Found poetry 55

Last week on Art With a Needle

The "home" show is open, and those installing the work decided that my artist book needed a suitable display, so they put up a shelf that allows the entire book to be open and readable at eye level.  A great vote of confidence in a project that died many deaths before completion!

I made all the gallery tags for the show, which occupied many hours.  You wouldn't think it would be too hard to ask each artist to provide the title, size, materials and price for one artwork, plus a short artist statement, but you would be wrong.  It took at least a dozen follow-up emails to elicit the right info from 32 people.  So very little art was made this week.

Here's my favorite miniature of the week, made from the sharp tips of skewers that, cut down to size, are providing support to the back of the artist book:

Beautiful shibori

On a beautiful, warm, sunny spring day I got out for a wonderful long walk, but beforehand, fit in a museum visit to the Carnegie Center in New Albany IN to check out the work of Elmer Lucille Allen, who has been a much-admired friend for many years.  The show featured nine of her shibori pieces, most done with stitched resist.

For a long time Elmer Lucille worked exclusively in dark blue Procion dye on white fabric (it looked like indigo) but here we saw her branching out into other colors. 

ELA 19-013, 72 x 43", 2009 (detail below)

This one spun an optical illusion in the gallery, although maybe not so much in the photo -- it looked to be like the vertical stitched panels were actually an open weave, showing the white gallery wall behind. 

ELA 19-009, 53 x 44", 2012

Here's one in color, on silk noil:

ELA 19-006, 44 x 24", 2014

And probably my favorite, the only piece in the show that wasn't made of a single piece of fabric but seamed, allowing her to combine both clamped and pole-wrapped resists:

ELA  19-001, 60 x 44", 2011 (detail below)

The show continues at the Carnegie Center for Art and History, 201 E. Spring St, New Albany IN, just across the river from Louisville, through April 20.  Paintings by Sandra Charles and Barbara Tyson Mosley are also on exhibit.           

Last week on Art With a Needle

A bunch of interesting ideas for my "home" piece in the comments this week.  One suggestion:  "Print on fabric and add oomph with thread?"

Many years ago I tried printing on fabric with the aid of Bubble Jet Set, but always felt the colors were washed-out or otherwise strange.  For one quilt I printed out old black and white family photos without any setting solution, did thread line work on top, then put them through the washing machine.  A lot of the pigment washed away, giving a nice faded look to the photos.

One of the photos from that project came out more purple than black, so I made the best of it. 

Purple Myrtle

But since then I have avoided printing onto fabric.  I know that technology has improved and the colors turn out much more vivid, but I don't see this approach as part of my art practice any more. 

Then again, maybe I will try it some day and see whether my opinion has changed.

Another reader, after I revealed what I finally came up with for the "home"show, commented, "Sometimes the simple solutions give us the clearest picture of what we are trying to convey.  This looks like it does the job."

I'm not sure this was a simple solution -- it sure took a lot of work and worry to get there -- but I hope you're right that it does the job.  Thanks to all of you for taking such an interest in my trials, and for all your encouraging comments.

My favorite miniature of the week started with a tiny piece of driftwood that I found while scavenging with my son at the river after a lot of high water:

I find home, finally

The consensus of my art pals was that they liked the photos, but they also liked the home songs.  So, too exhausted to keep fighting, I decided to combine the two and make an accordion book.  Printed out the photos quite small at the top of the page, then calligraphed songs at the bottom.  Put the book together with washi tape.

After all these months of angst and indecision, the execution was surprisingly effortless, except for the two pages that got inkblots on them and had to be redone.  And the two pages that got printed out before I noticed that the color cartridge was out of magenta.

Now I just hope that the pages -- printed onto card stock -- will be stiff enough to stand up on a pedestal for five weeks.  If not, I'll have to build remedial scaffolding behind it, but that might sort of fit the "home" theme too.

The show opens March 28 and will have work by all the PYRO member artists, plus a guest artist invited by each of us.  Drop by if you're in the vicinity of Louisville!

Still trying to find home

I wrote last week about my attempts to make "home" art with machine stitching, and how I abandoned them.  But meanwhile another train of thought was chugging along.

Previously a fellow artist in my gallery had suggested that I go through my 80,000 photos and find some having to do with homes.  I found a bunch that featured people's front steps, and I made 4x6 prints to show to my art pals.

They liked the photos a lot but thought it would not be sufficient to just hang the small prints, as I had done with a lot of photos in my solo show last fall.  Either I would have to print them up really big, or print them onto aluminum, or something else to give some oomph to the presentation.

I was not wild about these ideas, because I have never done any of those things with my photos and I don't have enough time to experiment.

What else could I do to get extra oomph?  Stay tuned.