procrastinating again

I just threaded a needle to sew a sleeve on a piece I have finished. You see how eager I am to do this chore. So here I am. Debra Roby was complaining about not having brilliant things to post: I know what you mean, Debra - although I don't agree about your blog. I think you've always got something fun on there. Nonetheless - we all go through these periods. The question is: do I post something inane or nothing at all? Mostly, I opt for the latter. But sometimes ya just feel like blathering on, whether anybody wants to read it at all. SO - I am going to blather about the kitchen - although I am having a hard time making this art-related. I forgive you if you skip the rest of this post. Yesterday was summer weather and oh, my, it was wonderful. Today - back to cool weather - a disappointment to me but I'll take it. I spent a good part of the day organizing my materials for Thursday's fabric postcard workshop at Gilda's Place. It's one thing to MAKE a postcard -- quite another to pay attention to the sequence and details so you can teach other people to do it. Do step 1, write it down - and be sure to write down the things you take for granted because you are teaching to people who may never have done anything fabric-related. I had to make a sample postcard out of commercial fabrics because that's what we will be using.

On another subejct... yesterday, my husband finished our taxes and took them to the post office. Hooray! Can we put the refund toward a new kitchen? Uh - sorry, it's going toward his dental work and a new roof - it might might pay for one tooth and a roof tile or two. BUT I NEED A STOVE!! (actually, they call them ranges these days). The clock/timer thingie is broken. They don't make the part any more. The self-cleaning oven doesn't work without the clock/timer thingie. I am allergic to the oven-cleaning chemicals. The paint is chipped and it looks entirely disgusting. Paint from the original knobs is worn off, so you don't know whether the stove is off or on. The temperature numbers on the oven knob are gone so you don't know what temp you are baking at. This is not a problem, since I have stopped using the bottom oven. The problem is that I can't just replace the damn thing. It's a double oven range of the type they don't make any more. Without going into construction details, suffice it to say that I either keep this horrible appliance that came with the condo or we redo the whole kitchen. For reasons too complicated to go into here, believe me - those are the choices. I am buying lottery tickets tomorrow. Wish me luck.

name that piece! - part I

Carol Ludington, of the Shoreline Quilters Guild in Branford, CT., sent me this picture of a finished quilt she started last weekend in my Jump-starting Your Next Quilt workshop. She can't decide on a name and asked me which one of two I liked better. Since I liked both, I couldn't decide either. When I asked for permission to post the piece to my blog, she thought it would be a great opportunity to ask for name submissions from all the creative minds out there. I loved the idea!! - So -- take a look and either comment or e-mail me with what pops into your head for a title. I'll post the suggestions on Monday night and we'll see what Carol thinks. In the meantime, many of us are celebrating either Passover or Easter, so I hope you have a good holiday weekend. In either case, we will all have eaten too much, no doubt.

Museum Monday

This morning, I loaded up my suitcase with fabric and screens and stuff and headed to the museum to meet Judy Langille, Diane Savona, and Rachel Cochran for a play day. Or a work day, however you chooose to look at it. We had all been at the Sedgwick opening (Judy won the Surface Deisgn award) and discussed the event and the art as we worked. By 2:00, I was toast and packed up, heading for Whole Foods where I managed to ring up a three figure bill in no time flat. 20% of it was for Scharffenberger 70% cocoa bittersweet chocolate -- seriously the best chocolate I have found to cook and bake with. And to eat. I tried a different brand that was half the price, and it was good. But it was not extraordinary. And I just hope that the fact of Scharffenberger's being bought by Hershey's will not kill it. I have my doubts.

Fast forward to tonight. My downstairs (print) studio is back to its normal condition. This is not news. The news is that I am able to accomplish anything at all in this mess. You can see that I have been screening over some fabric I had batik'd and discharged.

Here's a piece in the closet on the drying rack, which started out very orderly but didn't suit me, so I added another layer or two. God knows what it will look like tomorrow, after I steam and rinse it. And finally, in a complete departure, this piece below. I don't remember what it looked like before except I hated it. I had batik'd it and then I overdyed it. Today I discharged on it - a first layer. Now I have to think about what else I want to do with this fabric. But I will think about it tomorrow.

the Philadelphia story

Friday morning, Marty and I headed down for the weekend to attend the opening of Art Quilts at the Sedgwick. This is the Ben Franklin Bridge, the gridwork of which I could not resist shooting and which will undoubtedly turn up somewhere in my work. I didn't have a piece in this year's show but several of my good friends had pieces juried in: Diane Savona, Judy Langille, Judith Plotner, and Jette Clover, so we went to celebrate with them. Anyway, it is always such a fabulous weekend for textiles in Phila that we go no matter what. Weather on Fri wasn't promising but it ended up being a perfect day for walking - mild and sunny. Not so for Sat, which was COLD (I was wearing 5 layers, including my ski jacket) raw, and pouring rain. No matter. We had a great time. Friday afternoon we headed straight for the Snyderman-Works Gallery for the Fifth Biennial Fiber Exhibit. An eclectic show of fiber pieces to-die-for, and I mean to get back there before the exhibit ends on April 29. I think it is the strongest fiber show Snyderman-Works has had to date. I did not like everything -- but all of it was stimulating. Go if you can. It was great because I saw some people I knew and met some I had not previously run into but had wanted to meet among the members of Friends of Fiber Art as well as Art Quilt Network New York who were there. At the Sedgwick opening, Friday night (henceforth called Art Quilts Philadelphia because it will remain in center city). I finally met Lisa Call and Pam Rubert, both of whom had work in the show. It was so hectic and crowded that we hardly had time to chat, but it was great to see them. And of course, I kept running into my friend Mary Manahan, which is always a treat. Mary wasn't so crazy about the exhibit at the Snyderman and I can certainly understand that, since there were some rather strange pieces and everything from gut to wire. Fiber at Snyderman-Works is defined very broadly. I didn't like everything but there were a couple of pieces I would gladly have acquired if I had won last week's lottery. Here are just a few links to the artists I thought did especially interesting work. There were many more. Yvonne Bobrowicz Barbara Lee Smith Dorothy Caldwell Mary Merkel-Hess Shizuko Kimura Rebecca Medel Meantime, back at the Sedgwick opening and the next day at the brunch, I was so busy yakking that as usual, I forgot to take a lot of pictures. But here are the few I did take. I might note that everybody looked about ten times better than my photography makes them look. But, oh well.

Lisa Call, Pat Autenrieth, Pam Rubert

Valerie Goodwin & Sandra Woock

and in a moment of pure, spontaneous joy --

Corni Forster and Jette Clover

My high-living and late nights for the weekend have caught up with me and I'll try to finish up my report tomorrow night

Imagine my delight

when the postcards for the SPUN exhibit came today and my own piece was staring back at me from the front of the card. I have quite a few to get out in the mail but I hope that if you're within driving distance of Katonah, NY (Westchester County) you'll come to the Art Center and say hello. It promises to be a beautiful exhibit -- and you have a few weeks to plan who you are carpooling with - LOL. I think Katonah is a charming town and we are making a day of it. Artists include such luminaries as Linda Colsh, Karen Stiehl Osborn, Melissa Fowler, Rachel Cochran, Elizabeth Poole, and more. All the works are small and it's a great chance to add one to your collection. In the meantime, I am about to take my hands out of the dyepot and go do something useful, like pack for the weekend.

judging a book...or two

This morning I had to go to my mother's apartment (no, that is not it on the left) to let in the maintenance man, who was changing the air conditioning filters. He wears the brown pants and beige shirt with the name of the condo written in red on his pocket. I don't know his name. He has worked his way through all the rooms and is in the bedroom. I am in the hallway, looking at the art on the walls: a Miro, a Konrad, two lithographs by Raphael Soyer, and some other pieces I always see but never really study. He comes out of the bedroom and says "oh, you like paintings." "Yes," I say. "I love art." "Me too," says he. "Let me show you which one I really love." I follow him into the spare room where he goes to the corner and points to a watercolor of the Kreuger Mansion in Newark, NJ painted by my grandfather. ( At left is a recent photo, not grandpa's artwork, which was painted 50 years ago, before the building had been vandalized. Then, Jose (as I later discover is his name) tells me he is an artist who works in oils and he whips out his cell phone and opens it to show me a painting which looks pretty good. He tells me he has sent the painting to his cousin in Puerto Rico so that his cousin will have something to remember him by after he is dead. I do not mention that I am an artist. This is HIS moment. But you can never assume. You can never tell by looking at someone or surmising from the way he/she earns a living, what creative process and talent is going on to enrich his/her life. And I realize that for 13 years, he has been looking at the art on my mother's walls every time he comes in to fix something. I want to cry. Which brings me to Ted Orland's book, The View from the Studio Door, which I was reading at my mother's before I wandered into the hall to look at the art. There is SO MUCH in that book that I can't begin right now to discuss it - but I have decided that I should have married this author. Of course, he didn't ask me - but that is irrelevant. Has anybody else read it yet so that we can have a conversation?

It's not that I don't have work to do...

I just don't feel like doing it. Brain wants to move, body doesn't. So, time for some caffeine. BTW - the darker the roast, the less caffeine it has. Did you know that?

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

I'll be back after coffee break.

huh?

What is this white stuff? and what is it doing in my yard?

Tuesday and home

Back to my messy studio, which is the same disaster area it was on Saturday when I left. Did I actually expect that the good fairies would arrive and sprinkle magic cleanup dust around while I was gone? Yep. Just like I hope that the next time I open the fridge that something wonderful to eat will be there that was not there 5 minutes earlier. Just as I was feeling the letdown of being home, Diane Wright's e-mail with jpg arrived to cheer me up. (Diane and Vivika DeNegre are the program co-chairs for Shoreline Guild and they are both dynamos). By the time I had arrived home this afternoon, Diane had totally finished a piece incorporating some of the wonderful fabric she had block printed with trees she carved on Sunday. I wish I had carved that block. It's called "Whistling Past the Graveyard" and it is 23"x30". Diane, you're a whiz kid!

This morning, before I left Guilford, we went over to see the Guilford Art Center. What a place! There was an exhibit of the most amazing puppets you have ever seen - some very dark and bizarre, others very clever and funy. If you live within an hour of Guilford, CT, it is worth a drive to see the exhibit, Art in Motion -- and to visit their shop which has the most elegant and beautiful crafts I have seen gathered in one place. Click on the link and you'll get to their virtual galleries. Yum.

Well, I just unearthed my April/May issue of FiberArts magazine, which was so buried that I did not think I had received it. I had better go read it before I lose it again. I can clean up tomorrow...

Connecticut day 2

Monday was the second of two workshops. Gayle, our class superstar, came in on Monday with a completed quilt from the fabric she had printed on Sunday. Amazing!!! On Sunday we had carved our own stamps. Most of the people in the workshop had done stamping but had never made their own, and they loved it. They brought back their printed fabric and on Monday, combined it with pieces from their own (or somebody else's) stash as we did a variety of challenging creativity exercises and small studies. I had also brought a bunch of Helene's hand-dyed strips to share with the class and boy, did those get used!! For the last exercise of the day, I cut up half of that piece of fabric and distributed it to the people in the workshop to see what they would do with it within 30 minutes. As usual, I was blown away with all the different ways people used one piece of fabric. These are not finished pieces, of course. But you'll get the idea. Click on them for larger images. Monday night was my guild lecture/trunk show and after a long, rewarding day, I slept very well. I suspect that everybody else did, too.

hi from CT

I'm staying in beautiful Madison, CT for the weekend, where I'm teaching two workshops. Madison is on the shore of Long Island Sound and this afternoon my host, Jay Gunther, gave me the $100 tour while Mary Anne was preparing a delicious dinner. Earlier in the day, members of the Shoreline Guild and I had a big, fun, playday! We carved our own stamps and the class was a big hit with everybody -- even Mary Anne, for whom this was an entirely new experience. Here's Vivika DeNegre,program co-chair, who printed a prodigious amount of fabric today. The variety was mind-boggling and I've asked everybody to take their fabrics home and heat-set them and when they bring them back tomorrow, hopefully, I'll get some more pictures. My camera stopped working and I am charging the battery overnight in the hope that it will do the trick. If I can get some pictures, I'll post tomorrow.