Guilt and construction work

We're now starting the fifth week of construction work on two projects: rebuilding two decks and combining two small bathrooms into one glorious big one.  I think we're past the midpoint on both projects, but who knows?  I can still access my studio, but guys are sawing and pounding right outside the window, and more important, I need peace and quiet to decide what to work on next.

new tub in place -- everything else yet to come

So I've been going through piles of old newspapers, some of them dating back years, reading all the art reviews that I had set aside, clipping as needed, throwing away what's left.  Reading books.  Spending time with the new grandchild.

Most of the time, I'm not really needed here, but every so often there's a decision to be made.  Who knew it would take a half hour to determine how to install the lights and switches in the bathroom?  Should the light over the sink go on when you turn on the room lights or be on a separate switch?  Should the fan come on automatically with the room lights, or automatically with the shower light, or on its own switch?  Should the light be directly over the tub, or centered over the floor area between tub and shower?

Meanwhile, I'm reading about projects that many of my blogging friends are working on, and feeling guilty that I'm not doing anything useful.  I can't even concentrate enough to decide what my next project is going to be, let alone start staging up for it.  And the year-end tasks -- photo calendars, 55 Christmas ornaments, Christmas stockings for the new baby and maybe others -- are looming.

Maybe I won't do anything important till next year, and would that be so horrible?  Well no, except for the guilt....

But that's MY design....

Two interesting discussions on my email lists last week about quilters who were hurt, angry and/or confused about how other people responded to their work.

Quilter A wrote that she published a pattern for a quilt design that she has made several times; it's been selling well on Craftsy.  But a local quilt shop advertised her design as its block of the month, mentioning that they got the photo from Pinterest and made their own pattern from it "based on a quilt made by Quilter A in 2002."

Quilter A contacted the shop owner, said there is indeed a pattern, and would they please have their students buy the pattern if they want to make the block.  The shop owner refused and things got ugly.

Quilter B wrote that she just got an email from somebody who saw a photo of her quilt on Pinterest and fell in love with it.  What kind of fabric did she use?  "I intend to make it and would find it helpful if I had a starting point in my quest for the fabric."

Quilter B didn't know what to do next.  "I can't decide if I should laugh? be angry? or feel honored that she likes it that much?  I am at a loss for words."  A complicating factor: the Pinterest photo has been pinned and repinned many times over the last several years, usually identified as having been made by somebody other than Quilter B.

I was struck by the two unrelated tales and realized there is a wide gulf in expectations and understanding between people who make original designs and people who generally work from other people's designs.  And there's also a gulf among the people who make original designs!  Some of those people want to monetize their designs and techniques, through patterns, workshops, books, etc.  Some are happy to share their designs and techniques, even without getting money for it.  But other people are jealous of their designs and techniques, getting upset and offended if somebody wants to make copies or attempt the same technique or even take a picture.

Now think of the other group -- people who don't make original designs.  How are they to know which kind of person they're dealing with when they see a quilt they like?  Is this a quilt they're allowed and encouraged to copy, or one they mustn't touch with a ten-foot pole?  The presence of a dollar sign and the word "pattern" or "kit" is a clue, but not always.  And some people may not even realize that a quiltmaker regards her work as original art, rather than just a nice piece of handmade decor.  They may not even realize there is a certain etiquette regarding original designs, let alone understand the nuances of that etiquette.

Of course, the unindicted co-conspirator in both these stories is Pinterest, but we might equally blame Google images.  I bet we have all found our own work pinned to somebody else's board, or popping up when we google some other artist.  Often the work is not identified (it should be a felony to post photos with the remark "oh I forgot to note who made this") or is wrongly identified.  The only absolutely certain way to maintain control over the images of your work is to never photograph it yourself or take it out in public.

Since I am one of those people who am happy to share, and am not trying to make a living from my art, I am not qualified to chime in on Quilter A's dilemma above.  But I do have strong opinions about Quilter B's.  Some of the email list folks suggested that she ignore the request, or respond with some degree of asperity.  But I think it's better to be as gracious as possible.  I suggested that Quilter B say I can't remember what fabrics I used, it's been so long, and there's no pattern, since it's an original design, but you can certainly experiment with the concept, and good luck with it!

When faced with people who apparently don't understand the rules of etiquette that you and your pals live by, I think the best approach is to give them the benefit of the doubt, respond cheerfully, BUT ALSO educate them about that etiquette.  So Quilter B can tactfully mention in passing things like "this is an original design" and "I'd appreciate it if you would mention my name as inspiration."

For quilt artists who actively post their own work on blogs or Pinterest or other social media, I think it's also a good idea to be clear about your expectations.  If you truly don't want anybody to copy or riff on your designs, then you can watermark your photos and slap copyright notices and nasty language all over the place.  (Not that it's going to stop everybody, but your lawyer might be glad for the additional evidence if you end up in court.)  But if you are willing to share, then say so prominently and frequently.  When I did corporate communication for a living, all my publications had a note at the end reading "Copyright MY COMPANY.  You are welcome to reprint short quotations or extracts from this material with credit given to MY COMPANY."

I don't have a similar note on my blog, but I have said many times in describing my designs and techniques that I am happy to have you use my ideas and suggestions.  Go ahead and make a quilt that uses my techniques or looks like my quilt (just don't enter it in a big show as your own original design), but I hope you will make it three times, because by then it will stop looking like a Kathy quilt and start looking like  your quilt.  Mention my name as your inspiration if you are so inclined; send me a picture so I can see what you did and I can be proud of you.

Here's a bunch of quilts from a workshop I just taught in Boston.  They all sort of look like "Kathy quilts" but already they have moved on to reflect their maker's personality.

Prayer flags -- good or bad?

The Quiltart list has been abuzz with discussion of prayer flags, a discussion that I kind of started.  Somebody had posted to the list about a project having to do with prayer flags, which elicited a few comments.  But then I happened to be browsing in one of the online fiber art shops and discovered a bunch of prayer-flag things for sale -- magazines, books, kits to help you make prayer flags.  Apparently one of the quilting magazines had sponsored a challenge in which readers had to make prayer flags.  There's even a blog devoted to a "prayer flag project."  And I was mystified.

I wrote back to the list:  "So what's with the prayer flags?  ... Is there a sudden nationwide Great Awakening of Buddhism?  Or is this some kind of trendy appropriation of some other culture's sacred objects because they're small, cute and easy to make?  Next year will everybody be making (and buying kits for) little slips of paper to leave between the stones at the Wailing Wall?"

In the ensuing discussion, somebody commented that she asked several of her Buddhist friends whether they were offended by non-Buddhists making prayer flags, and the answer was no.  In fact, she wrote, "the spreading of beauty, and the dialogue that may be generated by the creation of a prayer flag, would be a positive impact."

I think that's a remarkably generous response from members of a group whose religious artifacts have been hijacked.  I'm not sure we'd see similar tolerance if, for instance, people from other cultures  -- or even from our own culture -- appropriated Christian symbols and practices.  Heck, we already haven't -- look at the outraged response when Chris Ofili made Madonnas supported on feet of elephant dung or when Andres Serrano photographed a crucifix submerged in a bottle of urine.  And that happened even though arguably the artists were treating the religious symbols with respect.

Andres Serrano, Piss Christ

Chris Ofili, The Holy Virgin Mary



















Another post to the Quiltart list said, "It never occurred to me that a sacred image, used in a reverential, thoughtful way could ever be offensive."  Obviously it can (Serrano describes himself as a devout Catholic but his work has been destroyed several times by people who said they were offended by it), but that's the subject for another discussion.  My question is whether the prayer flags are actually being used in a reverential, thoughtful way.

But avoiding offense is only one reason to be cautious when appropriating the symbols and sacred things of another culture.  The other reason is that it's often a sign of artistic bankruptcy.

When an artist uses a preexisting symbol, image or concept in his own work, it should be for a reason.  If you use something from your own cultural heritage -- let's say, for instance, a quilt -- it's generally because you're wanting to comment on how that heritage has affected you, how it has changed or not, or how it relates to today's society.  If you use something from somebody else's heritage, viewers will justifiably wonder why you have chosen it as part of your message.

That's my problem with a lot of the mixed media work seen in the craft magazines, especially in theme challenges.  When readers are asked to make prayer flags or shrines, or to make collages using birds or 1930s luggage labels, they are in fact being asked to adopt images and practices that mean nothing to them.  And when you make art based on arbitrary images and concepts that mean nothing to you, how can it be good art?

Years ago there was an equally spirited discussion on the Quiltart list about people who make art with trendy images such as mushrooms, butterflies, frogs or whatever the tchotchke du jour happens to be.  People commented that there's nothing wrong with that if you really like mushrooms, butterflies, etc. I suggested at the time that if a student of mine showed up wanting to make art with butterflies I would probably ask her:  How long have you been using butterflies in your art?  What does the butterfly mean?  Is the butterfly you?  What's this butterfly doing?  Is this artwork optimistic, pessimistic, fatalistic, cheerful, sad, or what?  Has your treatment of the butterfly changed since you have been using it?

I suggested that answering these questions (or not) would quickly separate the artist who is validly using the butterfly from the dilettante who has just grabbed up on the cutesy little doodad of the moment. But meanwhile I'm skeptical of the prayer flags, and unhappy with the entrepreneurs who encourage people to use them in faux art and sell kits to help with same.

Back in school -- originality

Here's the paper I wrote recently for my art history class:

After spending a day reading about originality, I reflect on Shakespeare's title/phrase: "Much Ado About Nothing."  The critics point out that art (or by extension, any aspect of thought or science) comes either from emulating existing knowledge or practice, or from some alteration or re-direction of existing knowledge or practice.  Or perhaps both.

Either the artist works from his own self-image, his own feelings, his own experience, or he channels the ancients, reworking communal themes and images.  Or perhaps both.

This is hard to argue with.  What are my other choices?

First I reflect on the possibility that anybody can work entirely from his own self.  Once you get to kindergarten, you have already internalized a body of knowledge that comes from others.  By age five you have learned a language, and a sub-language that marks your ethnic origins and your socioeconomic status.  You have learned a family history, perhaps complex: sisters, half-sisters, stepsisters; relatives by blood vs. those by marriage; which ones you like, which ones you stay far away from.

By age five you have learned a culture.  Within your family, you know that everybody comes to the table at dinnertime, or gathers around the TV, or fends for himself; that you go to church on Sunday or root for Michigan State; that you read books or have dogs or wash the car every weekend.  Within your community, you already know whether people in the neighborhood are friendly with one another and are welcome in each other's homes; whether they go to work faithfully, are unemployed, or play tennis every day; whether they demand that their children do homework and get good grades; whether they respect or fear the police.

If you were to drop out of kindergarten and move to a cave, you would still be marked with those early exposures to culture and history, and no matter how religiously you were to pursue artistic originality, you could never escape those memes.  And every year that you stick with the program, learning more facts about your history and becoming more nuanced in your culture, reduces the possibilities that you could be totally original as an artist.

If freedom from history and culture is the hallmark of the "modern" artist, then it seems that the only true "modern" artists are those who were raised by wolves or those who are profoundly retarded.  Perhaps the most well-known example is the late Judith Scott, who was deaf and mute and had Down syndrome, and made "art" by obsessively wrapping yarn and fabric strips into bundles.  She was embraced by the art world as an outsider artist and her work sold for as much as $15,000 and is found in the permanent collections of many prominent museums.

Judith Scott

The rest of us have no choice but to bring our culture and history to our artmaking.

If nobody comes to the studio without history and culture, then where can true originality come from?  Artists can copy others and/or, having come up with some idea that works, copy and repeat themselves.  This is no different than it was 500 years ago, but today, artists are made to feel inferior if they are not "original," whatever that means.

One of the nastiest remarks one can make about art is that it's "derivative."  The frequent response, it seems to me, is to say "I didn't want to be original, so there."  Call it appropriation, call it sampling, call it quotation -- it's a preemptive defense against accusations of lack of originality.

In the end, I believe artists must walk a fine line between being influenced by their surroundings, their culture, their history (otherwise they would be brain dead) and outright plagiarism.  Too far over the line and they may find themselves in court, but currently it's a lot more difficult to be found guilty in the public opinion of the art world.

Andy Warhol, Flowers, 1964 -- Patricia Caulfield, who made the original photo, sued and won a settlement

Richard Prince, Canal Zone (right) -- Patrick Cariou, who made the original photo (left), sued and won in federal court; all of Prince's images had to be destroyed

Shepard Fairey, Hope -- Mannie Garcia, who made the original photo, sued and won a settlement; Fairey pled guilty to contempt of court in the case and was fined

The challenge of challenges 7

This series of posts on challenges has finally made its way full circle back to where it started: my response to a new SAQA show that will be called "Text Messages."

SAQA has been particularly energetic in the last year or so in organizing theme shows that will travel around the country and be documented in catalogs.  I think this is an excellent idea and at least in my book, the most valuable service the organization provides to its members.  I have read many calls for entries for these shows and decided not to participate.

For instance, the "Beyond Comfort" exhibit had to do with "new technologies, techniques and materials."  Not my thing.  "Layers of Memory" had to do with memory, a subject I had worked with in 2001 and 2002 (my company had offices in the World Trade Center and I spent a lot of time in that building, so my response to its destruction had a lot to do with my own memories) but which I was no longer actively exploring.  "Art Meets Science" and "A Sense of Humor" didn't strike any chords.  And several other shows just didn't relate to what I was interested in.

But "Text Messages" is a subject that calls out to me in 144-point boldface all caps.  I could probably write a book about my affinity with text as a visual artist -- and now that I mention it, maybe I will write about it for you in the coming weeks.  For now, let me say that text, in the form of letterforms and alphabets, has been a huge element in my work for at least a decade.

So the thought of making quilts with "actual or implied writing" struck so close to my heart that I had to do something to enter this show.  I wrote last month about quilt #1, which I began several years ago and hope to finish in the next couple of weeks.  Now I've almost finished quilt #2.

I came to be the owner of a large piece of fabric covered with black printing on white background.  I think it had been a curtain in its first career, because of the hems and the permanently embedded creases, and I have no recollection of how it came to me.  The printing was attractive but apparently the writing was commissioned from terminally stupid Valley Girls.  So if I were to ever use the fabric, I'd have to cut it into small enough pieces that the words wouldn't be embarrassing.

Well, not to worry -- my current "Crazed" series of quilts, now up to #20, uses fabric cut into small pieces, generally no larger than postage stamps.  I have been wanting to do more with pieced fine lines cut from striped fabric.  I have used striped lines -- actually they look more like dotted lines when they're less than an eighth-inch wide -- in five quilts so far, and don't think I've even scratched the surface yet.

So it was totally comfortable to make a quilt using the printed text as background and striped fabrics as pieced-in lines.  The fact that it met the criteria for the SAQA show was almost incidental.  Here's a detail shot:

Crazed 20: Print on the Dotted Line

The challenge of challenges 6

Last year I was intrigued by another challenge: SAQA was sponsoring a theme show called Seasonal Palette.  For this show, you submitted a proposal, and if accepted, you would make a quilt to specific size requirements.  The proposal had to name which of the four seasons you wanted to depict, and what color palette you would use.

The instant I read about this challenge I wanted to respond, and I knew exactly what I wanted to make.

I had traveled to Antarctica earlier that year and came back with my head spinning with ice images.  I even wrote in my blog when I got home about how vacations often inspire big steps forward in an artist's work.  I wrote, "I'm going to contemplate ice and what aspect of it might be intriguing enough to work with."

Truth be told, I didn't contemplate it all that much in the months ahead as I got busy making other things.  But when the Seasonal Palette challenge came along, the ice quilt suddenly jumped from my remote to-do list onto my immediate to-do list.  And I knew what it was going to look like: it would be one of my Fault Lines series, in which fine pieced lines fracture the surface -- because that's what icebergs look like, all fractured and beat up.  The surface would be white and blue; the fine pieced lines would be black or gray prints to represent the glacial dirt that surprisingly marks even the whitest ice.

When my proposal was accepted for the show, the quilt practically made itself, because it had sprung fully formed from my existing work.

Big Ice, 32 x 78", 2012


My rule about challenges had produced its first success: I had made a quilt that was 100% comfortable within my existing series, and it took that series forward.

The challenge of challenges 5

After I realized how I had used challenges as a crutch for many years, I soured on them.  The dog would still salivate when the bell was rung, but I was able to restrain it from biting.  I knew that challenges would be the quilting equivalent of daily sudoku -- fun, intellectually stimulating, but in the end, irrelevant to the art I felt I should be making, my "real" art.

I made a rule: I would respond to a challenge or a theme show only if I could make work that was already on my to-do list.  In other words, it would have to be a natural extension of an existing body of work, and explore something that I hadn't already explored, or that I wanted to explore further.

The first occasion I had to live by my new rule came in 2008.  My small quilt group had a show that was going to be called "At the River's Edge" and I couldn't think of anything I'd made that would fit the theme.  My most recent work included this piece:

One day as I was whining to the group how I had no river quilts, no ideas, and precious little time before the show, somebody joked that if I was really desperate I could flip the quilt 90 degrees and call the blue a river.

Well!  Maybe not a joke after all!

I did flip the quilt and named it Low Water.  I recalled that the red-brown area of the quilt had been suggesting parched, cracked, dried-up dirt all along and it wasn't a stretch to think of the blue as water.

Crazed 6: Low Water, 34 x 45", 2008

















That immediately prompted a companion piece, which I named Flood Stage.  Here the river is almost escaping its bounds, lapping enthusiastically against the bricks.  I knew exactly how I wanted to make this quilt, because I had already resolved that in the future I wanted to use different colors of similar value, and try using small print fabrics as my fine lines (to date, I had only used solids).

Crazed 7: Flood Stage, 36 x 57", 2008



















I loved both quilts, and was pleased that the theme show made them happen.  And I felt so happy that I hadn't spent months making quilts that didn't fit into my current series.

A little help for my friend

Some time ago the German magazine "Patchwork Professional" had a feature about the Color Improvisations show that has been touring Europe for the last two years.  I was asked to provide a tutorial article on the fine-line piecing technique used in my quilts in that show.

Whenever you write a tutorial you're casting your bread upon the waters, with faith that somebody out there will read it and with any luck, find it interesting and/or helpful.  But in most cases, if that happens, you don't know it.  So it's always a pleasure to learn that somebody did read and enjoy.

Last week I was delighted to hear from Regine Daldrup, a German quilter.  She said that this spring she visited the Lyonel Feininger Museum in Quedlinburg, near Leipzig.  "I love his kind of painting very much," she wrote.  "Thinking about how to quilt in a similar way I remembered your fine lines and now I want to show you my quilt ala Feininger."

Here's Regine's quilt:

I have seen and admired Feininger's work in many museums but had never identified any parallels in my own work.  After getting Regine's email I did an image search and reminded myself of his characteristic style.  Sure enough, he frequently fractures his surfaces with diagonal facets and I could see why fine lines would be a good way to represent his work in fabric.

 Lyonel Feininger, Still Day on the Sea, 1929

Lyonel Feininger, Harbor Mole, 1913

Lyonel Feininger, Cathedral, 1919















I think Regine did a great job of capturing the famous artist's feeling while still producing a work that is very much a quilt.  I'm happy to have provided a bit of her inspiration.

The challenge of challenges 4

When I was a novice quilter I loved challenges, for a couple of reasons.  First, I like assignments and rules and constraints; I enjoy the intellectual challenge of working within bounds.  I also like the way that higher levels of computer games get more difficult.  When I write poetry I like to make it rhyme and fit within traditional forms rather than just flop along free-form.  And I really love taking standardized tests.  I know that makes me weird, but so be it.

Second and perhaps more telling, I often found it it easier to work on an assignment than to come up with ideas on my own.  As I recollect my early days as a serious quilter, what comes to mind is how I decided what to make.

Mostly I got ideas from quilts I'd seen in books and magazines.  I never copied them exactly, but I would use them as prompts.  In truth, I had lots of ideas floating around in my head, but I didn't know how to access them except with outside stimuli such as seeing somebody else's work or the rules of a challenge.

With such help, I would snag an idea, formulate a plan, and make a nice quilt.  When it was finished, I was back to zero, searching/waiting for the next idea, which came from somewhere outside.  Challenges were welcome, because they would often prompt the next quilt.

In retrospect, I recognize this as a highly inefficient and uncreative modus operandi.  In retrospect, I think the turning point in my artistic development came when I started looking for ideas not in the wide universe but within my own history, my own body of work.  At a point, the quilts started talking to me.  They told me what questions they had, still unanswered, and asked me to go back and work on unfinished business.

In effect, my work had started posing its own challenges.

The challenge of challenges 3

I don't have good photographs to illustrate my very early experience with challenges and theme shows, but many of them were big helps to my artistic progress.  For instance, a challenge was my first entree into having my work displayed in public.  At the time (early 1990s) I had just discovered quilt shows and learned that you generally had to have photographs made for jurying.  This was more than I could cope with, but when my local fabric store decided to sponsor a fabric challenge with our local quilt show, I was delighted to realize that I didn't have to submit photos, just bring the quilt to the store at the appointed time.

You would buy a half yard of the theme fabric and it had to constitute at least 50% of the face of the finished quilt.  The first year I participated I won a judge's choice award (the prize: $0 and a cute little certificate, which I framed and hung in the bathroom for some years until its next paint job).  The third year, my quilt was really fine -- it still hangs in my living room.  (Some day I should resew the sleeve so the top edge isn't wavy.)

Spiral Nebula

I also participated in several challenges on the Quiltart list, which was one of the first and most vibrant of the online communities for quilts as art.  Our shows were virtual (which made me learn how to con my children into taking digital photos for me, since I didn't have a digital camera at the time).

This challenge was to illustrate an aphorism from Ben Franklin.  I like the quilt, but it was truly one-off.  It's one of only two or three representational quilts I've ever made, and the only element that has any relationship to anything else I've ever done was the use of words printed from my collection of antique wood type.  The cow came from a cheater cloth but Tim was entirely my own design; since I can't draw I was particularly proud of how he came out.  The cow's ear and tail are three-dimensional.

Ben on Tim

The quilt reads:  Tim was so learned, that he could name a horse in nine languages.  So ignorant, that he bought a cow to ride on.

the nine words for horse: hast, cheval, kon, pferd, hevonen, hest, equus, paard, caballo

Here's another one from the Quiltart list.  The challenge was to use only pink, black and white.  (I even dispensed with the white.)  I had been wanting to make a quilt with narrow pieced stripes, and when the challenge was announced I decided I might as well make it in pink and black instead of any two other colors.  The quilt subsequently was shown in an exhibit at a brick-and-mortar museum and won a prize.

Landscape 1: Pink on Black














You may notice a new twist in my description of how this last quilt came to be: for the first time, I responded to a challenge with something that was already on my to-do list.  I was beginning to decide that in a challenge, I shouldn't stray too far from my preexisting body of work.  I think that was a critical step in my journey as an artist, and I'll write more about that next week.




Update: I've linked this post to Nina-Marie Sayre's blog -- visit her to see what other fiber artists are up to this week.

The challenge of challenges 2

For many years the American Quilter's Society has sponsored an annual contest, "New Twists on an Old Favorite," in which they specify a traditional quilt block and invite people to do variations.  In 1999, the first year I participated, I made a quilt from the Kaleidoscope block.

KALEIDOSCOPE

The Hubble Space Kaleidoscope, 1999

I apologize for the lousy image, digitized from a slide.  The black-on-black is difficult to photograph and some day I should probably reshoot it.  Every piece of fabric is a print with a black background; it's enhanced with lots of shiny threads as quilting and couching, and a bunch of subtle embellishments such as beads and turquoise bits.

 It was magnificent, one of the best five quilts I've ever made.  I entered the contest with high hopes, but the quilt wasn't accepted.  (When I saw the exhibit of quilts that were accepted, I was annoyed.  About half the quilts were indeed twists on the traditional Kaleidoscope block, but the other half weren't.  Instead they were 10-segment designs resembling the patterns you see in a kaleidoscope.  Yes, they both have the K-word in common, but only half fit the contest rules.)

I was unhappy, but fortunately the rejection came a couple of days before the deadline to enter the regular AQS show in Paducah, so I sent my slides off to that bunch of jurors.  The quilt was accepted and won a $1,000 prize.

BEAR PAW

The next year, the traditional block in the AQS contest was Bear Paw.  I liked my last year's black-on-black "space quilt" so much that I decided to make another space quilt for the contest.  Again, I found lots of prints with black backgrounds and enhanced them with metallic threads in quilting and couching.  But as the quilt neared completion I got cold feet.  I convinced myself that either this quilt wouldn't be accepted, or if it was, the exhibit would be tainted as it had been the previous year with quilts that didn't even follow the rules.  So I didn't enter.  However, the quilt was pretty damn spectacular.

Ursa Major, 2000

Although my record in the exhibit was now 0 for 2, I had two magnificent quilts to show for my efforts.

Apparently not remembering the first part of that sentence, the following year the block was Seven Sisters and I made a third space quilt.  Again, every fabric in the quilt was on a black background.  But reason prevailed after I had finished the top but not started quilting it.  At that point I decided that the New Twist contest was not for me.

I had only been rejected once, but I had been closely watching the quilts that were accepted and decided that the jurors' ideas of what fit in their show was different from my ideas of what I wanted to make.  I suspect this assessment was half truth, half rationalization.  But in any case, I couldn't summon up the energy to finish the third space quilt in time for the deadline.  Nor have I finished it since, even though I think it had promise.

I think I had realized that what I could do and what I should do were two different things.

The challenge of challenges 1

A popular trope in the quilt/art world is to organize challenge or theme projects.  Participants must submit quilts that fit a given theme, a given size or shape, a given color scheme, a given fabric, a given subject, or combinations and permutations of the above.  Such projects are often fun for all concerned.  Participants often find that making work in response to a challenge sparks their creativity and fosters cameraderie.  Viewers often enjoy the exhibit because it's fun to see how different people responded to the same rules.  Organizers often find that the exhibit is attractive and easy to hang, especially with a size or shape constraint.

I used to love challenge projects, and participated in many of them.

In 1997 Quilter's Newsletter Magazine sponsored an exhibit called "Rhapsody of Roses."  The rule: you had to have at least one rose on the quilt.  I was determined to enter the contest, but worried about how my work would stack up against the others to be juried in.  I anticipated miles and miles of beautiful roses, and I just don't do beautiful.  So I decided to be in contrast to the beautiful roses, and focus on thorns.

Rose Among Thorns, 1997

I drew three different thorn blocks on the computer and printed them out for paper foundation piecing.  The blocks were irregular quadrilaterals, which will tesselate to cover the surface.  The colors aren't very true in this photo -- digitized from the original slide -- but the thorns were all gray or brown, against green backgrounds.  One pink rose lurked in the bottom corner of the quilt.

I was thrilled to get into the exhibit, and mystified to win a prize for "Best Interpretation of Theme."  I still don't understand whether the award came from the quilt or the artist statement, in which I said something sappy about the rose that struggles against adversity being sweeter or more beautiful than the one that has no troubles.

Some time in the mid-90s I took a workshop with Margaret Miller, a quiltmaker whose work I have always admired because she provides plans rather than patterns; no two students will ever make the same quilt under her guidance.  After the great success of her first plan, "Strips That Sizzle," she was experimenting with a new plan, "Easy Pieces," in which you construct a block out of several wedge-shaped strips, then combine blocks in different patterns.  At the end of the workshop she invited us to make quilts using this plan and send her photos that she could use in a book.

I made a couple of quilts, one of which did appear in the book.  This was a breakthrough project for me, the first time I had ever quilted a piece of this size (about twin-bed size).

Blue Ridge Mountains (detail below)

Later this week I'll tell you about some other challenge quilts I made.

 

Pennies from heaven, aka creativity

This week our local fiber and textile arts group heard a presentation on creativity by Dr. Annette Allen, a poet and professor of humanities at the University of Louisville who has studied creativity in many different artistic disciplines.

Many of her comments struck chords with me and other listeners, since we have all wrestled with the issues of how and why we make things and why some times it's easier than others.  I was taken by her remarks that creativity has been a subject for argument for millenia.

Plato thought that creativity or inspiration came from outside the individual -- from a muse or a divine power.  He sometimes described this as "divine madness" and believed that works of art are unpredictable.

By contrast, Aristotle thought creativity or art was mainly a case of craft at work.  Creation is a straightforward process of making a plan and then executing it upon some material.  It's a process that can be explained in terms of psychology and nature.

Rembrandt, Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer, 1653

Dr. Allen asked us which camp we fell into, and the group consensus seemed to be somewhere in between. We believed that there is often a spark of inspiration that comes from somewhere outside ourselves, but that you do have to sit there and do the work.

I think I'm way more toward the Aristotelian end of the spectrum.  I may have had one or two Platonic moments when inspiration struck, seemingly from the blue.  But upon closer examination, in retrospect I realize that the "inspiration" was just a happy combination of subjects I'd already been thinking about, techniques I'd already been exploring, skills I'd already developed.  Then one day, it all came together.

It seemed like magic, or divine madness, or whatever you want to call it, but never would have happened without the groundwork.

I've often thought that luck, like divine madness, is overrated.  If the pennies start falling from heaven, are you going to be standing there with a bucket, or are you going to be inside lying on the couch watching TV?

The self-reflexive feedback loop

Last week the New York Times reviewed an installation at the Museum of Modern Art in which a Brazilian artist, Carlito Carvalhosa, constructed a walk-through spiral by hanging 60-foot tall panels of fabric from the ceiling to the floor.  The reviewer wasn't wild about the installation -- thought it was 30 years behind the times -- but I was intrigued on two counts.

photo -- New York Times

First, it's always nice when a Real Artist uses fabric and still gets taken seriously by the art establishment.

Second, I was taken by this paragraph, which gave me much to think about:

"It is worth noting too that the self-reflexive feedback loop is essential to modern art. Painting from Manet to Pollock makes us think about painting. Sculpture from Rodin to Smithson makes us think about the space of sculpture. In Op Art we become hyperaware of the act of seeing. Conceptualism makes us think about thinking. A lot of art today involving video and other new technologies makes us more conscious of our own consciousness."

So if modern art requires self-reflexive feedback, how does fiber art qualify?  Apparently fiber art needs to make us think about the nature of fiber.  To me, that means it drapes, it frays, it sags, it slithers on the bias, it fades, it feels smooth (or not) -- all the qualities that we love and celebrate but sometimes have a hard time controlling to achieve our artistic vision.  And if we choose to work in the quilt format, it should make us think about the quilt tradition, even if we go far beyond it.

But that makes me think about some fiber artists who seem to want to escape the nature of fiber.  They stretch their work flat, make it stiff with acrylic mediums, paint on it as if it were a board or canvas, try to make it do things it doesn't want to do.  They call their work "painting" or "tapestry" or some word that technically just isn't accurate.  Sometimes I look at work in shows and wonder why the artist wanted to render it as a quilt instead of as a painting, a print or a photograph, because there doesn't seem to be any reverence for or even much knowledge of the quilt tradition, and the image would probably be sharper and clearer if it were put on paper or canvas. 

When I first decided that my work qualified as Art, I explained my decision to make quilts rather than other forms as the realization that I was getting on in years and didn't have time to learn a new medium or technique, so had to stick with what I already knew.  Now I am more deliberate in thinking about what I make, why I choose to make it in fabric, and how that decision affects what I make (the feedback loop, right there). 

It's puzzling -- but what's the fun of making art if it doesn't give you something to think about while you work?

Getting past the workshop

I have visited and written reviews of four fiber art shows in the last couple of weeks, and in one of them I committed a terrible gaffe.  Don't go looking back and trying to identify it, because I apologized to the person I maligned and took the offending remarks down.  But some time has passed, and I want to revisit the issue.

One of the pieces I described as "from a Famous Quilter workshop," but went on to say that I liked the work a lot.  The artist wrote me and said that yes, she had indeed attended a Famous Quilter workshop, but hadn't made this piece in the workshop; rather this was her original work from a later date.

I was really wrong to say the piece was "from a Famous Quilter workshop," because I had no knowledge of when or how it was made.  The reason I made the remark was that it had several of the hallmarks of the FQ: several specific techniques, a certain use of stitching, a certain supply list.  I should have been more careful in my words. 

But if this particular piece wasn't made in the FQ workshop, and it still looked like it had been, is there really a qualitative difference?  If the FQ teaches five things, and somebody's work continues to exhibit those five things, doesn't the FQ influence still cast a powerful shadow?   To what extent should this bother the workshop participant, or those who view her work, or those who might want to bar her from exhibiting that work?

I speak to you as a workshop junkie.  I have spent 16 weeks studying at the Crow Barn over the last several years, 15 of those with Nancy Crow.  Nancy has had a huge influence on me, I admire her work, and some of the things I made in my early times with  her could probably be identified by cognoscenti as derivative.  But I think that in more recent years -- and after I graduated from workshops with class assignments to self-directed "master classes" -- I've moved past the point of taking ideas from Nancy, because my own ideas have developed to the point where they can stand alone.

There's nothing wrong with taking workshops from Famous Quilters.  Among other things, it helps support the people whose work you admire, and of course you learn a thing or two and have fun for several days.  But I think if you're a serious quilter you want to learn to make your own work rather than just riff off the style and techniques of somebody else.  The challenge of workshops is first, while you're there, to learn as much as you can.  And second, after you come home, to analyze what you intend to incorporate from that workshop into your original work, and how much you need to change to make it your own.

This doesn't happen overnight.  The first couple of pieces you make after you come home are still going to look derivative, but if there are elements you like, keep going.  If you are rigorous in evaluating your own work, and keep asking yourself  "am I making this mine, or is it still the FQ lookalike?" you should soon move beyond the actual workshop quilt, and then beyond the virtual workshop quilt, to the truly original quilt.  Sometimes that means you have to quit doing something you really liked, or at least transmogrify it to something different.  But it's usually worth it.

Here's an example, from one of the first Nancy Crow workshops I ever took, in the fall of 2003.  This one was called Sets and Variables II and as you can see, work by many different participants (one photo per participant) all looked very similar.  I've kept up with many of those people, and can testify that we've mostly stopped looking like Nancy wannabes and developed our own styles.

The original: a small unfinished piece by Nancy Crow.

Here's my piece.  The rest are from others in the class.  Don't we all look a lot alike?

Disaster art

I wrote yesterday about my "elevator speech," a very brief commentary about my quilt "Regatta."  I referred to a cheerful scene, "But the threads holding it all together are so skinny, so delicate. What if there is an earthquake or a big storm, or the power plant blows up?"

Postage 1: Regatta  (detail) 

Sandy in the UK responded, "I am wondering about the dating aspect of the comments about current events. Were these things on your mind when you made the piece?  Not to be too picky I hope, but it might be better to just go on from mentioning the delicate strings to the comments in the second paragraph about the fragility of life.  People will make their own connections."

First, Sandy's question.  Obviously I wasn't thinking about the earthquake in Japan when I made the piece three years ago.  And I wasn't specifically thinking about disasters at all when I made it and others in my "postage stamp" series.  But I was specifically thinking of disasters when I did another body of work at the same time.

Crazed 3: Red Tide

My "Crazed" and "Fault Lines" series both deal explicitly with disaster, whether actual or potential.  "Fault Lines" even look like geological disruption and instability, so they probably go more toward the earthquake sector of the disaster universe.  I've given subtitles to my "Crazed" quilts, referencing a lot of other types of disasters. 

Fault Lines 1

One day I was discussing art with a friend and remarked that I was working in two parallel and unrelated bodies of work.  She laughed at me and said "They're all the same!"  And of course, the second she pointed it out I realized that both the pieced quilts and the postage stamp grids are made of many, many tiny bits held together by fragile bonds, an apt metaphor for the state of our world.

Don't you feel stupid when you realize the existence of something that was there all along?  When you belatedly bring something important out of your subconscious and put a name to it?  So is it intellectually dishonest to ascribe a meaning to a piece of art that at the time you made it, wasn't yet articulated?  I hope not, because they they'd have to lock me up.  I've often made quilts whose real meaning didn't surface until late in the making, or even a while afterwards.  Occasionally I've held off giving them names while awaiting clarity in my own mind.

But once I realized that all my recent work has been about disaster and disorder and our inadequate attempts to keep things under control, it brought me to a new plateau of intellectual smugness.  When you worry about these kind of things current events are always confirming your dark thoughts.  Before the Japan quake there were plenty of earthquakes (Haiti, Chile, NZ) and big storms (Katrina) and power plant accidents (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl).  There will be another disaster of some sort in the future, whether environmental, economic or otherwise, and I may very well have already made a quilt that already deals with it.

Postage 5: Epidemic  (detail)

Was it heavy-handed to include the specific references to Japan in my elevator speech?  Possibly.  Maybe people would make their own connections, as Sandy suggests.  But what the heck -- why take a chance?  There's a time and place for subtlety, and I'm not sure thirty seconds in an elevator is it.

Are quilting magazines counterproductive?

I’ve embarked on a train of thought this week that started with a discussion of Quilting Arts magazine. (Earlier posts here and here, or just scroll down and read the last two essays in between the pictures.) Several of the commenters to yesterday's post raised questions that propel my train farther down the track.

Diane wrote, in part, “I get your concern that it's all too easy to be diverted from focus on art by the appeal of new gadgets and techniques. But you seem to forget that what might be distracting to you might be exactly what someone else needs to take her art in the direction she wants. Maybe that new technique is exactly the way she can put her artistic vision onto fabric.”

Diane, I think your comments reflect on the state of “art quilts” today. That heading encompasses people everywhere from serious artists to total newbies.

It’s like a pyramid. At the bottom are a lot of people who don’t even think in terms of artistic vision or taking their art in a certain direction; they’re happy just to make nice things. As Leigh put it, “I strongly suspect that most people don’t have any ideas they are looking to express. They just want to have the latest and greatest and make a Cute Project for their friends to tell them how ‘Creative’ they are.”

These are the people who buy patterns, make quilts described in magazines and books, enjoy a different kind of technique and project every month, and buy the new toys and products. They may say they’re interested in “art quilts,” but in practice, there’s a lot of quilt and not very much art. These people pay the bills for the huge quilting industry, which to a degree supports the habit for all of us. It’s this huge audience that publishers have to cater to, if they want to stay in business.

At the tip of the pyramid are serious artists who may or may not earn a living from their work, but certainly approach it like a business, working hard and trying to make the best possible art they can. This small audience is one that publishers cannot afford to cater to. There just aren’t enough of us to buy the magazines and books that we like.

In the middle, however, are a lot of people in transition. They may have entered the art quilt world as beginners, but now they are wanting to progress toward more original and creative ways of working. If they’re lucky, they’ll find a good teacher who can help them find their sea legs and move ahead. But many will look toward books and magazines, especially Quilting Arts, for guidance.

Here's a cute little quilt I made before I knew there was such as thing as artistic vision.  You can learn how to make it too, from a really good book.

And this is where I have concerns about the technique- and product-oriented focus of some magazines -- it’s so easy to keep thinking about technique and never get around to the design and meaning. Does this act as an enabler, subtly encouraging people to stay on the lower levels of the pyramid, making a new nice thing every month, instead of urging them to move upward and develop their artistic vision through focus?

Yes, a new technique can often energize and transform somebody’s whole work, and that holds true both for hobbyists and serious artists. That’s exciting when it happens but it also implies the discipline to stick with the new technique and make it your own. My fear about magazines with a new technique every month is that people will fall in love again next month and never get to master the one they loved last month. Maybe what I’m saying – and several of the people who commented yesterday had the same idea -- is that people who want to move up the pyramid should read Quilting Arts as eye candy, but for their own good, resolve to actually use only one new idea a year, if that.

New techniques -- good or bad?

I wrote yesterday about the conversation on the Quiltart list: whether Quilting Arts magazine has lost its focus on art. Some people, including me, thought the magazine has gotten too repetitive, too simple, writing about little projects rather than about big art.

Other list members jumped in to defend Quilting Arts. Several pointed out, and I have to agree, that there are many relative beginners who benefit greatly from a magazine that encourages you to make original designs and experiment with new ideas. And the focus on relatively small work – artist trading cards (2.5 x 3.5 inches) and “inchies” (1 inch square) have been popular formats – is good for people with limited time to devote to art and craft.  Still others regard their work as a hobby rather than a serious vocation or avocation, and are happy to make nice things without worrying about artistic development.

artist trading cards from my past













But one commenter in particular rattled my cage. “Not everyone, no matter how passionately they desire, can take workshops from the best and the brightest in our field to learn the new techniques and get a handle on how to use some of the wonderful new products,” she wrote. “There is a need for opportunities to see and learn how to do some of the newest techniques in our fabulous world of making quilted art. Who is going to dispute that?”

Well, I’m going to dispute it. I would even argue that one of the factors holding us back from greater artistic achievement is the lure of new techniques and products. It’s so easy to equate technique with inspiration, when in reality technique should be so much lower on the food chain.

I read a fascinating and disturbing book last year, “Seven Days in the Art World,” which among other things talked about how grad students and their prof at California Institute of the Arts conduct a critique session. (Click here for a wonderful review/discussion of the book in “Art in America.”)  What comes back to me today is the CalArts guiding principle, “No technique before need.”

I happen to think that’s a dumb principle in many walks of life and art. It’s so much easier to produce decent works of art if you have mastered some basic technique. For instance, if you’re a painter, you can get down to work when inspiration strikes without having to first figure out how to stretch and prime your canvas, and go down to the art supply store and read labels to find out whether you want oils or acrylics. If you’re a quilter, you can get down to work without having to first figure out what kind of fabric to buy, how to piece, how to quilt, how to make the thing lie flat, how to put a sleeve on the back.

That said, I’ll defend the principle as it applies to advanced practitioners. If I really need to screenprint a design onto my fabric, I can learn how to do it. If I need to machine embroider precision lettering onto my quilt, I’ll figure out where to get a machine and how to program it. But if I don’t want or need to do those things, why spend time learning them? That question applies even more when you start talking about products and equipment. Why buy a sewing machine with advanced embroidery or needle-felting capabilities, a package of Transfer Artist Paper or Angelina fibers or a bolt of Misty Fuse, if you don’t need them?

But the desire to learn and buy the latest techniques and products, as the Quiltart correspondent seems to think is essential, isn’t just a way to waste time and money. I think it’s actually counterproductive, even for people who don't consider themselves serious artists.

Why? Because having learned the technique or bought the product, the natural inclination is to use it in your next piece. Your work gets motivated by somebody else’s trend rather than by your own ideas. And your work tends to jump around in response to what was in the magazine this month instead of growing organically out of your previous work.  Devotion to the latest techniques and products is like attention deficit disorder. You never focus on one thing long enough to make it pay off.

I sometimes reflect on what my long-dead grandmother would think if she visited my studio. She would be amazed and delighted at the rotary cutter and its attendant mats and rulers, and at the fact that the sewing machine is computerized and can make a row of zigzags or little flowers. She’d be particularly enamored of the knee lift lever. But that’s it as far as equipment envy.

She might be surprised that my quilts don’t use traditional patterns, but once I explained how in the half-century since her death quilts have come off the bed and moved to the wall as art, I’m sure she’d understand. She might be surprised at my elaborate free-motion quilting, but when I showed her the darning foot she would know exactly how it worked in this context.

And this is the most important part – as she looked at my quilts, she wouldn’t find any technique that she didn’t understand perfectly. It’s just piecing, and quilting. She did those things a hundred years ago, and I’m doing them today. I don’t think much about technique any more, just about design and meaning. And that’s what I wish more of for my fellow citizens of the fiber art world.

Vacation inspiration

Clearly time for me to get back to real life after my magnificent vacation to the end of the earth.  Since I got home I've mainly been doing laundry, unpacking and reading old newspapers, but the gravitational pull of art is starting to be felt. 

I know from my art history readings that many artists have come home from vacations with new excitement and outlooks that have changed their entire work.  The young Paul Klee, for instance, famously went to Tunisia with two of his lesser-known artist pals, Louis Moilliet and August Macke.  In only a couple of weeks his brilliant watercolor sketches convinced him that color and paint were far more important than drawing, and he came home firmly pointed in the direction of greatness.

Paul Klee, Garden in St. Germain, European Quarter of Tunis, 1914








Unlike Klee, I didn't make sketches on my vacation, just took pictures (would art history have changed if Klee had brought a Brownie with him?).  But I did think occasionally about whether and how the wonderful, exotic scenery of Antarctica is going to affect my art. 

I don't do realism, so that means no adorable penguins, seals or killer whales.  But I have been pondering the icy palette of the polar waters --blue-black ocean, black rock, white snow and ice, gray lines of dirt and rock dust within the glaciers, a huge range of medium and light blues and blue-greens as you get close to floating ice and see the light reflecting back.  

I've never worked with this palette before, even though I've been awed to sail amid glaciers and icebergs on previous vacations.  Is it as simple as realizing the pitfalls of sewing on large expanses of white?  Not only can you see every non-white thread or seam allowance on the back side of your quilt shadowing through to the top, but the quilt gets dirty after you manhandle it for a month or two.

For both those reasons, I wrote last summer about my resolution to never make a pale yellow quilt again, even though I'm pleased to report that it got into Quilt National '11. So would I not only forget my promise but up the ante and go for white this year? Don't know if I'm that dumb. And yet would the polar blues be that evocative without the white to surround and set them off? Probably not.

So I'm going to contemplate ice and what aspect of it might be intriguing enough to work with. I'll let you know when I figure it out!

But meanwhile, I'm interested in your experiences. Have you come home from vacations with ideas that have made major, lasting change in your own art history? Or have you dabbled in souvenir art that faded almost as fast as your suntan? I suspect even world-class artists have had both kinds of responses.