Found poetry 53

A little stitched house

My gallery is having an all-member theme show in April and I have been trying to figure out what to make.  The theme is "home" and the organizer had lots of philosophical thoughts about how we are supposed to contemplate the true meaning of "home."  I find myself turning off when asked to contemplate the true meaning of anything, so I am just trying to come up with something that will kinda sorta have to do with "home" and not be too cutesy or precious.

So what to do.  My first thought was to make some more refugee quilt people and stick them under the interstate bridge to represent the homeless people that we have way too many of.  But I realized that I would have to build an interstate bridge for them to live under, and that would get pretty involved, since I am not a woodworker.  I also realized that while I am personally concerned about homeless people, I didn't particularly want this to become a subject for my art.  (I am personally concerned about a lot of things that I don't want to become subjects for my art, and I don't feel a bit guilty about that.  Your art practice has to be a lot more selective and focused than your personal political agenda.)

My second thought was to riff on the stitched pyramids that I made a couple of years ago.  These were so heavily stitched that they took on structural integrity and were able to stand by themselves, a theme that I have been exploring in various ways.  After I finished the five pyramids below, I thought I would continue with different shapes and thought I might equip them with doors or awnings or other architectural features.  But I had never gotten around to this.

I have written many times about how I will respond to theme challenges only by making something that was already on my to-do list, and adding doors to pyramids qualified.  So I made a little house with a little door that opened.

Here's a picture of the heavily stitched house, complete with door:

Although I had made a carefully measured template for the house, I was unhappily surprised at how some of the segments got distorted with the heavy stitching.  In particular, the left-hand house side developed a droop at the lower left, and the door ended up bigger than the opening it was cut from.  The sides of the roof also weren't exactly the same length as the sides of the house they had to be connected to.

When I stitched the pyramids together it made absolutely no difference whether the sides ended up exactly the same length.  I was happy to leave half of the seam unstitched.  But that approach wouldn't do for a house.

So I had to do a fair amount of remedial sewing by hand to get everything put together.  Some roofs ended up with an overhang, and all of the walls ended up with bulges.  But in the end, everything fit together.

I still don't know whether this piece is too cutesy for the gallery, or too glib and superficial, or too lacking in artistic substance.  But at least it's finished.

Isaac's Christmas collage

Isaac wanted to sew something for his mother for Christmas, so I cut a piece of denim from my jeans-for-art box and he rooted around through a bag of scraps to make a collage.

My contribution was to cut the zigzags in the top of the tulips and to stitch on some curly gold wire that we found on the worktable for hair.  Isaac did the rest.  Now that he is eight years old he is an old hand at the sewing machine, having made his first collage three whole years ago!  I know he's getting big because he no longer has to put the foot pedal on a shoebox; a thick book does the trick.  And he wondered if he could set the speed control up a little higher this time....

He wanted to use beads for eyes so we had to do a side project for him to learn how to sew on beads before he could do it on the gift.

In the past we have just made sleeves on the back of his collages and suspended them from a piece of coat-hanger wire or a chopstick, but since this was a Christmas present I thought we should splurge and mount it on a burlap-covered canvas, which I did for him (and did a number on my left wrist by having to hold it at an unnatural angle to avoid sewing into the top stretcher bar).  Since I discovered this product at my local craft store I have been using it for various purposes.  Surprisingly, the burlap has made a good backdrop for delicate silk collages made from old kimono as well as art brut pieces such as this one.

We look forward to our next project.

Last week on Art With a Needle

Vivien left a comment on my post about daily art:  I've always wanted to do a daily art project, but I feel I don't have enough control of my day-to-day to commit to it.  Then again, I guess that speaks to the "rules" of the project; how might I define my daily project and what are my objectives.  Interesting to read your thoughts on the matter.

And do I have some thoughts!  You're right, it all has to do with the rules.  You should set rules that work with your day-to-day.  If you travel a lot, don't commit to work on the sewing machine every day.  If you have to work on your breakfast table, don't choose something that has to be laid out to dry overnight. 

If you have limited time, as Vivien alludes to, don't choose a daily task that will take an hour.  But how long can it take to make one photograph, or draw in a small sketchbook like this:

or onto a small card like this:

or make something tiny like this, which is my favorite miniature of the week:

Although it's often fun to use your daily art project as a way to try out new materials and new tools, that takes time.  If you're feeling stressed, much better to have a half-dozen pens or pencils in a little packet that you can reach for every day than to have scores of them, each in its own storage place.  Better to use a self-contained pen than dip into a bottle of ink, risk spillage onto your worktable, and have to clean the pen afterwards.  Or at least work this week with this pen and this bottle of ink, and switch out next week instead of finding new tools every day.

everything at hand -- keep the pack next to your sketchbook (yes, it's the toothbrush pack you get at the dentist)

So Vivien, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts -- can you try 30 days of a low-commitment daily art project and see how it works?  Let us know.

Daily art 2018: post mortem 2

As I wrote on Monday, the main thing I didn't like about my 2018 daily art project was that it was too varied and thus too hard to keep track of.  No neat file boxes with everything in order.

I also am mad at myself that sometimes I didn't get the day's art done on that very day.  I've always permitted more or less slippage to fit into real life -- always those days when you're in transit for 29 hours straight or sick in bed or have six house guests or need to attend a wedding and you just can't fit in daily art. 

When I sent daily postcards to my mother, I often mailed or even wrote them late, but  that it was OK because who knew when the post office would actually deliver them.  One year when I was posting daily photos, some from my archives, I did two weeks worth in advance, allowing Blogger to post them each day, because I was going to be in Antarctica and out of internet touch.  When I did daily quilt blocks, it took until February the following year before I finally figured out how to illustrate the last day of my trip to Yellowstone National Park.  The only year I religiously did the daily art every day was 2010, where I took a photo each day.  Many times I raced around the house at 11:30 pm searching for something to photograph.  Some of those photos were lame, but I like the fact that I kept the rules more than I regret the weak showing.

In 2018 I let myself get behind too often, and each time you get behind it gets easier to rationalize getting behind again.

I also went wrong in 2018 by not documenting my work until a long time later.  I did write things down in my ledger as I did them, but didn't scan or photograph some of the work until a few weeks ago.  Bad move!  I don't know how many people visited my Daily Art blog last year, but they would have been appalled by how little current art was posted.  And it was way more work to get things organized and posted at the end of the year than if I had kept up with the task week by week.

Finally, last year it took more time than I should have devoted to daily art, especially days when I drew maps in my sketchbook or did bookbinding.  People often ask me how long I spend each day on these projects, and I say anywhere from five minutes (for a kissoff day) to two hours (if I take my sketchbook along to a meeting and work on it all afternoon in between talking and snacking).  I liked working on my maps, and so I didn't begrudge the time, but in retrospect I spent a LOT of hours last year on maps and what I have to show for it doesn't seem worth the final happiness-per-hour ratio.

this imaginary city map took a LOT of time

And of course, spending too much time each day made it easier to rationalize falling behind, easier to neglect documentation.

Lessons learned: This year I swear I will do both my daily arts on the very day.  No excuses.  I will scan and post them every week.  At least that's my plan.

Daily art 2018: post mortem 1

I always like to evaluate my art projects when they're finished, in part so I can figure out what to do and what not to do again.  And I think on balance my 2018 daily map project was a disappointment. 

At this time last year I thought it would be exciting to have a theme instead of a format, so one day I might draw a map, another day I might use a map in collage, a third day I might make a little book.  I would achieve my structure and documentation by writing down each day's map in a calendar book.  As it turned out, I found this approach unsatisfying. 

As was confirmed in spades as I got ready for my solo show last fall, I like being able to go through my old daily projects, with everything in one place and on display.  I like to see and feel the accumulation of day after day's art in a box or bag.  I like being able to find what I did on Valentine's Day or on my birthday or on Thanksgiving and put my hand on it. 

But last year that didn't happen.  Many things ended up filed in a big portfolio; small, lightweight 3-D work went into a file box; big heavy 3-D work got put somewhere among my finished artwork storage.  A few things are currently MIA.  This all makes me nervous. 

As I spent the better part of the end of December organizing and documenting all my maps from 2018, I mentally kicked myself a lot.  I was happy with daily pieces that fit into series, like my "I've been there" collages.  But I was happiest with the many "I've been there"s that were all on the same size card, less happy with the ones in different sizes or in different formats. 

I like this one

People who have visited my studio may laugh to hear me say that I crave organization and structure, but just because your studio is a world-class rat's nest doesn't mean your daily art shouldn't be neat and tidy.  Maybe that's one of the things I love about daily art: it can be perfectly organized and managed, even though I have a hard time achieving that in the rest of my life activities.

I actually anticipated that the way I defined the 2018 daily art project might be a problem.  My blog post from January 1, 2018:  When I started thinking about my next daily art project, in October and November, I was a bit apprehensive about this approach.  Was it too loosely defined?  Would I be afraid to work without the net of the strict format?  Fortunately, the minute I heard myself think that last question, I realized that was the dumbest thing I had thought in a long time.  If at this point in my artistic career I couldn't work without a net, I didn't deserve to call myself an artist.

Well, I was right to be apprehensive.  I wasn't afraid to work without the net, but as it turned out I didn't get as much satisfaction as I expect from a daily art project.  I like working within a strict format, at least in this context!  So for 2019 I'm back to rules.  Lesson learned.

I'll write more about my problems with the daily map project in another post.  Meanwhile, you can check out all my daily art here.