Goodbye to the old gallery....

I haven't been posting this week, or doing much art of any sort, because it's moving time at Pyro Gallery.  Cleaning out the old space --

It looks much bigger empty!  It's been a good home to us for five years and we're sad to say goodbye.

My favorite things 35

We have a family rule of no gifts, except for extraordinary circumstances, so I was surprised when my son showed up shortly before Mother's Day three years ago to present me with a Kindle e-reader from him and his brother.  We were leaving the next day for Great Britain and the guys thought I needed a Kindle to stay in touch.  The best part of the gift was that my son did all the setup for me.

And indeed, I immediately fell in love with the device.  I could check email from our hotel in London, find a google map to plan our walking route, read in bed without turning on the light when jet lag woke me at 3 a.m., order up a new library book after I had read the three I loaded at home.  The only downside was that I couldn't upload photos to my blog, open attachments to email messages, or perform any online activity that required highlighting, cutting, pasting or anything else that you would ordinarily do with a mouse.  I've carried it with me on many a journey, and only occasionally has it done temper tantrums.

Until last week, when I got a message from the library that a book I had had on waitlist for some time was now available.  I went online and told it to download to the Kindle, then turned on the Kindle to start reading -- and nothing happened.  I plugged it in overnight but still nothing.  My son came over with his own Kindle and power cord and confirmed that it wasn't the power cord.  The Kindle was dead.

The new one arrived Friday afternoon and in a fit of independence I decided I would do the setup this time around.  And it only took an hour and a half!

First I had to wait while my new modem/router took its time thinking about whether it would indeed let the Kindle connect to the internet, despite several attempts where it told me "no internet available." Much searching around to find the sales slip from the new router to entitle me to 90 days free tech help so I could ask them why the wi-fi wasn't broadcasting properly.  By the time I got myself organized for that task, I realized that the Kindle had apparently persuaded the router to let it on. Then I had to click around for ten minutes to figure out how to get my email online.  Here I knew the password, but I couldn't figure out how to access the right site (it was bookmarked into the old Kindle, but that didn't help....)

Now to the blogger site.  A month ago Google had a hissy fit when I tried to log in to my blog from a motel in the wilds of Ohio, deducing incorrectly that this was a hack.  It took me an hour of frustration before I was able to persuade them that it was indeed me, and to issue me a new password.  I thought I took the precaution of sending myself an email with the new password, as well as writing it down in a couple of different places.  I did in fact remember it long enough to reset my desk computer when I got home.  But yesterday I couldn't remember, nor could I find the email or any piece of paper with the new password.  So I had to ask for another reset.  That took the better part of a half hour to get resolved.

Then I had to bookmark the public library site, and check out a new ebook to see if the library would recognize the new Kindle instead of the old one.  It did.  But then I had to log in to Amazon, which manages the interface between library and device.  Finally, I had to bookmark the New York Times, without which I could not live while away from home.

In all, I had to look up five different passwords in my notebook, wait for an email with a new one-time access code, reset that password, write it down in my notebook, and reset it on my desk computer.  I still haven't reset the new password on my laptop, which occasionally travels with me as well.

Technology is wonderful, I guess.  Before the Kindle I carried bags of books on long trips and searched out computers in hotel lobbies to check email.  And before computers and email we sent postcards, searched out the International Herald Tribune in tobacco shops around Europe, and didn't know whether our loved ones were alive or dead till we got home.  But technology doesn't come easy.

I suppose my granddaughter could have whipped through these setup tasks in five minutes, but I was happy that I managed it all by myself.  Now comes the second learning curve, figuring out how the new device differs from the old one.  You know it will, and you know that some of the features that I liked about the old one will have disappeared.  But I'm keeping a smile on my face.  I do love the damn thing!  I really do!  grrrr

The pyramids are almost all gone

I wrote in February about a new fiber art enthusiasm, making pyramids out of heavily machine-stitched fabric, stitched so densely that the fabric took on structural integrity and would stand on its own.  I made five pyramids in reds and blues and put them on display at Pyro Gallery, the co-op gallery where I have been a member since last fall.

To my surprise, four out of the five have been sold -- all but the tallest, pointy-haired blue one.

So what do you do with one pyramid?  I guess you go back to the sewing machine and make some more so this one won't be lonely.

All the pyramids were stitched with shiny polyester machine embroidery thread, left over from the Mending Project at Kentucky Museum of Art + Craft, which I participated in and wrote about extensively two years ago.  KMAC was trying to get rid of a lot of stuff it had no storage space for, and our local fiber art group got to take home thread.  I have a whole drawer full so stitching pyramids will be totally free, at least in terms of materials (not so in terms of time).

Since I made the first five pyramids, I've been having ideas for more -- I could truncate the pyramids, I could make doors and windows, I could build little dormers and awnings and bulges onto their sides.  So one of these days I'll be back in the pyramid-building business.
 

Grandchildren and fiber art 3

Several weeks ago I posted a photo of Vivian asleep while I crocheted.  At the time, she had spent practically all of her time with us asleep, a source of frustration to grandparents who wanted to play with her.  But I predicted that pretty soon she'd be up and about.

And sure enough, she's now awake.  My dear friend Uta Lenk from Germany, whom I met years ago at a quilt workshop and have been close with ever since, is visiting the States this month and brought her knitting along.  We noticed that Vivian seemed transfixed by watching Uta knit -- was it the click of the needles, the light reflecting from them, or just the repetitive motion?  Whatever, she watched Uta intently all evening.

Uta promised to come back and teach Vivian to knit when she's old enough.  Uta learned when she was six, taught by her grandmother who rewound balls of yarn to include coins and little toys, an incentive to keep going.  What a great idea!  Only five and a half years till we can try it with another little girl.

My favorite things 34

My parents traveled frequently to South America and brought home various souvenirs that my siblings and I now own.  One of my favorites is this fragment of weaving from Peru, made by the Nasca people in about 1500 A.D.

It's not the oldest thing I own, but is by far the oldest textile, and is well preserved; the dry climate of the coastal deserts west of the Andes has kept lots of cloth in excellent condition over many centuries.  It has the traditional birds, steps and spirals of ancient Peruvian textiles, and its red and gold colors are still relatively bright.

After I'd owned this for many years, I bought a contemporary piece of embroidery that shares the pre-Columbian sensibility, a small piece by my very good friend Bette Levy.  It has four mask/faces painstakingly executed in couched metallic threads, onto a frayed linen background that looks a whole lot like the real antique.

(My apologies for the reflections and glare in all the images, because both textiles are framed under glass.  I know that glass protects fragile art, both from dust and flying objects and from UV light, but I always wish that textiles would be open so they can be better seen and appreciated.)

Of course the two pieces had to be hung together, and that's how they have been for a decade, keeping one another company across the centuries.

At the State Fair 2

Today was opening day at the Kentucky State Fair and I was in attendance, which I haven't done in several years.  Yes, I would go out three days in advance to judge the textiles, but not show up for the actual festivities.  This year reminded me of what I have been missing, and I loved my favorite pastimes of watching the border collies herd ducks, observing the animal judging and eating a pork chop sandwich.

Towards the end of a long day, I didn't have the stamina to look at every quilt on display, but I was surprised to see that they've added a new category since I used to enter.  This one is called "Quilt Top" and is described: "The quilt top may be hand and/or machine pieced, no serger.  This class is for a quilt top only -- the back will be displayed.  This class is to show the skill of the quilter in constructing a quilt top."

I guess this is the natural culmination of the quilt police mentality that has always reigned at state fairs and similar venues -- not only will the QP judge you on the number of quilt stitches per inch and whether you sewed your mitered corners shut, but now they want to see inside!  I think it's sadly appropriate that in this class you get to see more of the back than you do of the front.  After all, who cares about design, composition, color or artistic vision as long as those seams are beautifully pressed in the right direction?

Here's the first place quilt, of which I would have liked to see a lot more of the front and a lot less of the back:

And a couple of more in the same category, all beautifully pressed.

And here's one that you can probably deduce wasn't going to get a ribbon:

If you want my opinion, the skill of the quilter in constructing a quilt top is pretty damn evident from looking at the finished quilt.  When that one just above is quilted, for instance, you're going to detect lumps where the seam allowance flipped from one direction to another.  You don't need a separate category in which people are going to be obsessing over trimming the fraying edges off the back of the quilt (the big difference I could see between the blue ribbon winner and the also-rans).

Because what good is it to trim the fraying edges out of the inside of your quilt?  Other than winning a ribbon, that is?  I'd much rather the state fair encouraged people to obsess over important things like how the quilt looks when it's made up and hanging on the wall or lying on the bed.

At the State Fair 1

This is the third or fourth year that I have been asked to judge the textile entries in the Fine Arts and Crafts division of the Kentucky State Fair, and yesterday was my day to do the deed.  I'm not going to reveal who got the ribbons until later in the week, since the Fair doesn't officially open till Thursday, but I do have some thoughts to share.

One of the five textile categories is for "Traditional Textile Techniques, Non-Textile Materials."  It's a category that every year I think should bring forth exciting and exotic works of art, and every year doesn't.  No different this year.

When I contemplate this category I think of many memorable artworks that I've seen in other shows; here are several from the Surface Design Association show at Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center last year.  The show was called "Transgressing Traditions" and a lot of the entries would have fit nicely into my category.

Eszter Bornemisza, Next Page (detail) -- X-ray films sewed into a huge, spectacular tapestry

Emily Dvorin, Urban Ephemeral -- basket made of plastic tubing, cable ties, wire and other stuff

Roz Ritter, The Great Unknown (detail) -- hand embroidery on paper

Christine Holtz, Ten Second Rule (detail) -- junk food wrappers sewed together

There are a lot of fine fiber artists in our part of the world, many of whom like to enter the State Fair, and I don't know why there's this blank spot when it comes to non-textile materials.

Perhaps it's simply because fiber artists love working with fibers -- drawn to the material rather than to the technique.  Using one's knitting skills, say, with wire instead of yarn, may seem too conceptual or arid.  (Also it may hurt the hands.)

But I'd still love to see more work like this, to push the boundaries of what we think of as fiber art, to be a little more edgy, to take a few more risks.  Maybe next year.

What do you think?

My favorite things 33

Many years ago, the League of Women Voters saved my life.  I was back from three years living in Germany, but feeling like a stranger in the city we had returned to; instead of a young single woman working at an exciting career, I was a slightly less young married woman with an almost-two-year-old, no job and precious little to fill the day besides library books, grocery shopping and changing diapers.  Life seemed not particularly rewarding, it didn't look like that was going to change any time soon, and I was feeling desperate.

My friend Dot Ridings, called me up one day and ordered me to come to a League meeting next week.  The next thing I knew, I had a job doing the newsletter and was thrilled to be able to spend several hours each week with adults talking -- and doing something -- about affairs of substance.

Dot went on to a distinguished run as national president of the League of Women Voters and several other high-power posts in journalism and non-profits, but at the time she too was a young mother, on leave from her own career and searching for something meaningful to fill the gap.  She told me the League had saved her life, and if would save my life, and she was right.

The League became so important to me that after my second child was born, we detoured on the way from the hospital to visit the office before he even got home.  The first child remembers fondly being a brat on camera while I was being interviewed by a TV reporter about voting procedures.  Both children remember stopping off at the polls on the way to or from school so they could be lifted up to "help" me vote; sometimes the whole carpool got to "help."  The League had a little dummy voting machine, about the size of a ream of paper, that I would take to school for demonstrations as election days approached.

Eventually I held practically every job there was on the local board, including president, and when we had a major remodeling job, I rescued this sign from the dumpster, and now it hangs outside my office.  It had hung over the back door of the League building for decades, inviting women to come in and put their formidable, but so often underutilized, talents to work for the public good.  It's hard to remember how quickly society's expectations have changed, how within my own adulthood the majority of educated women did not have paid employment, did not have that many outlets for their energies and intelligence and ambition.

For so many other women, as well as myself, the League -- and other volunteer organizations focused on social change and good works -- was indeed an ENTRANCE to a world in which our skills and energies were developed and appreciated.  I treasure those years of volunteer work and the organization that was, and is, almost always on the right side of every issue.  Would that today's political scene still valued the informed participation of citizens in government.

What's the opposite of an artist?

So often a day late and a dollar short, I just saw among the "most read features" in the New York Times one called "What Is Your Opposite Job?"  Somebody thought to tap into the Labor Department's breakdown of the skills and tasks required for every job, and make an interactive feature where you can enter your job and learn the "polar opposite."

Not sure why you would want to know this, although the article suggests that "breaking a job into its component parts helps us look beyond the obvious and think clearly about the things that people actually do."

So I typed "quilter" into the box, and got no results.  Apparently nothing starting with Q is on the Labor Department's list of occupations.  Typed "sewing" in and chose "sewing machine operator" and when I selected that, my opposite job popped up -- chief executive!  Ouch!  So perhaps that explains why my corporate career stopped three levels away from CEO -- it was because my sewist's "ability to quickly and precisely adjust controls on a machine" is hardly ever used by CEOs.  (Maybe that's why my personal CEO always had to holler for his secretary to retrieve his voice mail.)

Intrigued, I tried "fine artist, including painter, sculptor and illustrator"  and "craft artist" -- and the opposite job for each of these was physicist.  Apparently "thinking creatively," "originality," "visualization" and "fluency of ideas," all skills that artists allegedly use the most, mean nothing in physics.  (Tell that to Einstein.)

But then I scrolled back to the top of the article and found these teasers:  "The opposite job of a kindergarten teacher is a physicist."  "The opposite job of a chief executive is an agricultural grader (whatever that is)."

So following the rules of logic, if this algorithm has any substance to it, you would expect that "fine artist," "craft artist" and "kindergarten teacher" all have the same skill set, and that "sewing machine operator" and "agricultural grader (whatever that is)" have the same skill set.  Hmmm.  Actually when you look at the skill lists, artists and teachers have zero items in common.  Kindergarten teachers, for instance, apparently have "geography" and "philosophy and theology" among their top ten skills, whereas you may have noticed most artists don't.

On the other hand, it gives me, and perhaps many other sewing machine operators, a certain degree of comfort to know that this is our polar opposite:

Form, Not Function 4 -- more machine quilting

More machine quilting that I liked in the FNF show --

Barbara Nepom, Emergent (detail below)

The contrast of diamond-shaped puffy unquilted areas with perfectly regular straight lines gave some excitement to a calm composition.

Erika Carter, Refresh IV (detail below)

Dense echo quilting in the background, sparser meanders on the flower forms made the flowers stand out.  The quilt won an honorable mention.

Deborah Hyde, Sam in Sunlight (detail below)

For the second year in a row, Deborah's clever technique of letting a portrait emerge from a traditional around-the-world piecing pattern wowed FNF viewers.  The composition alone is worthy of admiration, but more subtle is the use of quilting to complement both pictorial and geometric elements. Contour quilting emphasized the facial features and helped them emerge from the background, while geometric quilting lines flattened the other areas and made them more like a traditional quilt.

Several posts to go before I exhaust the possibilities in this excellent show.  It's on display at the Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany IN through September 16.

My favorite things 32

I received a Cuisinart for Christmas 1979.  Food processors were relatively new consumer items and I felt like a daring early adopter; didn't take long for the little machine to become an essential part of my life. It also didn't take long for the new models of the machine to start getting "upgraded" with features and gewgaws that I read about in ads and didn't think I would like.

By 1992 I had started to worry that my machine would some day die, and would I then have to buy one of these overpriced, over-accessorized models then on the market?  In particular, I had noticed that the new models were engineered to save me from myself, with convoluted "safety features" that would, for instance, not allow me to push new basil leaves into the machine while it was running, thus doubling the time to make a batch of pesto.

Fortunately my mother was downsizing, and had never loved her Cuisinart (the very same model as mine) enough to take it with her to the retirement community, so I called dibs on it.  Imagine my dismay when she and my sister phoned one afternoon to update me on their packing up the house, and they told me they had taken the Cuisinart to the Goodwill store that morning!  My shriek could have been heard in Virginia without the telephone.  They got in the car, went back to the Goodwill and ransomed the Cuisinart, which made its way to me.

Sure enough, my machine died one day, but I was able to haul Mom's machine out of the closet and set it to work.  I also ended up with two bowls, two tops, four blades and two pushers, which has forever made it easier to work without having to stop and wash up.

But the poor dear Cuisinart is showing its age.  I have no idea what I did to put that horrible burn/melt onto the pusher.  The bowls have ominous striations that look like the plastic wants to shred under stress; some of the little hooks and tabs that lock the bowl and top together have broken off; the spring sometimes sticks in the ON position instead of releasing when I turn the top; one of the plastic blades broke earlier this year; the cord has electrical tape wrapped around where it comes out of the base.  I figured this sort of thing happens in old age, but the Cuisinart, like me, would continue to soldier on despite aches and pains.

But last week something really bad happened.  I affixed the bowl to the base and the machine turned on, even though the bowl hadn't been turned into place to trip the switch.  The little red spot, right above the second I in Cuisinart, is a plastic membrane that protects a switch underneath; the vertical tube on the bowl has a spring-loaded piston that is supposed to depress whatever lies underneath the red membrane.  But it seems that the red membrane has disintegrated into cruddy bits, and that seems to be enough to render the switch permanently ON.

What to do now?  I made pesto the other night by inserting and pulling the plug out of the wall to turn the machine on and off.  Worked OK, but I feel vulnerable, especially when a spark flies upon pulling.  I guess life has really and truly run out for my wonderful machine.  I am too depressed even to start to research what is available in food processor technology these days; I'm afraid it will be just like in the late 80s, way too many protect-you-from-yourself features and way too expensive.  User testimonials welcome.

I do know one thing -- I have to figure out a way to incorporate this machine, or at least some of its parts, into my art.  It's been too close to my heart, too necessary to my life, for almost 40 years to just deposit it in the recycle bin.

QBL leftovers

The last time I taught a multi-day workshop I had the idea to ask my students to each give me a couple of leftover bits from their projects, and I sewed them together into a little souvenir quilt.  I enjoyed that exercise so much that I wanted to do it again at Quilting By the Lake.  But this time instead of asking for contributions, I decided to simply go around and raid the scrap bags at each table.

The last three days of the workshop were fine line piecing, but the scrap bags didn't acquire many bits with fine lines; I think many people packed up everything on their worktables to take home and finish their projects.  So most of the scraps I rescued were simply strips and pieces of solids.

I got a lot of piecing done during the workshop, and by the time I came home I had perhaps two-thirds of this quilt sewed, or in large modules ready to put together.  But scraps breed in the dark, you know, and whenever I thought I was about finished I would realize that there was still quite a bit of fabric there.

You can see how I added several long strips on various edges, expanding from the original center of about eight rectangular modules.

And you can also see how the quilt gained a final border when I found Jayne's scrap bag, which I had stowed in a separate place in my car and didn't come inside until yesterday.  Jayne had pitched a substantial chunk of maroon fabric with fine orange lines, which I cut up to make the dark borders.  There wasn't quite enough to go all the way around, so the top border is quite a bit more random than the other three, not to mention a half-inch narrower.

When I got the quilt this far I had to admit this was the end.  All I had left was a pile of truly miscellaneous scraps, mostly too narrow to accomplish much with.

I sorted through and found a small pile of pieces large enough to do something with, bagged them up neatly and put away.

And then -- yes, I did -- I threw the rest away!!  The old Kathy would have dumped them into a grocery bag and stashed it underneath the worktable, just as I kept three bags of scraps salvaged from other people's throwaways for two and a half years after my last trip to the Crow Barn.  The new Kathy pitched this whole pile (not without a few second thoughts....)

How-to -- the long version

Reading the New York Times this morning I came upon an article headlined "How to Go Makeup-Free to Beat the Heat."  Because "summer's heat and humidity make a face full of makeup feel oppressive.  But how to go without?"

Having decided to go makeup-free when I retired, I thought the answer would be pretty simple: just say no.

Silly me.  Turns out that in order to give up your makeup you might need to do all kinds of substitute routines or advance preparations.  Such as:

-  Laser treatments to remove your dark spots

-  Pulsed light treatments to implode your spider veins

-  Microneedling to shrink pores and build collagen.

-  Botox to shrink pores.

-  Rhofade cream to reduce red veins

-  Injections of hyaluronic acid filler under your eyes to puff out skin and eliminate baggy circles (aka "tear trough correction")

-  Chemical peel to take away excess melanin under your eyes and eliminate dark circles

-  Injection of "semipermanent fillers" to smooth wrinkles and camouflage bumps

-  Latisse serum to give you thicker, longer, darker eyelashes

-  Eyelash extensions  

-  Microblading, a tattoo procedure that simulates eyebrow hairs.

Of course, there are tradeoffs.  Many of these approaches require several sessions.  Some are painful.  Rhofade and Latisse require prescriptions.  And almost all of the treatments are expensive, whether done by a dermatologist, plastic surgeon or makeup artist.  

Having read this article for you, I will offer my own bottom line: just say no.  If you feel that your naked face looks too awful to go out in public, take it into your studio and make art.

Form, Not Function 3 -- machine quilting

Most of the quilts in Form, Not Function are machine quilted, which isn't really surprising (what surprised me was how many quilts had both machine and hand quilting).  But few of them had what I might describe as fancy quilting -- most of them simply had parallel lines of straight stitching, or perhaps two sets of parallel lines to make a grid.

I'm not one to poke fun at this method of quilting, since it's my default design, but I did think that some of the quilts in the show would have benefited from a little higher degree of complexity or pattern in the quilting.

The only really masterwork quilting in the show was done by Sandra Palmer Ciolino, whose very large quilt won an Award of Excellence presented by River City Fiber Artists.

Sandra Ciolino, Precaria #8: Crucible  (details below)

Sandy is well known for her wonderful free-motion quilting, in which she frequently changes designs as she moves from one part of the quilt to another.  And this quilt did not disappoint.

I also liked the machine quilting on Beth Schnellenberger's quilt, which won the Inspired by Nature Award, presented by Juanita Yeager.

Beth Schnellenberger, Scorched Earth (detail below)

More quilting in tomorrow's post....