011-12-29T05:40:00.000-05:00

snow tires

Student work

2011-12-28T06:18:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago we visited of St. Olaf College in Northfield MN, where our son had attended. I always like to check out the art school when we hit a college campus, and was happy to encounter a student show. Most students, particularly undergrads, are still on the heavy-handed side, with more technique than substance at their disposal, so it can be a bit frustrating for the viewer. (And probably also for the teacher.)

But here was one that made me laugh out loud.

Andy Kreienkamp, Why are you even looking back here?

You had to lift the art to find the signage, hence the title.

Photo du jour

2011-12-28T05:30:00.000-05:00

sea creature

Photo du jour

2011-12-27T05:41:00.000-05:00

found art

Photo du jour

2011-12-26T05:47:00.002-05:00

santas

Merry Christmas! or whatever...

2011-12-25T06:32:00.001-05:00

We have two shoeboxes in the hall closet labeled "Christmas cards" -- the ends and dregs of decades worth of card purchases. I've always thought it was classy to buy new cards each year, so that all of them would match. Kind of a dumb idea, when you think of it -- I don't suppose our friends from San Francisco are likely to be examining the cards hung from my sister's mantel in Virginia and noticing that they didn't get the same model. But we persist.

This year we found ourselves under unexpected stress, since my surgery. I'm recovering very well but am exhausted much of the time, certainly not up to a trip to buy new Christmas cards. So we hauled our shoeboxes down and inspected them to see if we could make do with our existing supplies. Any Christmas card that could be associated with an envelope went on the pile. Some were more than 40 years old, bought when we lived in Germany. Some were singletons, others had several copies. Some were big, some were little; some had Madonnas, others had Santas. Some said Merry Christmas, others Happy Holidays. We had fun matching cards to recipients, using big ones for those with letters, small ones for those needing no additional messages.

I recall a few years ago when some friends did a similar project, except theirs were the giveaway cards they had received from charities in fundraising efforts. Our friends' message was apropos: they warned us that their greeting was not to be taken as an endorsement of any charity nor a suggestion to contract the disease in question.

To all my internet friends, please accept my very best greetings for your holidays, whatever kind you celebrate. Want a manger scene? Want a menorah? Want a cute little dog on the snowy rooftop? Want an original UNICEF art card? Think of what would make you happiest, and let's imagine that I'm sending it to you right now.

Photo du jour

2011-12-25T05:39:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas!

Photo du jour

2011-12-24T05:36:00.000-05:00

creche with penguin

Photo du jour

2011-12-23T05:11:00.002-05:00

sign of the week

Photo du jour

2011-12-22T05:45:00.000-05:00

sparkle

Photo du jour

2011-12-21T05:31:00.000-05:00

gray day

Fashion forward again

2011-12-20T06:43:00.002-05:00

Even a broken watch tells the right time twice a day. And even those of us who don't worry about fashion sometimes find ourselves ahead of the curve. You just have to sit in your accustomed place and do your normal thing as the cycles of fashion sneak up behind you, and then -- wow! You're hot!

I was pleased but not surprised to find that it has happened again, as I read in the New York Times last week that the latest must-have accessory is a canvas tote bag. "The tote might be the ideal carryall for these post-luxury recessionary times. The tote’s status is stealth. It telegraphs not money but access, ethics, culture — encapsulating the idea ... that happiness grows more through experiences than purchases."

I have been there for a long time. Shortly after I retired, a decade ago, I made a life-changing decision, which was to stop carrying a purse. I had shlepped too many tons of irrelevant crap through too many airports in my business career, and when I realized I didn't have to do that any more, life got better. I downsized to a little card case that I carry in my pants pocket, just big enough for a license, a credit card and a couple of bills.

If I was carrying other things -- date book, handwork, kleenex, comb, checkbook, camera -- I would put them into a canvas bag. I took to maintaining many different canvas bags, which lived in different places and were always ready to go, such as one with crocheting to take to meetings; one with crayons, books and kid stuff to go with me to my volunteer work; one that accumulates things to take to grab bag at my fiber art group. Sometimes I carry two bags at once. My collection of canvas bags grew larger and more exotic over the years, until I suddenly find myself in the flush of fashion.

Of course the New York fashionistas seem to be carrying slightly different tote bags than I do. The article cites bags from big-name designers' shows and Halloween parties, fancy restaurants, international artists and celebrity charities. Mine are a bit more eclectic but I like to think much more exclusive than those mentioned in the Times.

Sure, everybody needs a reminder or two of the global financial crisis. When the good times rolled, the fancy firms got really great bags! After it all hit the fan, family members of those employees left to sweep out the closets and turn out the lights got some nifty hand-me-downs.

International art mementoes are always good.

Travel souvenirs, exotic and not so much.

Stains attest to the fact that I actually use these bags -- only working status symbols in this household.

As the Times wrote, access, ethics, culture. Here's the one I bet you'll never see in New York:

And its flip side. Now there's a statement for the ages.

Photo du jour

2011-12-20T05:28:00.002-05:00

red leaf

Photo du jour

2011-12-19T05:38:00.001-05:00

by the expressway

Photo du jour

2011-12-18T05:54:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday, Matt!

More prints gone upscale

2011-12-17T06:28:00.000-05:00

No sooner had I encountered a whole room full of commercial print fabrics on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts than I walked up a floor and found a sculpture by Yinka Shonibare that featured -- they're everywhere!! -- commercial print fabrics.

Yinka Shonibare, Dressing Down, 1997

Shonibare, a Nigerian artist, often uses batik prints associated with African or Indonesian fabrics to construct period European clothing, juxtaposing both sides of the imperial/colonial relationship.

Considering the subtext of the artist's identification with the exploited rather than the exploiters, I have always wondered whether Shonibare does his own sewing or sends it out to some nameless operative. An hour searching on the Internet failed to answer the question.

But it did find a couple of interesting scholarly papers pointing out that the batik fabrics used in Shonibare's work have a complicated history.

Originally, prints like these were made in Indonesia. In the 1800s Dutch traders attempted to make similar fabric in Europe and sell to the Indonesians (didn't work; the Dutch cloth wasn't as high quality as the originals). The European fabrics were then sold to Africans, still bearing the Indonesian-inspired designs, where today they are regarded as the next best thing to indigenous. And Shonibare purchases the fabric for his works at markets in London.

Which reminds me of a beautiful length of batik that I bought in Antwerp several years ago. In that Belgian city, like many other places in Europe, we saw many people wearing African dress, and happened upon some fabric shops that specialized in batiks. Unfortunately, all the fabric came in five-meter pieces, apparently the length needed for a standard outfit (flowing dress plus headwrap). I really wanted ten half- or quarter-meter cuts of different patterns, but had to settle for one big piece, as we were doing the Low Countries by train (and foot) with limited luggage space. It took me a long time to decide on this one from the dozens and dozens of spectacular patterns.

Note how the selvage on the yellow edge of the fabric is in French; on the blue side it's in English. I think UNTL is the logo of the fabric company.

I've used a few small bits of this fabric in quilts but a big hunk remains. Probably not enough to make a victorian dress with a bustle and ruffles.

Photo du jour

2011-12-17T05:44:00.000-05:00

quilt pattern

Photo du jour

2011-12-16T05:58:00.001-05:00

sign of the week

Photo du jour

2011-12-15T05:25:00.001-05:00

in the alley

Print fabrics gone upscale

2011-12-14T06:26:00.001-05:00

After carrying on a lot recently about the commercial print fabrics in my stash and whether they are in any way, shape or form art-worthy, I was amused to find a display of print fabrics in a museum.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts had a special exhibit of British print fabrics from the 1970s, an extravaganza of Op Art design that whisked me back in time.

The signage explained: "Technological and stylistic change characterized the American and European printed textile industry in the 1970s. On the process front, manufacturing advances eliminated the guesswork of hand screen-printing and created a technical and artistic precision that had previously been unattainable....

"By the 1970s, a new generation (of designers) embraced the optical illusions of the Op Art movement. They produced designs inspired by computers, machinery and minimalist architecture... Stylistically, these printed textiles effused energy and movement through repetition of form, strong graphics and bright color ranges."

As a lover of selvages, I was happy to see the fabric displayed with its beautiful ID markings visible.

Heals was a high-end fabric manufacturer in the UK; Barbara Brown was their star designer.

And don't you wish you had three or four yards of this gorgeous stuff? I could certainly think of something to make with it.

Photo du jour

2011-12-14T05:22:00.000-05:00

found art

Photo du jour

2011-12-13T05:36:00.001-05:00

snow scene

Change of plans

2011-12-12T06:28:00.001-05:00

What I was supposed to do last week:              What I did last week:

Tuesday: attend a going-away                             got sick
reception for my dear fiber art friend
and her husband who are leaving town

Wesdnesday: get my 2011 Christmas                 got sicker
ornaments in the mail

Thursday: attend the holiday party for             got sicker
my fiber and textile art organization

Friday: keep sewing on a new quilt that             had a CAT scan
I started in a frenzy of enthusiasm earlier
in the week

Saturday: go to the opening reception                 had my gall
for the 42nd Annual Mid-States Craft                 bladder removed;
Exhibit in Evansville IN, to receive                      went home three
an award of merit                                                   hours later

For next week: scratch the parties and the Christmas lunch, hope to get the ornaments in the mail, read some trash novels and maybe do some handwork. It only hurts when I laugh, which is too bad because I'm feeling pretty happy to have been diagnosed and fixed so quickly -- and on a weekend yet! It's a far cry from the greatest healthcare system in the world, but when it works, and for us lucky folks who can afford to participate, it does have its moments of glory.

Photo du jour

2011-12-12T05:34:00.000-05:00

ice scene

Print fabric update

2011-12-10T06:03:00.000-05:00

I've been writing recently about how I can't figure out how to use my huge stash of commercial prints.

But wait! I had occasion last week to use one in a quilt! And not a throwaway quilt, not a baby quilt, not a placemat, but something that could become part of a new art series. I'm not ready to share the full view with you, as it's not quilted yet, but it is sure DIFFERENT!

Interestingly, when I decided I needed a hunk of print, I knew exactly which fabric I wanted. It was a print left over from a dress, I think, probably dating back to the 80s or very early 90s. And to my delight, I was able to go to the right drawer and find it, and it was perfect for the quilt, just as I had thought it would be.

This a large-scale print -- what you see in this photo is about 15 inches across. You might wonder at first glance how on earth it's going to fit into a quilt made by somebody whose art style might well be described as austere. Or at least austere-wannabe.

I think one answer is that the print is so large and the shapes so unrecognizable that it appears in the quilt simply as a field of color rather than as flowers or fish.

But it is DIFFERENT and that has given me a nice jolt of excitement. I'll keep you posted on how this quilt turns out and whether any more prints will be allowed out of their drawers and into the art world.

Photo du jour

2011-12-10T05:23:00.000-05:00

guarding the museum

Photo du jour

2011-12-09T05:30:00.002-05:00

bricks

Photo du jour

2011-12-08T05:33:00.000-05:00

before the concert

Internet friends 2

2011-12-07T06:08:00.001-05:00

I've written in the past about internet friends and how pleasant it is to meet them in person if the fates smile on you. Let me tell you about one of my earliest -- and most distant -- internet friends, Olof Davidsdottir, who lives in Iceland.

In 2003 we took a trip to Greenland which started off with a day of free time in Reykjavik. I knew that Olof, one of the frequent participants on the Quiltart list, lived in Iceland so I emailed her and asked for suggestions about what to do while we were there. To our absolute delight, she asked where we were staying and said she'd pick us up. She gave us the city tour, including the only quilt shop in Iceland. Then we picked up her husband Snorri from his work and drove to Thingvellir, a national park/magical place about 20 miles outside of Reykjavik.

You may know that Iceland has the world's oldest parliament, which first met in 930. Until 1789 the parliament met at Thingvellir, an open-air venue that still has remains of rock slabs where prominent families would pitch their camps when parliament was in session. Yes, they continued to meet outdoors all that time. You had to be tough to live here!

Thingvellir sits on the rift between the North American and Eurasian geologic plates -- which means you can stand with one foot in North America and the other in Europe. The land shows many signs of geological turmoil, such as lava rock, chasms and upthrust rock fissures.

Olof's husband, my husband, and Olof walk ahead through the rift

As we explored the site, Olof took us to an area where her family would camp when she was a child. How much more intimate and wonderful than the commercial guided tours!

I had asked Olof if I could bring her something that was hard to get in Iceland and she asked for Schmetz topstitch needles. Even with several Schmetz packets and lunch, it was the cheapest and greatest five-star tour we've ever taken.

So fast forward to the present; Olof and I have stayed in touch by email and having perfect English, she reads my blog, although I can't read hers. But she has started video blogging as well, and last week she responded to my recent post about striped fabrics. She's speaking Icelandic, but has provided English subtitles, so all us underachieving monolingual dolts can get the message too.

Photo du jour

2011-12-07T05:19:00.000-05:00

just wallpaper

Photo du jour

2011-12-06T05:52:00.000-05:00

sign of the week

Goodbye quilts

2011-12-05T06:32:00.002-05:00

I wrote last week about my love of commercial prints, and how I am chagrined to realize how many fabrics in my stash are pretty disgusting. Don't know whether this is a function of overall changing tastes (I sure had a lot of yucky browns and beiges dating back to the earth-toned 70s) or to my own growing discrimination as an artist.

About ten years ago in a period of creative blight I decided to make a bunch of "goodbye quilts." These were made from the ugliest, most misbegotten fabrics in my possession, without much worry about design or composition. They were generally large-lap-sized and used traditional quilt blocks. The rule was that if anybody expressed an unsolicited positive comment about one of these quilts, they got to take it home, and it was surprising how many pieces got to leave under those circumstances.

Some of them went to the Holocaust Museum in Houston in 2001, where Rachel Brumer had an exhibit of her quilts about holocaust victims. She wanted to be able to give quilts to museum visitors as an expression of human compassion, and I was pleased to send her some of mine to put on the pile.

I called them goodbye quilts because I got to say goodbye to these pathetic fabrics without actually incinerating them. Even though the quilts were pretty awful-looking, it gave me a thrill to turn them into something useful, and to have them leave my premises. And after I had made a dozen or so goodbye quilts I found that my creative block had disappeared and I was ready to tackle something more demanding and rewarding.

I'm sorry that most of the goodbye quilts came and went in the days before I owned a digital camera and had gotten into the habit of documenting everything I made. The two shown here are the only images I can find of that series.

Today my stash doesn't include as many dogs as it did a decade ago, thank heaven. I'm now down to a truckload of prints that are still mostly appealing to me, even if I don't know what to do with them.

Photo du jour

2011-12-05T05:26:00.001-05:00

wind chimes

and a special prize for the first person to identify the site

Photo du jour

2011-12-04T05:42:00.000-05:00

sky view

Photo du jour

2011-12-03T05:40:00.000-05:00

reinforced

Photo du jour

2011-12-02T05:25:00.000-05:00

wrong side of the model railroad tracks

Photo du jour

2011-12-01T05:49:00.000-05:00

boarded up

Print fabric -- spawn of the devil??

2011-11-30T06:45:00.001-05:00

When I wrote last week about the trendy colors in modern quilting and showed an array of prints in said colors, I was surprised at some comments from people who apparently don't like prints in any way, shape or form, whether the colors are trendy or not. Even though I know that most people who think of their work as art more than as quilts don't use commercial prints, I wasn't expecting the vehemence of the responses.

Although I generally haven't used commercial prints in my own work in more than six years, I don't share that disdain. I own a truckload of prints in every color and style known to mankind, and have a fond hope that someday I will figure out how to use them. In other words, don't write and suggest that I could eliminate my problem by sending the truck over to your place or to the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. I like my prints, just don't know what to do with them at the moment.

Here are glimpses into some but by no means all of the drawers I have filled with commercial prints. You can see that I take some care in putting them away -- folding them to be the same height, sorting them by color.

Most of these are quarter- or half-yard cuts, although I have taken pains to save bits after using some of the fabric.

One of my best quilting friends says she loves nothing more than to use up the last piece of a fabric that has been around for a while. I am exactly the opposite -- I will never use up the last piece unless I absolutely have to. When I've used almost all of a fabric, I'll fold it into a really tiny little packet and move it to a box reserved for "endangered species."

I will admit that many of my commercial prints look dated and even ugly. Who knew what caused me to buy them in the first place? And in some cases, I didn't buy them, I inherited or otherwise acquired them.

It's probably time for me to sort through the drawers and pull out the fabrics that look ugly. I still own a lot of old-fashioned small calico prints, but they've mostly been pulled out of the drawers and put into a separate place so I can give them to new quilters who want to work with a traditional look. In general, I still love my prints. I like visiting them in their drawers, even if they don't get to come out and play very often. I like straightening them out and arranging them in neat rows so you can see everything there without having to paw through a pile. I like HAVING them, even if I don't use them. As vices go, I think you could come up with worse.

Photo du jour

2011-11-30T05:54:00.000-05:00

sign of the week

Photo du jour

2011-11-29T05:31:00.000-05:00

sky view

The typographic observer 9

2011-11-28T06:28:00.000-05:00

Photo du jour

2011-11-28T05:30:00.000-05:00

red

Photo du jour

2011-11-27T05:13:00.000-05:00

complementary

Found poetry 3

2011-11-26T05:36:00.000-05:00

I've written before about my practice of "finding" haiku on the printed page, and art form that is satisfying to me because it combines visual art with the written word. I had the chance to use this practice in a challenge project with my local fiber and textile art group.

Seems that one of our members is active in her Friends of the Library group. Several months ago that group was given 16 large boxes of romance novels, and after disposing of many of them at book sales, simply couldn't even give them away any more. So the remainder came to our textile art group and we held a challenge to make art out of the books. Last week we had the great revelation.

I decided to find haiku in the book to make a reader's digest version of the novel, and pasted them into a book I made using various stamps and stencils with acrylic paint.

Here's the first page, which was also the first page of the book -- you will notice that it didn't take long for our heroine to start losing her clothes.

I won't show you every page, but will give you the full text:

stripped down to her slip
her rented car. It was hot...
taken a wrong fork

Like a black panther,
energy to stalk his prey.
the danger in him

hard against the bed
his scent... the scent of danger
Why don't you lie down

What are you hiding?
swept her up against his chest,
muscles of his chest

outrageous passion.
wrapping like satin barbed-wire
her widening thighs

like a scream of pain
She drew a breath on a sob.
Do you even care?

the unspoken pain
she didn't yet comprehend.
A tingling began

Your beautiful skin
creamy velvet all over.
he had studied her

breath caught in her throat
Falling in love at my age
want to marry you,

Lots of fun with this project! The only drawback was having to read the novels in the first place. It was kind of like watching a snake eat a bunny rabbit -- so awful that you can't look away. Do romance writers think that women are attracted to men who treat them like dirt and regard rape as a logical, if frowned-upon, courtship tactic? Apparently, since they publish over 7,000 romance novels every year. Even in the readers digest version it would be difficult for me to get through many of them.

Photo du jour

2011-11-26T05:27:00.000-05:00

detour

Photo du jour

2011-11-25T05:06:00.000-05:00

mail call

Collaboration project 10

2011-11-24T06:46:00.001-05:00

Last month some people in my artists book club got together at my house, and somehow the conversation turned to my postage stamp quilts and how I got the idea to make work in that format. Since we were, after all, at my house, I was able to run into the studio and bring out a handful of my sew-off squares to demonstrate the process. One thing led to another, and everybody in the group went home with a square or two to see if they would inspire some art.

This week most of the people came back with their artwork, and the overachiever's prize went to photographer Keith Auerbach, who had taken his two little squares, scanned them and played with them in photoshop. He ended up with a whole series of compositions that he printed off as notecards and gave to me.

Here's the first square:

And the finished image:

With some color manipulation:

And some shape manipulation:

Here's the second square:

And here are some of the finished images in this series, with various manipulations:

If you've been following my year-long efforts at collaboration, you may think that this work doesn't really qualify, since I did 0.01 percent of the work and Keith did the rest. And you would be right. So to keep things honest, I'm going to take some of Keith's images and put a lot of work into making something with them as a starting point. Not sure when this part of the project will be complete, but I'll show you what I come up with.

Photo du jour

2011-11-24T05:55:00.000-05:00

sign of the week

(good luck)

Photo du jour

2011-11-23T05:09:00.000-05:00

drinks on the house

Photo du jour

2011-11-22T05:26:00.001-05:00

still looking at you, kid

Photo du jour

2011-11-21T05:01:00.000-05:00

here's looking at you, kid!

Modern quilting colors

2011-11-20T06:14:00.000-05:00

Over the last few months I've been doing my best to keep you posted on my ongoing project to understand what Modern Quilting really is. If you haven't been paying attention, so far we've established that Modern Quilters tend to be younger than non-modern quilters, that they want to Break The Rules, that they love gray and white among their colors, and that they like to depict their quilts artfully draped over furniture or shrubbery rather than photographed boringly head-on against a neutral background.

This week I was happy to read that several Modern Quilting gurus have shared with us their ideas of exciting color combinations.

We all know that colors go in and out of fashion, just as patterns do. A year or two ago I was crushed to discover that it's very difficult to buy striped fabric -- just when I had realized that stripes worked marvelously with my newly developed style of piecing. I made a huge quilt that exhausted most of my stripe stash, and went out to buy more for a second quilt in warm colors, but oops, no stripes. Plenty of polka dots, though.

Crazed 8: Incarceration, 2010 (detail)

Most fiber artists that I know don't spend much time in the quilt shop, however, making most of their own fabrics with various surface design techniques, whether dyeing, painting, screenprinting, discharging or whatever. So maybe you will be as curious about what's hot these days as I was.

In a nutshell: gray and gray/beige, orange, mustard yellow, pink, warm dark red, grayed teal.

Should fiber artists spend even a millisecond thinking about this?

Maybe not. But then again, I was present in a room once when a Famous Artist was judging quilts in a juried show, and after some consideration, passed by a quilt that I thought was quite striking. Why? "Because the color palette is so old-fashioned, it just doesn't look fresh." And if you, like me, are toying with the idea of doing an article or book or pattern or workshop that might appeal to quilters who do frequent quilt shops, perhaps you would like to think that your samples look fresh rather than old-fashioned.

A few months ago you, my friends, pitched in and helped me win a contest in which I wrote about what I thought Modern Quilting meant. My prize included a nice little pile of fabrics that, sure enough, fit in nicely with this new color vibe. In furtherance of my own commercial development plan, which I'm not yet ready to go public with, I'm going to use some of these new trendy colors to make a quilt! And since my stash dates back decades, I can probably go into my drawers and find a lot of fabrics that are just as trendy to go with these new ones, saved from the last time orange and gray went around. When was that -- the 60s? the 70s? the 80s? I can't remember.

Modern quilting fabrics on the left; my stash on the right. If you're younger than I am and would like to save me from myself, please let me know which ones are mortifyingly old-fashioned. Thank you!!!

Photo du jour

2011-11-20T05:40:00.000-05:00

blue bench

Photo du jour

2011-11-19T17:18:00.002-05:00

street ball

What do I think about this?

2011-11-19T06:44:00.002-05:00

The question du jour on one of my email lists has to do with self-critique, and what questions you should ask yourself as you work on, and then after you finish, a new piece. This is a subject guaranteed to get me to the keyboard, because I've long felt that a formal process of evaluation is necessary to a serious artist.

I'm sure some of my former students and readers will be rolling their eyeballs if they read this -- oh no, here we go again! But yes. I don't see how intelligent people can conduct any part of their lives without self-evaluation. Does this pair of jeans make me look fat? Why do I always end up going out with losers? Can we afford to remodel the kitchen? Should I rat out my co-worker who's sneaking money out of petty cash? If I make this recipe again should I use less rutabaga? How should I invest my 401(k)? Is this art any good?

for instance, is this any good? (detail below)

My hobby-horse is that the more serious the issue, the more it deserves a formal process rather than just some fleeting thoughts in passing. So when it's your financial affairs or how to treat a blockbuster disease, do research, write stuff down, discuss it, get second opinions, revisit your decisions periodically. When it's your jeans, don't spend too much time on it.

But if you're serious about your art, or wonder whether you should get more serious about it, then it may deserve a more formal process. Here's mine. I suggest you review a just-completed work on four counts:

-- What you liked or thought was successful
-- What you disliked or thought was unsuccessful
-- What technical issues or problems you had
-- Decision points where you had to choose between equally appealing alternatives, and what alternatives you rejected

Then you use these answers to plan your next work:

-- Do more of what was successful
-- Don't do what was unsuccessful
-- Try to solve or minimize the technical problems
-- Try one or more of the alternatives you haven't used yet (you may go back to earlier pieces to find rejected alternatives to try this time)

Before you start a new work, define conceptually what you are planning to accomplish. Think about how it fits into your body of work, whether it extends a current series and if so how, or whether there is a reason to do something outside a current series. (Just playing is a valid reason, as long as you don't do it all the time.) If you can't describe this clearly, maybe you shouldn't start.

Photo du jour

2011-11-18T05:26:00.000-05:00

architectural view

Packing fever

2011-11-17T06:28:00.000-05:00

The good news is you got into a show!

The bad news is then you have to get the quilt to the show.

Yesterday was a bad news day. I had to ship two quilts off, which shouldn't be too big a deal. I own plenty of pool noodles on which to roll things, plenty of long boxes, plenty of dowels and sticks for hanging rods, plenty of screw eyes in case I have to make a new rod. I have a roll of clear package tape in every room of the house, with a scissors nearby. But it took me the better part of an hour to get those two quilts on their way, not counting the drive (in the rain) to FedEx.

Didn't take too long to find them because I'd recently packed up almost a hundred quilts, leaving only those in current circulation on the bed. But after trying 35 different pre-existing hanging rods, finding none to be the right length, I had to cut a new one and set screw-eyes. I did find two rods of the right length for the other quilt, but one required a little remedial maintenance.

Only had to root around for a minute or two to find the right length noodle. Found a box just the right size quite easily, since the larger quilt had come home from another show in it and it was at the front of the box stash. Found a nice fabric tube to put the roll in, because I had recently cut up an old sheet and made THREE such tubes, each one already labeled with my name and address. Did I feel proud of myself! Found several nice cords to tie up the roll and the package, because I had recently cut the hems off some curtains and made a dozen ties of various lengths. More proud of myself.

As packing days go, this was a walk in the park. Sometimes I have spent an entire morning on a frantic, prayer-punctuated expedition to find the quilt in the first place -- looking in drawers, boxes, rolls, piles, straightening up my studio to an alarming degree before the damn thing shows its face. Sometimes I can't find a noodle long enough, and have to construct one by joining two shorter ones with a dowel for a spine. Sometimes I have to build a box by cannibalizing cardboard from other sources.

Perhaps you have noticed that the operative verb in this narrative is "find." It's not that any of these steps are difficult or even time-consuming -- once you have your materials and things at hand. I remember fondly the mail room at my old place of employment. Big empty counters where you could spread out your stuff and pack your boxes, sealing tape right out there on the counter 24/7.

I suppose that in an ideal world I would have a big rack for my hanging rods, like at Home Depot where dowels of different lengths each have their own little compartment and you could instantly go to the 35-inch space. It would go right next to the big empty counter with the sealing tape, under which would be a dozen empty long boxes in assorted sizes. I'll invite you over when I get this all organized. Perhaps in the next century.

Photo du jour

2011-11-17T05:12:00.001-05:00

still life

Photo du jour

2011-11-16T05:33:00.000-05:00

looking up

Photo du jour

2011-11-15T05:27:00.000-05:00

immediate seating

More about the Q word

2011-11-14T06:34:00.001-05:00

Perhaps you have seen episodes on PBS, or read promotions urging you to buy the DVD of a new documentary series, "Why Quilts Matter." It was produced by Shelly Zegart, who was interviewed last week by our local alternative weekly newspaper. I read it with interest, partly because I am one of the quilters who was shown in the documentary, and wondered how the subject would be presented to the younger, hip readers of this publication.

Sure enough, the interviewer announces early on, "I have to admit I thought quilt making was a dying art..." (Don't you love it when the reporter is so proud of her preconceived wrong ideas that it gets into the story?)

The rest of the interview is relatively innocuous, because of course you can't go into enough detail in one of these feature stories to treat anything substantively. But I perked up at this Q&A:

Reporter: "What do you consider to be the most important quilt in history?"

Shelly: "The AIDS quilt -- it put focus on a movement like no other. It changed the face of the understanding of AIDS and its human toll. Quilts have always been made for causes, like temperance or to raise money; the AIDS quilt just brought this to the public."

I happen to agree with everything Shelly said except one thing. She's right about how this project made many people realize that AIDS patients were people, not remote and nameless victims who weren't like us and probably deserved what they got. (Young people may not remember that in the early days of the disease, that was exactly the prevailing view.) And it certainly made people realize the size of the epidemic, when it took a huge swath of the Mall in Washington to display the piece.

But wait -- the AIDS quilt is not a quilt. Call it a fiber construction, call it cloth banners, call it a set of panels (actually that's how the official project website refers to the individual pieces) but not a quilt, because it's not quilted. It wouldn't even qualify as a quilt under the expansive definitions of most art quilt shows, let alone the strict definitions of your favorite traditional guild or state fair.

So am I being a terrible party-pooper and pedant and killjoy? Maybe so, but I find it ironic that to promote the concept that "Quilts Matter," we have to cite something that isn't a quilt as the most important quilt in history. Just because its promoters call it a quilt -- and wasn't that a stroke of marketing genius? -- doesn't make it one, technically.

I tend to be a little picky about nomenclature in other contexts as well. Although I often try to avoid the Q word in describing my own work, I do value the technical definitions of the myriad variations of textile arts. I'm willing to substitute a less-specific umbrella term for "quilt," but I'm not willing to use an equally specific word that happens to be wrong. So yes, I'm OK calling a quilt a "fiber construction" or a "mixed media piece" or a "fabric collage" but I'm not OK calling it a "needlepoint" or a "tapestry" or a "painting" or a "weaving" or an "embroidery."

I happen to believe that those of us who make art in the fiber kingdom should and usually do understand the world in which we have chosen to play. Even if we choose to play against the tradition, we should respect it and be cognizant of its history and forms.

Even if the ordinary man-on-the-street or alternative-newspaper-reporter doesn't know the difference between a quilt and a woven coverlet or a crocheted afghan, we should. Even if the clever advertising people at Northern Tissue think that ladies quilt at a frame with both hands on top, holding knitting needles, we should know better -- and yes, we should do our best to educate the ad guys and get the commercial changed. Even if other people misspell our name, we shouldn't.

Heck, if we don't understand and respect the picky little details of our own chosen art form, how can we possibly expect anybody else to?

Photo du jour

2011-11-14T05:23:00.000-05:00

sign of the week

Photo du jour

2011-11-13T05:47:00.000-05:00

mums

20,000 and counting

2011-11-12T06:30:00.001-05:00

A few days ago my camera, which I bought in June 2010, flipped its odometer for the third time, and started counting again at 0000. That means I've taken 20,000 photos in 17 months, actually more like 15 months if you subtract its three vacations in the Nikon service center.

The high mileage testifies to how seriously I have taken to daily photography; I almost always have the camera in my pocket when I leave home, thus allowing me to take advantage of serendipitous photos like this one:

Or this (yes, I know it's bad practice to take pictures while driving, but the light had just changed and we weren't even moving yet...):

The bad part of flipping the odometer is that now you have three photos named DSCN0032 or whatever. I've always wondered why Nikon chose to have its naming protocol perform so inefficiently -- fully half of the characters allotted to naming are wasted, while the remaining four don't last all that long for serious photographers.

As a result, my photo folders often have problems. My food folder, for instance, might have a bunch of Thanksgiving pictures, taken the first time I hit a certain neighborhood in the numbering protocol, interspersed with some of the summer garden from the second time around. As I go through the folder, I'll come upon a turkey (DSCN3724), then a tomato (DSCN3724 - 2), then another turkey (DSCN3725), then another tomato (DSCN3725 - 2). I know I could change the names and call them turkey 1 and tomato 1, but I'm getting old and life seems too short.

By contrast, I loved the naming protocol for my old Olympus cameras. As far as I can deduce, a photo might be named P6263724, which means it was taken on June 26 and was numbered 0124. The next photo might be named P6273725, which means it was taken on June 27, but the ID numbers, so to speak, continued consecutively. The same eight characters as Nikon, but a lot more information and a lot less opportunity to trip over your own feet. Even if you went around the four-digit odometer a hundred times, what are the chances that photo number 3724 would be taken on the same date as on a previous circuit?

But if that's the biggest complaint I have about my camera, I'm a happy camper. At least it's in my pocket these days and not in the Nikon service center. Hope it holds on for another 10,000 pictures!

Photo du jour

2011-11-12T06:08:00.002-05:00

junkyard dog

Photo du jour

2011-11-11T05:33:00.000-05:00

at the war memorial

Photo du jour

2011-11-10T06:32:00.001-05:00

terra cotta

Remedial surface design

2011-11-10T06:28:00.001-05:00

My 12-year-old nephew was visiting from Australia recently and had some requests. His mother had bought him new T-shirts at an outlet mall but none perfectly fit his fashion sensibilities. Could his aunt the sewist do something to remedy the situation?

Such a challenge generally sets the adrenalin going and I said I would do my best. What was the problem?

The first one was easy. The shirt had a breast pocket and he didn't like it. Among other things, unruly boys at his school have been known to grab pockets and rip them off. He'd already been advised that unsewing the pocket would look bad (even if we managed to get the stitches out without leaving holes, a printed logo was half on and half off the pocket). So he would settle for sewing it shut. But I went for the much simpler approach, fusing it shut.

The second problem required more artistic contemplation. The two identical shirts were plain, solid colors, and that just wouldn't do. He wanted some kind of design.

I went through the possibilities. Paint, tie-dye, discharge, applique. To that last one, his mom said, "you know, like the little heart on your father's sweater" that was one result of my big mending project at last year's visit. But if Dad has it, would a kid want it too? Of course not.

We tested the fabric and sure enough, both the red and the orange shirts discharged nicely with Finish dishwasher gel. So we put a nice abstract design on each one.

Here's Robbie with one of his new shirts.

Photo du jour

2011-11-09T05:20:00.000-05:00

election day

More found art

2011-11-08T06:18:00.001-05:00

I've written before about what I call found art, photos of interesting surfaces and accidental marks that make pleasing "pictures" and might even be mistaken for paintings. Recently I read on another blog about a project of Loughborough University in the UK that is developing an online database of various art topics, including -- yes -- found art, except they call it "found drawings."

They're soliciting contributions so I sent in several of my own found art. I thought these two were particularly like drawings. One of them, plus another that isn't pictured here, was chosen for the database.

So far the database doesn't have a lot of these photos, but if it grows, I suspect the next step will be to categorize them, which I think will make it more fun to consult. For instance, categories might include natural textures, graffiti, aerial landscapes, distressed manmade objects, shadows, reflections.

If you'd like to send in some of your own found drawings, here are the guidelines.

Photo du jour

2011-11-08T05:05:00.004-05:00

sign of the week

wow, Heather, I want some of your brand of paint!!

Obituary of the week

2011-11-07T06:30:00.001-05:00

Yesterday's New York Times carried an obituary that gave me pleasure, not because a good woman died but because the newspaper celebrated a life worth living, and of interest to fiber artists. The departed is Mary Hunt Kahlenberg, who was curator of costumes and textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and later was an important textile collector and curator in Santa Fe.

Perhaps her most notable accomplishment was to organize, in 1972, an exhibit of Navajo blankets that toured widely and greatly impressed the art world. Rather than showing the blankets as craft artifacts or in dioramas, she put them on the wall, just like paintings.

The NYTimes art critic wrote at the time, "The range is amazing. There are designs here — fields of gray with the leanest linear embellishments — that answer to the strictest notions of minimal aesthetics, and there are others that are so vivid in their color, so intricate in their accretion of forms, so overpowering in their optical effect, that they make the inevitable comparisons with recent developments in op art almost laughable. Nothing that our painting has produced in recent years exceeds in sheer visual power the strongest works in this survey.”

While I had been unaware of this important exhibit, the critical remarks reminded me of a similar blockbuster show at just about the same time, the exhibit of American quilts at the Whitney Museum in 1971. There, too, the critics raved; quilts displayed on the wall in a museum setting suddenly could be perceived as Real Art (aka painting-like objects). And of course three decades later came the Gee's Bend blockbuster, where again, quilts on the wall blew the critics away: "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced," the Times wrote. "Eyes of New Yorkers attuned to modern art will find echoes of painterly equivalents."

Ah, yes, to be Real Art it has to remind us of paintings. And interestingly, no matter how powerfully the critics were impressed by the textiles, they apparently weren't persuaded to seek out and venerate similar pieces in other venues. The Real Art world always recovers quickly from blockbuster appearances of non-traditional mediums, at least those executed by artists who didn't get MFAs at Yale or contracts with Gagosian.

Photo du jour

2011-11-07T05:13:00.000-05:00

orange

Photo du jour

2011-11-06T06:02:00.000-05:00

berries

Not your grandmother's quilt

2011-11-05T06:25:00.001-04:00

I wrote about a panel discussion on art that I attended recently, much of which was kind of the same old discussion heard many times in the past. But there was something delightfully different. The subject at hand was the sweet, down-home connotations of quilts and how that affects viewers of contemporary art.

Sometimes artists play along with that stereotype, making quilts that deliberately evoke the meaning of home and nurturing. But sometimes they can play against the grain, with equally powerful results.

Exhibit A: Scott Scarboro, a mixed media artist, talked about a piece that he had made by divesting a lot of battery-powered toy animals of their skins. He sewed the skins together to make a blanket or throw, and draped that over a cradle. Next to it, all the scalped animals danced around wildly.

Here's the blanket, and one of the animals; I wish I had seen the entire installation. Presumably the sweet, warm furry throw on the cradle doesn't exactly prepare viewers for the live action. You go, Scott!