Is this mending? I guess so...

If you define mending as fixing a dysfunctional garment with a needle and thread, then yes, this is mending.  The cardboard mask was the perfect complement to a superhero cape, except it was so poorly engineered that the only point of contact between mask and nose came way too far down, and the forehead didn't support the weight of the mask, and it HURT!! 

So I found a piece of an old T shirt, and stuffed it with poly batting, and affixed it to the inside of the mask with stitching and a bit of glue, and all is well in the superworld.   

Afterwards, ice cream was served, which made the day perfect.

Great and not-so-great minds 2

Imagine my surprise when I saw a recent article in Hyperallergic in my email, with this feature image:

It's a lithograph by Anni Albers, whom I have always known as primarily a fiber artist.  And indeed, doesn't that mottled background remind you of any number of dye jobs you yourself have done in your fiber art career?  It looked  like some of my experiments with walnut ink.

But what really struck me was the tangled-cord motif.  Which looked exactly like one of my favorite subjects from my year of daily drawing. 

So I guess the only artistic difference between Anni Albers and me is that she had the good sense to combine her tangles with her mottles, and make lithographs.  And probably a couple of other things.

And that got me to thinking of another déjà vu moment when I saw my own reflection in a famous artist's work.  Coincidentally, that famous artist was none other than Anni's husband Josef Albers! 

(If you're interested in Albers' printmaking, check out the online exhibit of the current show that Hyperallergic was talking about.  It also features prints by another artist who is primarily known for her fiber work, Ruth Asawa.)

Forced to Flee -- zooming this evening!

I wrote yesterday about how my 3-D "art quilt" is now traveling with the SAQA show about refugees, "Forced to Flee."  I will be one of five artists participating in a zoom webinar roundtable this evening at 7 pm eastern, discussing our work in the show.  

The webinar is free and open to the public, but you do have to register first, at tinyurl.com/MUQuilts

Because of the time difference, it will be difficult for non-North American viewers to tune in, and only US artists were invited to participate in the roundtable discussion.  I thought this was too bad, especially since SAQA bills this as a "global exhibition" and many of the artists live outside the US.  So I asked my dear friend Uta Lenk, who lives in Germany and has a piece in the exhibit, if I could feature her in my own little non-zoom roundtable.

Uta Lenk, Everyone has the right (detail below)

Here's what she has to say about her quilt:

Over the years I have met and become friends with a number of refugees, many of them from Africa, who had come to Germany via different routes, but for many of them a rubber boat trip across the Mediterranean Sea had been part of their journey. Germany’s reaction towards the ‘refugee crisis’ has taken a decisive turn, the brief period of ‘welcome refugees’ in 2015 has turned into a Fortress European Union, trying to keep refugees out, violently (and illegally) pushing them back from Greek shores to Turkish shores. 

I have always deeply felt the gap between the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to which the European Union likes to refer when it is reproaching other countries for not abiding by these rights – and the way the EU is treating people seeking a better life by leaving a home whose difficulties were often caused by interferences of European countries, be it long ago or today. I get the impression that European countries do not grant the same degree of Human Rights to people from any country. I used a newspaper photo of a refugee rubber boat on the Mediterranean as inspiration for this quilt. An abstracted boat with its passengers is enclosed by excerpts from the Declaration of Human Rights written in the background, on the sky.

 

Thanks, Uta, for your guest appearance today.  Sorry you will probably be asleep during the zoom tonight! 

Forced to Flee -- zooming tomorrow!

Longtime readers may recall how four years ago I started making little figures from fabric that I called "daily people," and then when I saw a call for entries from Studio Art Quilt Associates I thought I needed to make some more.  The call was for a SAQA show called "Forced to Flee," about refugees -- at any time, from any place.  

So I made a bunch of quilt refugee people, using scraps of old beat-up quilts as my raw material to make sure I would meet the SAQA definition of a quilt.  And the piece, "Tired and Poor," was accepted.

The show has been traveling since 2019, with a couple of dates last year canceled for pandemic. It's now on display at Misericordia University in Dallas PA and tomorrow I will be one of five artists participating in a zoom roundtable to discuss our work.  The webinar will be held at 7 pm eastern time on Tuesday.  If you'd like to tune in, you need to register in advance at tinyurl.com/MUQuilts.  I'd love to have some company!

Happiness

Happiness is when one of your favorite pair of socks gets a hole, and you can't bear to throw the other one away, so you save it and a year later one of that pair's twin pair gets a hole, and you know just where the first one is...

Happy Easter!

I've been dyeing Easter eggs with the now-ten-year-old for several years.  We missed last year, at the height of the first surge of coronavirus, and that also meant that the now-three-year-old missed her first chance to participate.  So it was especially good to be all together again, vaccinated and ventilated, this year.

The plan this year was to immerse the eggs only partway in the dye, then in a subsequent bath, spin the egg so the colors overlap and blend in pretty ovals. 

It worked out very well.

A few of the eggs even had special effects, for reasons that we couldn't figure out.  Maybe because the tablets were still fizzing when the egg went in?  And how about that yin/yang curve on the green-and-yellow egg?  

Happy Easter!