Fiber art and encaustic 3 -- Linda McLaughlin

Early this month I had the pleasure of visiting Linda McLaughlin in her studio and couldn't help but fall in love with her encaustic paintings.  Knowing that she's primarily known as a fiber artist, I had to ask how she made the leap into encaustic.

Q.  How long have you been doing fiber art / how long have you been doing encaustic?

I have been sewing for 60 years; about 25 years ago I got really serious and creating my own work became a driving force. 

I first became aware of encaustic about 6 years ago and 5 years ago I went to an encaustic camp to learn more. I was very enthralled at first but my interest has faded. I keep thinking I should do more, but then never do. 

Q.  Did you feel that encaustic was a natural progression from your fiber work, or a totally new thing?

I approached encaustic as a new thing and then tried to find ways of including fiber. I've even thought of doing a relatively large piece of fiber art and then encasing it in encaustic on a wood panel.  I even have the panel (20" x 24").  I just need to do it.

Photo du jour

Earlier this year I collaborated with my twin-separated-at-birth Linda McLaughlin on two weeks of daily photographs.  One week she chose a theme for us both to follow; the next week I chose.  We both had fun, and decided to do another round.  I hope you enjoy them, and please check out her daily photo too.

Linda chose this week's theme: red.

zinnia

Photo du jour

In my collaboration with Linda McLaughlin, we're doing river images this week.  My big river is the Ohio; Linda's is the Snake.  Rivers tend to be in the news when they flood, as mine did earlier this year, and also tend to be more photogenic in a fascinating/horrifying sort of way.  The water has gone down now, and we're all thankful.

high water

Collaboration project 4

My art theme for the year is collaboration, and today kicks off my fourth such project.  This time my partner in art is Linda McLaughlin, whom I have never met in person although, as you may know from reading my blog, we are twins separated at birth.

Both Linda and I have been posting daily photographs on our blogs for many months.  In the first year of our respective projects, we used photos that had been taken that very day, which made for a powerful incentive to get out there with the camera and take a walk, whether we felt like it or not.

Both of us, having completed a year of daily deadline pressure, decided to continue to post a photo every day, but changed the rules to make it slightly easier.  Now our photos can be taken that day, or found in our archives.  For me at least the new rules have led to new possibilities, as I have gone through old vacation photos to find interesting shots of faraway places.

But after all these months, I think both Linda and I are ready for a new twist on the formula.  So we've agreed to have occasional theme weeks, in which we'll both be posting on the same subject.  Linda chose the subject for this week, architectural details.  So please check out her blog as well as mine, and see how two artists on opposite sides of the country respond to the same "assignment."

Passing it on!

I had a treat earlier this week when I learned that Janet Bottomley, a quilter and teacher from the UK, has nominated me for the Liebster Award, a kind of moveable feast in the low end of the blog world.  The idea is to give a little appreciation to smaller blogs (those with fewer than 300 followers) that you particularly enjoy.  (I believe that it started in Germany, hence the name, which means "favorite.")

So first, my thanks to Janet, who blogs about her quilts and her studies for the City and Guilds continuing education program.  I think it's marvelous that the internet makes it possible to have friends on other continents, and that we so often realize how much we have in common with people so far away geographically but so close in terms of everything important.

But now the hard part -- who will I pass this honor along to?  I have many blogs that I read religiously, often to the detriment of actually going into my studio to make art.  It was hard to choose just three.

First on my list has to be Thru Linda's Eyes, in which Linda McLaughlin posts a photograph every day.  First, because that's the blog I read first every morning when I sit down at the computer.  I've written about how Linda has been a role model for my own similar project and how I suspect we are twins separated at birth. 

Second is Margaret Cooter, another Brit, whose blog I have become addicted to in the last six months or so.  Margaret has been particularly prolific and productive since she enrolled in a course on book arts.  As a typophile myself I have loved watching the nifty projects she's making when she's not doing fiber art or photography.

Third is Terry Jarrard-Dimond, whom I have the pleasure of knowing because like me, she is a repeat offender at Nancy Crow's classes.  Terry has written extensively about her experiments with surface design, complete with tutorials that have inspired lots of readers to try flour resist and other exotic techniques.  But I really love her thoughts on art in general, and her insights gleaned from many decades in the art world (I'm always jealous of people who went to art school the first time around and have been doing it for their whole careers, in contrast to latecomers like myself).

I could suggest many more blogs worthy of honor but I'll stick with the rules for now.  Thanks, Janet, and my thanks also to Linda, Margaret and Terry who have given me so many hours of good reading and thinking.

Separated at birth -- part 3

I've been writing about Linda McLaughlin and her daily photo project, noting how her project and mine are similar, and so are our photos.  In yesterday's photo quiz Linda's pictures were on the left and mine on the right.

Both of us have realized the magic of the serendipitous great photo that appears as you're walking by.  Here's one of Linda's favorites from her year of pictures:

She explains:  "A butterfly was on my deck; I put my finger down and it walked right on to it. We were getting ready to leave and I had my camera in my purse.  I managed to get it out with my free hand and get the picture."

One of my favorites from Linda's year is this one, which also was serendipitous:

When I wrote her and said, "Wow!  How did you do that?" she replied, "I didn't do anything!! It was a reflection from a parked car mirror. Pretty cool, I just happened to be there at the right time."

By contrast, we both have had days when inspiration doesn't strike, but you need a picture anyway. We both have found much to look at in nature, even if some of the photos are a bit obvious.

 

When all else fails, there's always the grocery store.

And sometimes the daily photo appears right under our noses.

I could go on and on, because Linda's pictures are so good.  You can check them out yourself every morning, because she's going to continue her project in the coming year. 

But maybe you'd like to see whether we actually look like twins.  What do you think?  I'm the tall one.

Separated at birth -- part 2

I wrote yesterday about Linda McLaughlin's daily art project of posting a photo every day to her blog, and how similar it has been to my own such project.  Yesterday Linda's photos were on the left/top of each pair, and mine were on the right/bottom.

Until I discovered Linda's blog I had never met her, nor was I even familiar with her name.  But I learned that she was enrolled in the Jane Dunnewold surface design master class, which three of my friends have attended.  She has also just had work accepted into Form, Not Function: Quilt Art at the Carnegie, a juried show that I helped organize.  Although we live more than a thousand miles apart, we both lived in upstate New York as kids and both made trips back there last fall, complete with photos.

Linda's project rules call for her to shoot a photo each day, then post it as soon as she gets up the next morning, right after making coffee and feeding the cat and dog.  Once I left a comment asking how on earth she, two time zones to the west, managed to get her pictures posted every morning before I even got up.  Turns out that yes, she's an early riser whereas I'm a slugabed, but it's not quite that simple.  Her internet provider operates on pacific time while she's actually on mountain time, so when it says she posted a photo at 5:30, it was really 6:30 her time.  By contrast, I have chosen a lower-pressure model for my art project, saving up a week's worth of pictures for one post, which I try to do on Saturday but might on occasion not get done till later. 

Linda created a separate blog for her photo project, keeping her previous blog to talk about her fiber art.  I do both in the same blog. 

Both Linda and I try to take daily walks, which with any luck provide us with our pictures du jour.  Linda says,  "I like to walk early in the morning and take my photos then, but in the winter it's dark and now icy and I'm not walking, so I have to find other times to get some pictures taken. Today we had to leave town for some appointments so on the way home I took pictures from the passenger's seat."  I hate to do anything early in the morning, but sometimes accompany my husband to his 9-11 a.m. volunteer gig and walk while he teaches English to immigrants.  My walks tend to occur in the afternoon whenever possible, although during our brutally hot summer I did drag myself out in the mornings.

Linda says that in the course of her year of daily art "my camera skills have definitely improved. Reading the manual that came with the camera really helped and I took an online class about getting to know your camera."  I too saw a huge improvement in my skills.  I got a new camera last spring and got a free three-hour class at the photo store, during which I learned more than I had managed to pick up in five years of using other digital cameras.

Here are some more photos for you to guess the maker.  Again, all the left/top were made by the same person, and all the right/bottom were made by the other.

Separated at birth

Being an aficionada of daily art, I am always delighted to find a soul sister out there who is walking down the same path.  Almost a year ago I discovered Linda McLaughlin, who, like me, is a fiber artist and blogger who undertook a project of taking a photo every day and posting it on the web.  Linda's photo is usually posted by the time I get to my computer in the morning, so that has become the first thing I look at for the day.

Linda explains her project:  "This blog is dedicated to my Mom who passed away five years ago today [she started the project November 30, 2009]. When I received my first camera about fifty years ago, I was reprimanded because I took a whole roll of film of 'nothing' and it cost too much to get it developed. Well I'm still taking pictures of nothing, it doesn't cost anything to develop them now and I'm going to share them with you."

Not only do I love Linda's photos, and the concept of her daily art project, I am delighted and often chagrined to find out that our minds and cameras work so similarly.  When Linda hit her one-year anniversary of the daily photo project two weeks ago, she invited readers to choose their favorite photo of the year and she would send us a print.  As I went back through her year of photos, I noticed how many of hers reminded me of mine. 
 
Here's your challenge for the day:  decide which pictures were taken by Linda and which by Kathy.  Hint: in each pair, all the ones on the left/top were by the same one of us.

   

 

Answers tomorrow, and more about Linda and her photo project.