mid-week check in

I faced one quilt and am almost finished with the facing on the second one.  Here is the back of the second one - it is my dropcloth.  I figure that if nobody likes the front, I can always keep printing on this backing and make IT the front.

Most of the time I don't care what's on the back -- although some of my best friends are not happy unless the back is somehow related to the front.

I am trying to organize my time: a new concept for me.  I have decided that mornings will be for miscellaneous non-art related tasks.  And then, come hell or high water (and sometimes both) I get my butt out the door to the studio.  Today, I didn't get out till way after lunch and then I had must-do errands I couldn't get to this morning.  But I did spend an hour at Franklin Street Studios, making marks on some scarves.  I have steamed them and they are in the dryer as we speak.

I am putting together a new lecture about working in a series, based somewhat on the conversation we had here about 3 years ago.  Since  nobody defines a series the same way, I would love it if any of you would send me examples of 2 or 3 different pieces you think belong to the same series.  I think audiences get awfully tired of just looking at my work when I speak.  Thanks in advance -- the resolution should be high since I am going to project them.  You know where to find me.

be careful what you wish for

As I mentioned the other day, they are redoing our driveways and replacing the rotten railroad ties with stone.  There is lovely orange construction fence all over the place and I asked the foreman who cut my phone line last week whether I could have some.  Next thing I knew, he rang my doorbell with a gift.  Good grief - I could fence in my own construction site with this amount of stuff.  I guess he was feeling guilty.

Here it is, all rolled neatly.  If I ever worried about running out of it, my worries are over.  But I really need to move it away from the front door.

The other thing near the front door is a 4x8 piece of Celotex. My sewing room is so crowded that I had to move part of the design wall out into the hallway.  That's where I have been working while my STUDIO sits idle.  Meantime, while I am supposed to be finishing three other pieces, I am auditioning fabrics instead for something I need to make - at some point -- for myself.

 Yes, it's part of a series; a series which rears its head,unbidden, every montik and donershtik. Translation: every time I turn around. It is something which informs my work and I can't get away from it or get finished with it.  I guess that is the nature of a series. Bah.  I'm putting together a lecture on "what is a series?"  What, indeed?

As of October, come hell or high water, I will be back in my studio.  In any case, I am teaching an advanced Thermofax class there on October 6 and it is already full.

I am seriously thinking about teaching a Deconstructing the Screen workshop sometime this fall, so if you would be interested, e-mail me. I have room for 4 people -- I want to leave plenty of room to print...and there is enough construction fence for everybody.

working in a series, revisited

There was a question on the QuiltArt list today about how many pieces it takes to make something a series. I guess, by definition, a series is more than one - so the answer has to be two. Right? But it is less a case of how many than of how you define a series. Style? Subject? If subject, does the style have to be consistent? Size? Color? Mood? Technique? I don't think there is any right answer.. Are they a series? If so, what makes them a series? Or if not, why not? This is a piece of fabric I have recently printed. Does it belong with the above pieces? Even though it is a smaller size (and not intended to be part of anything when I printed it), is it part of the (unintended) series that evolved over time? And what about this piece, which was on my design wall recently? Style totally different: subject the same. Is it part of this series? Depends on your definition. I think not - at least not as it stands - or stood - because I have dismantled it and may or may not revisit it in the future. And this one, which I made a decade ago and no longer own: is it, in retrospect, part of this series? If you were reading this blog two years ago, you may have participated in the terrific discussion about working in a series. If you didn't read the posts/comments, go to working in a series and click on it to see them. Then come back here. Take a look at your own inventory of work: what do you see as a series? Do some of those pieces fit into several different series, depending on what you bundle them with? This gets us into another topic, which is what constitutes a body of work? But maybe that's for another blog post. Meanwhile, let's talk!

As I drove away today, I snapped this picture of the snow. If you look really hard, you can see two little blobs of white between the driveway and the tree. There are piles of it across the street, but ours is gone. It was 65 degrees here today and smelled like Florida. I was in my usual Birk sandals and it was too hot for a sweatshirt. Tomorrow will be in the 50's and then they are predicting snow again later in the week. Weather is not my favorite subject, but I send my sympathies to all of you in the northwest and midwest for all the horrible storms and floods and what-not. Good grief! Stay safe. Jessica and Tommy have been in Wisconsin this week spending Christmas with Tommy's family. I hope they get home safely tomorrow. I sent Marty to the mall to take advantage of the sales and buy a new pair of jeans while I went to work. Like my friend Carol Larson, I am printing art cloth to submit to an exhibit and need the space for two yard pieces, which are difficult to do at home. I have now got two layers on one of the pieces and am debating what my next move should be on that and on another piece. I added a layer to some yardage that will probably not be submitted, but we'll see what happens tomorrow. I took lots of pictures but the battery on my good camera went and the little one takes lots of blurry pictures if you get too close to anything. So I will have more pix to put up tomorrow when I reshoot them. I had cut this piece of rather odd shibori in two, determined to do something to the half that didn't come out so well. This is the better half of what started as a yucky piece of yellow. Today, I made a new Thermofax screen and decided it would be good for the other half. This is before I brought it home to steam, etc. What looks like purple has turned into fuschia, which takes five years to ever rinse out completely. It is soaking as we speak. And finally, I was playing around with the neutrals and left this small piece on my design wall at the end of the day. It seems this series will never end; it is so deeply a part of me that it resurfaces again and again without conscious thought. In Sept '07 we had a whole discussion on this blog about working in a series which continued a second day and ended up being an article in the SAQA Journal. Lots of people are able to work consciously in a series and I wish I could do that - but it feels contrived for me to do it that way. Nevertheless, several series emerge all by themselves when I least expect it. Don't you find that happens to you, too?

working in a series, continued

Your comments on working in a series were really fascinating and I really appreciate that I am not the only one who has difficulty working consciously that way. The fact is, there are lots of ways to define a series and I don't suppose any two of us would define it exactly the same way.

Your responses generated an e-mail from Russ Little, who asked such salient questions that I thought I'd post his message so we could keep talking. Here it is...

I've loved reading the flood of comments on quilt backs and working in a series. It seems like the surface design equivalent of stem-cell research--everybody's got an opinion and none of them are lukewarm! "What makes a series a series?" It sounds like there isn't general consensus among your readers about whether it is (a) it is a consistent subject; (b) a consistent theme; (c) a consistent design element ( e.g., color); (d) an intentional exercise; or (e) some combination of the above. This Wikipedia page shows a good sampling of works from Monet's Haystack series , which I think illustrates so clearly an artist intentionally focusing on light, color, and mood by holding other elements of the composition static. Personally I would have grown weary of the haystack (or the lilies, or the Houses of Parliament, or the Japanese bridge, etc.), but I see the value of the study, and it's amazing to see several of them together in the same room and to feel the differences between them.

If I'm drawn to the shape of leaves, and I execute 10 finished pieces that deal with leaves, is that a series?" What if the designs are radically different? What if they are created months or years apart and only later presented as a "series"? What I'm hammering away at is that if you take a liberal view of what constitutes a series, then there are a lot more of them out there. And, perhaps some of them might even be created by people who hate the thought of working in a series.

Good food for thought/discussion, Russ. Any one of the above can be a series if you deem it a series. My Poland Series began as a way to process what I had seen and felt -- but I didn't think "oh, I'm going to do a series." I just began to work. This was an early one. And over the next 10 years, pieces emerged that became - IN MY MIND - part of that group. Even though the pieces are visually different and it may not be obvious that they are part of a series, their genesis was the same and they are all exploring aspects of memory and loss -- both personal and collective -- sparked by that trip to Poland. This is the last piece - or should I say the final piece? It took me a decade to get this one made to my satisfaction

and I didn't know what it was till I was 3/4 of the way finished. Then I realized what it was about -- and it was the piece I had been trying to make for years. When I stopped thinking about it, it just happened by itself. Now I have said all I wanted to say and I can move on.

In the meantime, a number of my Poland pieces will be part of a two-person exhibit in January. The other artist is a photographer.

So, to get back to Russ' questions about what makes a series...what does it mean to YOU?
(a) a consistent subject; (b) a consistent theme; (c) a consistent design element ( e.g., color); (d) an intentional exercise; or (e) some combination of the above.

working in a series and other digressions

Well, this is one way to dress up a boring picture. I couldn't bear to post without an image and my batteries died when I was at the studio today -- just as I was about to photograph a piece in progress - otherwise known as "the monster on the wall." But no matter, I have taken that piece apart, off the wall, and put it away. It will emerge again when it is ready, and will look very different from the 17 past permutations - none of which really worked well enough for me to go finish them. I am home, the batteries are in the charger, the new batteries are in the camera - and now there is nothing but empty wall. One happy note: I have finished a piece I am very happy with it. It is on the floor, waiting for me to find enough fabric for a backing and sew them together so they are large enough to cover the back of this piece. Oh, dear. Question 1: does it matter to YOU if you put a pink and purple backing on a green and blue piece? Or do you feel the back has to somehow harmonize with or connect to the front, even though nobody sees it? This finished piece seems to be the second in a series; same motif in each piece, although each piece is differently sized and colored. The piece I took apart was a conscious attempt to make another in this series with a lot of the fabric I have printed. But conscious attempts don't work for me. The first piece went together easily - 1-2-3 (or so I am remembering it) and has a strong, direct rhythm. The piece I took apart today just never worked; I think I was trying to hard to achieve something specific -- like trying to make somebody like you when nothing on earth you could do would change the other person's feelings. Question 2: Working in a series. Many of you do, and do it well. LizzieB did it with her discharge pieces and circles; Virginia Spiegel's most recent group is clearly a series based on her outdoor adventure; Sonji's bundles are a major series - and on and on. For those of you who work in a series -- is this your intent? Do you ever feel you are forcing the issue or does everything flow naturally? For those who don't work in a series -- why not? I look forward to your comments.