revisiting the journal

< A few days ago my copy of Laura Cater-Woods' new book, Idea to Image: Tempting Your Muse, arrived. Hooray! Just what I needed. I started reading it yesterday and brought it with me to work on while I waited and waited and waited and waited with my mother at the doctor's office. I brought along a yellow pad and a pencil so I could - uh - doodle. By the time we had waited an hour, this is what I felt like. I read the doctor the riot act (nice way to start the day) and if I had been the patient, i would have walked out and not come back. But my mother was in pain, so we stayed. But we'll find another doctor if she has the same problem again. In 1999, I started to keep a visual journal: images that appealed to me, design ideas (none of which I ever used), and thoughts. When I look back at this image from 9 years ago, I see the x's and o's that I didn't realize were in my head that long ago. This piece is from 2007 - quite a bit less orderly. When I got sick in 2000, I stopped. And I never went back till 2005, when I decided I should draw. I can't draw...but I drew. I drew my foot, I drew the inside of my refrigerator, I drew my plants. and I drew the view from my (then) studio window. You can tell it is winter. Looking back, I am in shock. This is the person whose 7th grade art teacher gave her a grade of C on her tree. Would I still get a C? Maybe a B-. Finally, I found my Art Goals list for 2006. It is very short. My goal now is to get a good night's sleep. It is midnight in New Jersey.

working from the cloth

Yesterday I did a little discharge on a piece of fabric I had printed on. The fabric was an icky olive green and some other color -- too dark for the black paint I had put on it. Rescue mission, more or less. Also a chance to use up some thiox paste I had sitting around, before somebody thought it was salad dressing. Today, it was time to cut it up and see what would happen. This is how I work: I start from the fabric, having no idea where I am going. Well, not quite true. This particular cloth told me what is was about - but then it was up to me to figure out how to make it work with the other fabrics I had hanging around in my bins at home. Give 10 people the same piece of fabric and they will all do something different with it. And the potential is there for even one person to do 10 different things with it. Which way to go? The audition process can be painful - above is the first act. Then a few more versions as I added, subtracted, substituted, and moved things around.

The piece does not, at the moment, looki like any of these versions, but this is always my process. I will leave it on my wall for a couple of days to see if I need to tweak it or start again from scratch. In the meantime, I could go pay bills...

one of the best things

is the joy of seeing what people do with the fabrics they have printed in class. For me, this is one of the the rewards of teaching that makes all the preparation, travel, and aching feet worth it. So, this is an intermission from the circles to share the piece Cécile Trentini made after she left QSDS and returned to her home in Zurich. The five-day class included two days of printing and three days of creativity and jump-starting new work using what they printed in class. A few days ago, Cécile, who is a teacher in her own right, sent me a picture of a piece that grew from a sample she started in the workshop. It is approx. 34" x 16" (click on it to get a closer look) The left side is the mini-piece she made in class and incorporated into the larger composition, which works so well. This is a wonderful example of working from the fabric and seeing where it takes you -- a spontaneous approach that looks easier than it is. Thanks, Cécile, for brightening my day! On another note - I am working at home tonight, sewing together the beginnings of something that was on my wall in the studio. My good machine is at home, so I prefer to sew here. And my print space there is so good that it seems a shame to waste time sewing when i could be doing surface design! I stopped briefly at the studio to make a screen, after a stop at the paint store (as in kitchen wall paint) where I spent $16 on four teensy jars of paint to try. My first choice is not bad - but Not Bad is not the same as Good, so I'll try the other 3 shades tomorrow. Oh, good grief - I remember the last time I went through this - 4 years ago. Here we go again! Finally, I have to do a little shameless self-promotion: go here and scroll down to read the reviews that have been posted on C&T's website. Aw, gee...

circle dance

Round and round and round we go.

Studio day today. And as I was overprinting a couple of pieces of fabric, I realized the irony of yesterday's statement about not being interested by circles. In fact, this screen came from a photo I took in 2004 in Brussels. I think it was some kind of sidewalk insert - who knows?
Then there was this piece of fabric -I hated it before I discharged it and it was not much better afterwards. So I went to work on it and below is the first new layer.
Good grief, more circles -- in orbit. What was I thinking? Ah - that is the problem: I WAS thinking. Always a mistake.

taking a "muse" break

For the past couple of mornings, I have been walking the mile around the complex before the heat and NJ humidity became overwhelming. I really feel better after I walk, but it has been a difficult year in which to maintain a routine - or even the semblance of a routine.

This morning I took my little camera with me to see if anything struck my fancy enough to put it in my "muse" folder. I shot quite a few circles, and while they really don't excite me, I guess they have potential. Once you start looking, you can get crazy with the variety. Tip of the iceberg.




There were lots of pretty flowers but I still like my unkempt garden the best.
I fooled around in Photoshop to see what else I could get. But as inspiration, fleurs don't do it for me. Too pretty.
As I walked I thought about why we are attracted to certain lines and elements. For some people, nature is a great inspiration. Except for my woods, I don't find much inspiration in things that grow. But give me grit, graffiti, garbage and grids and I'm inspired. This is the first picture I took this morning - before I left on my walk - and it is still my favorite of the day.
I took this one after a rainstorm a few years ago - I do love it.
And I haven't the vaguest idea where I took this or what it is, but it is in the same category as the two above it. Look at the common elements.
The question is WHY these speak to me...and I have to think about the answer. There is a certain order and geometry in them; the light plays beautifully in each one, and the elements are simple and abstract. Interesting, since my work is neither orderly, geometric, simple, or abstract.

What is it that speaks to you? And more important, WHY?

what's wrong with this picture?

These pictures, actually. I will spare you the images of my nice, neat, organized sewing room that you can actually walk into! After two days (and not finished yet) of filling trash bags, sorting, filing, and whatever else I have been doing -- I am left with two piles that mystify me. On the left, lids - not a single matching bottom. On the right - bottoms, no tops to be found anywhere. Worse than socks disappearing in the dryer! Another of life's little mysteries. The room is approaching dangerously neat but so far I am doing ok with it. I brought home a piece from the studio that I'm working on; it needs to be here so I can sew it together as I go along. And I have two pieces that need to be put under the needle. This is a smidgen of one of them. Tomorrow, my contractor will finish up. He was here today, which is why I was home cleaning out STUFF. Tomorrow, I hope to actually sew. I'm too tired tonight, but I hope also to go back tomorrow to Laura Cater-Woods' new book, which I am determined to use! I started reading it the other night and collecting images or ideas. A workbook is good - it forces you to write things down and then you remember them.I will tempt my muse after what I hope will be a good night's sleep. Anon.

eggs and other mysteries

I think this week set a record: I was in the studio every day. Hooray! I have work on the wall, I finished writing an article, I have mailed every book that was ordered, I sent off my donation to the SDA auction, and I had a wonderful two-day visit from Cindy Shaw a textile and book artist whose beautiful work you must see. Cindy lives in Thailand and we met seven years ago when we both studied with Kerr Grabowski. We've kept in touch but each summer I have been somewhere else when she came to to visit her family. This year, our schedules meshed - so she came for a play date. She brought me these hand-printed napkins in a divine box that she made, which I couldn't get a good picture of. Cindy had a chance to use soy wax, which is not available in Thailand. Naturally, she loved it. And we both screenprinted with thickened dyes using a variety of resists. I had a really mysterious result and neither of us can figure out how it happened. I decided to deconstruct a red screen over a piece of blue fabric I had printed with what looks like flour paste resist. here I am putting sodium alginate paste on the screen to release the dye. I also used some yellow thickened dye to deconstruct the screen. Here is what the fabric looks like after the thickened dye has dried. Then I steamed, rinsed, and washed the fabric. Here's what I got. Discharge? Looks that way! Since I didn't use discharge paste and didn't smell Thiox, this remains a mystery. It's in the category of "I couldn't have done this if I'd tried" - and it is very interesting, indeed. I am still scratching my head over this. Stay tuned for the next layer. Then, on the way home, we stopped at Whole Foods to pick up some necessities: kalamata olives, 12 grain bread, heavy cream, espresso coffee, and zucchini. Now I've seen all kinds of things at Whole Foods, but this beautiful display in the produce aisle stopped me cold. The sign said duck eggs. What would anybody want with duck eggs? And why were they not refrigerated? Right below the future quackers was another display: this time, teensy eggs followed by some huge ones. Dinosaur eggs? The teensy ones had a sign that said quail eggs (another mystery: what do you do with them and why would you want to have them?). And the dinosaur eggs merely had a sign that said LOCAL. Here is brave Cindy holding one of them. I was laughing so hard I am surprised the camera stayed still. We finally saw another sign that said "ostrich eggs." OSTRICH eggs? LOCAL ostriches? Another mystery. If the sign had said wild turkey eggs, I might believe it. But I haven't seen any ostriches locally - and in fact, I don't believe I have ever seen an ostrich, except in cartoons. So besides the mystery of local ostriches, the more important question is - what on earth do you do with an ostrich egg? And why would you want one?

back in the studio

Can you hear me sigh from happiness? This is due not only to being here, but in no small measure to the fact that we have air conditioning, at last. Ahhhhh. I've been here for two hours and I guess you could say I have accomplished a lot. I've put away and cleaned up all the stuff I left in chaos a few weeks ago. I brought a bunch of fabrics from home to be ironed and sorted so I can actually work with them. I found several screens I had left to dry that are now ready to print with, so I am putting that on my agenda for today or later this week. Deconstructed screen printing. But for the moment, I am finishing up an early lunch so I can spend the rest of the day without interruption. Friday night's leftover lobster on yesterday's leftover salad. Done, and time to go back to work.

I've been thinking...

Comtemplating, really. Lots of things went through my head this week but due to a family emergency, have been too tired to post. All is well by now, but I have forgotten half of those thoughts. Never mind, the important ones are coming back... First -- those of you who have taken the time to e-mail me that you love the book - thank you! I'm so happy, and I hope you have a great time with it. I've been working furiously to get them all out and the last three will be at the post office on Monday, priority mail. All the domestic orders should be in your hands before the week is out. You can read a very nice review if you click here and scroll down. And Susan Brubaker Knapp had a few things to say on her blog, too! Second -- coincidentally, Martha Sielman's new book, Masters:Art Quilts, arrived in my own mailbox last week. There has been a spate of art quilt anthologies lately, so I was prepared to see "same old, same old." And yes, there are many of the usual suspects. But there are some fresh voices in this collection, and I am happy to see that Martha does not just include U.S. artists. Furthermore, she devotes enough pages to each artist that there is work by almost all of them that I had not seen before. There is so much here, both visually and in the artists' own words, that I not only enjoyed it, I want to go back and read it again. Check it out on Martha's website while you are reading the review of my book. Third -- I have been thinking about why we are so reluctant to cut into fabric, especially fabric we have printed. In my workshop at QSDS, we spent 2-4 days printing and 3 days using some of what we printed. Yes, some fabric should remain as whole cloth. But most of it becomes much more interesting if it is cut and combined, incorporated or reassembled. This was a demo piece in my workshop -- random screenprinted with I-forget-what as a resist. If one of my studients had printed it, I would have said "it's got wonderful movement - but now what? Print more and make it whole cloth? Or leave it alone and cut it up? It could go either way. This one has some nice bits but needs to be cut up. It has so many layers, I can't remember what was what. I have resisted cutting this one because I think it would make a strong element in another piece. But maybe too strong: perhaps it really does need to be cut into three segments. "You can always make more," I tell my students. But then, there is "do as I say, not as I do." It has been so long since I've been in the studio, what with teaching, traveling, and tending to family emergencies. I was planning to go tomorrow, but the Gillman clan from Bethesda is up here and stopping by on their way home. So, Monday. In the meantime, I continue to contemplate my crowded wall in the studio-cum-sewing room at home. And tonight, I will enjoy the luxury of silence, fabric that needs to be pressed, and a table covered with brand new silver ironing board fabric.