Photo suite 37 -- containment

Following two long sea voyages on cargo ships, I have developed a love for containers, those basic boxes that serve as the red blood cells of our global economy.  Whenever I see them I photograph them, stacked on ships, stacked on land, or best of all, in transit dangling from a crane.

Long Beach CA

Taraunga, New Zealand

Barcelona

Salvador, Brazil

Lisbon

Ushuaia, Argentina

Trinidad

going through the Panama Canal

Sign of the week

Another collaboration

Last year I resolved to do a bunch of collaborations with other artists, and managed to complete ten projects in photography, embroidery, collage, quilting and calligraphy.  Several of those projects were what pre-school teachers call parallel play, in which the collaborators make their own work on a common theme.  But a few were shared efforts, in which both people actually worked on the same piece of art.  I found the latter kind more challenging and in some ways more rewarding.  So I was happy to accept when Rosemary Claus-Gray, a good friend and fellow fiber artist, invited me earlier this year to do a hand stitching project.

The rules of the game were that we would each start stitching on a 12-inch-square ground.  We were to make some kind of map, but it could be literal or metaphorical.  After a while we exchanged pieces, but without telling the other what the map was about.

Rosemary has been far more diligent than I in working on this project; she's done her bit on my piece and sent it back to me.  I put in some finishing touches and I think it's complete.

After she sent the piece back I told her that the map shows many of the different routes that I can take between my house (the yellow square at top right) and the post office (the yellow square at center bottom). There are lots of different ways to walk, and since I've lived here for 26 years and have walked to the post office a bazillion times, I'm always looking for a bit of variety in my route.

Rosemary added a bunch of different paths, all of them more curvy than my city street grid.  I was particularly happy that she added a wide street going past my house and out the top corner of the piece.

In reality our house is at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, blocked by a creek, and I can't tell you how many times I have wished we could simply teleport across the creek and be on our way instead of taking the long, three-right-turn way around.  So Rosemary fulfilled my wish without even knowing what it was!

I should have planned a bit more before I started mapping my grid onto the fabric, because I had a lot of empty space around the edges.  I filled in one of the big spaces with feather-stitched flowery vines before I sent it on to Rosemary.  She filled in another with a little airport.

Aside from the flowery vines, I was pretty literal in my first pass at the map.  The only things I stitched were the streets and the routes.  But when the piece came back to me, full of fantasy, I found myself freed to use whatever shapes and lines popped into my head.  I suppose that, in a nutshell, is why people collaborate -- the other person's imagination lifts you out of your own mental habits and ruts, in ways that you might not achieve on your own.

Now I have to get to work on finishing Rosemary's piece and getting it back to her.  I made a good start on it when it first arrived, but have been submerged in quilting for the last couple of months and neglected my other projects.  I'll take photos, of course, and will share them with you when she declares her piece complete.


Update:  I linked this post to the new blog site that shows what a bunch of other fiber artists have been up to this week.  Please check out their work!

In Stitches

Interweave Press, which publishes Quilting Arts magazine, also puts out an e-magazine called Quilting Arts In Stitches, and I am one of the featured artists in the new issue.  I talked and wrote about my daily art project of hand stitching, and provided tutorials on some of my favorite embroidery stitches.  Here's an excerpt.

I admit to having felt technologically obsolete when the folks at Interweave sent out emails asking the artists to blog about the new issue.  The magazine is available only on iPad, and since I don't have one, I can't even read it.  They did send me a pdf of my own article, which I thought was pretty nicely done -- I don't mean to compliment myself, but to compliment the photography, layout and design by the Quilting Arts people, who always put out a high-class product.

I was a bit surprised to find that the magazine was published exclusively for iPad, and apparently I wasn't the only one, because after the new issue was announced, there were questions and complaints.  Interweave explained that software companies are putting all their development money into tablet technology, not into stuff for desktop computers.

"As a result, it costs a tremendous amount of money per eMag to build it for an acceptable PC/MAC viewing and reading experience and the sales numbers couldn't continue to support this effort," they said in July.

But apparently the questions and complaints continued, and Interweave blinked!  "Due to overwhelming demand from desktop eMag readers, we have decided to release Quilting Arts In Stitches volume 7 for the desktop.  All of the eMags going forward will be offered for both desktop (Mac and PC) as well as for the iPad."  In addition, they're revisiting several publications that were issued earlier this year for iPad only, and making them available for desktop.

This strikes me as an excellent decision.  Considering the demographic of people interested in art quilts, I suspect a lot of them are like me, iPad-less.  It seems counterproductive to limit the distribution of a high-end product to a single platform, thus ruling out a significant portion of one's potential audience.

So those of you who do have iPads can get the magazine right now.  Those who want to read it on their old-fashioned computers will have to wait a bit till that version is available, but I'll let you know when that happens.

And by the way, doesn't it make you feel a bit decrepit to remember that not so many years ago, desktop computers were cutting edge, not old-fashioned?  Having been an early adopter of WYSIWIG in the previous century, I cling to my self-image as avant garde, not hopelessly behind the curve.

Photo suite 36 -- Ken on vacation

As we have vacationed in many beautiful places around the world, we have noticed many of our fellow tourists taking pictures of one another rather than of the magnificent scenery in front of them.  On a trip to Greece and Turkey I did an art project in which I photographed my husband in notable places (although you'd never know it to look at the photos) in the style of those tourists.

Ken at Hadrian's Arch, Athens

Ken at the Acropolis, Athens

Ken at the Agora, Athens

Ken at Troy

Ken at Ephesus

Ken on the ferry to Chios

Ken at Pergamon

Fringe benefits

I wrote yesterday about a beautiful prayer shawl or tallit that fiber artist Felice Sachs made for Ellen Shaikun, using blouses that belonged to Ellen's late mother.  I was privileged to be present when Felice and Ellen brought the last and most important part of the tallit into being.

That's the tzitzit, the ceremonial fringes that are attached to each corner of the prayer shawl.  Deuteronomy instructs, "Make tassels for yourself on the four corners of your garment which you use for protection."  Obeying this command, Jews tie fringes to their shawls following strict procedures that Felice calls "ritual macrame."

The first step is to put a hole in each of the four corners of the tallit to hold the fringes.  Most tallit simply have punched circles, as shown above.  But Felice put a buttonhole salvaged from the blouses in each corner.

To make the fringes, you buy a kit with special wool yarn, usually made in Israel, cut to specific lengths.  For each corner you make a bundle of four strands, with one extra long strand called the shamash, the "leader" or "protector."  You thread the four strands of yarn through the punched hole, even it out (the shamash will hang much longer than the other seven strands), and tie a square knot with the two sets of yarn.

After the knot is tied, you hold all the strands together in a bundle, separate out the shamash and use it to wrap around the bundle.  To begin, you make seven wraps around the bundle, then separate the strands into two sets of yarn, incorporate the shamash into one so you have four strands in each hand, and again tie a square knot.

You repeat these steps -- winding, then a square knot -- four times.  The second winding has eight wraps, the third has 11 wraps, and the last one has 13 wraps.  Finish off with a square knot and you're done.

Ellen wanted to tie some of the fringes, of course, and found it easier when Felice held the bundles taut; four hands work better than two when doing complicated wrapping and tying.  Each time a set of wrapping was finished, they would carefully count the wraps to make sure the number was correct.

The numbers of cords, knots and wraps are symbolic of many things from Scripture and tradition.  For example, the four fringes symbolize the four corners of the earth; winding symbolizes the unity of God; the number of cords and wraps adds up to the 613 commandments in the Torah.

No sooner had Ellen finished the last knot than she was off to synagogue for evening services, almost at the end of her eleven-month ritual of mourning her mother with daily prayers.  It was exciting to see her with her new tallit, wrapped again in her mother's arms.