weekend express

That's what is seems like, it went so quickly. Yesterday was a blur, spent mostly in the supermarket(s). Only Whole Foods has the yogurt I love - so that was stop #2 after the huge shopping at the Shop-Rite, which was mobbed with pre-superbowlers. Aarrgh. Of course, you can't go into Whole Foods without coming out $50 poorer for 5 things. Fast forward to today..

I'd love to have you all for brunch, but these invites are for my neighbors. Postcards. I spent a good part of the day today screening these and then wonder-undering fabric to cover the paint blobs. But they'll never know. Then, Marty and I went to another opening of the exhibit,"Breast Cancer: An Artist's View," which is traveling around New Jersey and is in its third location. The space was larger than the previous space, so there were several more artists invited to participate. My piece, "Bad Hair Day" will be traveling again with the show to fourth gallery next month.Tonight, going back into the fabric I printed with f.o. yesterday. I think I'm ready to send them off to the guild who wants them as enticements. This one was depressing yesterday but it's better today with a couple more layers, including some foil. Construction fence & sequin waste, screened & stamped, and a foam brush.

Construction fence, soap thingie, insert from a pencil box, and rubber mat. Then it needed a layer of text, so I wrote all over it. Better.

This is more typical of my urban stuff: printed with a rubber mat, a metal grid, and a rubber stamp. I don't remember what else. I may not send this one.

There's more but I have to get up in 4.5 hours. Good night.

rainy Saturday

While the weather has been relatively warm, this afternoon made a good backdrop for a depressing movie. The scene from my deck, which could not be much gloomier. I'd know this tree anywhere. - you know, the one that keeps its dead leaves all winter. Aha, but INSIDE, a hub of colorful activity in my studio!! I have been fighting with a piece on my wall; another one needs the facing stitched on; a third one needs quilting, and finally, I have fabric and paint spread out because I am supposed to be printing fabric for class samples and nothing is looking happy. It needs to be HAPPY. Well, I'll sew the facing the small piece onTuesday, when I go do my civic duty. Jury duty, that is. In the state of NJ, it pays $5 a day, which doesn't cover the cost of your lunch from the grease truck outside the courthouse, let alone your gas to get there. Forunately, I have my knitting. My husband's birthday is in 2 weeks and this was supposed to be for his last b.d. At this rate, he'll be 80 before I finish it. Well, intermission is over. Blogger's server is down so I had better get back to work. Enough of this procrastinating.

happy blogiversary to me

Oh, dear, I missed sending myself a card. Has it been a year since I first sat down to write this stuff? Jan 31 - late by 2 days, but that's ok. I forgive myself for the lapse. I've been busy. In fact, I just took a photo of a piece on my wall (here is the salient detail) and realized that I have come full circle. Or maybe I have not moved at all.

When I looked back just now at my first blog post, January 31, 2005, here is what I saw.I was talking about how obsessed I was with this picture and others of the same woman. I love this picture. Somebody asked me today at crit who she was and I asked whether it really mattered. Only to me. To everyone else, her identity is irrelevant. Here is the full piece on today's wall, which I still have to finish. But it is done. And it named itself, so that is good. The background fabric is a part of a piece I batik'd a few weeks ago. We were talking in crit group today about how difficult it can be to use the fabrics we've printed. One as busy as this is especially difficult, I think. But it spoke. Would that they would all speak! My friend Diane says that her fabrics sit on the wall and then jump up and wave their hands and shout "me! me!" Mine more or less whisper. Once in a while they sing. The next ones sang and this piece made itself in the blink of an eye.

The black and white which is in both of these pieces is fabric I batik'd with paint when I was making class samples. Obviously, the fabric will not make it to class. The red and white fabric was printed last summer when I was demonstrating how to screen print with thickened dyes and found objects. I have more of this fabric so it will undoubtedly show up in something else. Another woman. No title yet - but it will travel in a small works show that will be in Dallas, so I have to come up with something. Speaking of titles - when Helene and I went to the Rauschenberg exhibit we realized that we could see absolutely NO relationship between his titles and his work, in most cases. I've been having an ongoing discussion about naming work, with anybody who would engage. Somehow the title "Untitled I" doesn't do it for me - although I can really understand it. My friend Judy is working on a series now and they are all called "Torn Forms #1" and so on. Works for her. I know somebody else who just opens up the dictionary, closes her eyes, points, and whateve word she hits is the title for her current piece. Maybe Robert Rauschenberg did that, too. And maybe it ain't a bad idea. We were discussing this again today. If you have a piece with trees and you call it "Trees" there's no chance for the viewer to think about anything. But if you call the same piece "Regeneration" or "Square Foot", you give the viewer a chance to bring his/her own interpretation to the piece - or some thought about what meaning the piece may have. Or even a "huh??" Enough of this idle chitchat - it is already the next day and I need to get my beauty sleep so I can think of some creative titles for my work tomorrow.

after

Nancy Eha kindly send me a jpg of an 'after' detail of my piece in her book. Thought you'd like to see what she did with it. What an imagination! I would never in a million years have thought of it. Almost dinnertime. I spent the entire afternoon going through my bills and business expenses for taxes. Still not finished - but that's all for today, folks! I am going to play after dinner. If I accomplish anything new, I'll let you know

round 2

For those of you who wrote to me privately and commented yesterday, here it is flipped 90 degrees. It will stay on my wall that way while I go multi-task, dealing with taxes and other fun stuff. I'm taking the piece back to my crit group tomorrow for rehab. In the meantime, my studio is not too bad. Yet. The tax paperwork is temporary.

Bead Creative

I just got an e-mail from Nancy Eha that her new book, Bead Creative Art Quilts, is hot off the press! If you are into beads, you know that Nancy does gorgeous work - and I'm really flattered that she invited me to be part of her new book. Am I a beader? No way. But one of my pieces is in her book and I'm very pleased. Nancy took one of my quilts - Urban Garden - and beaded it for her book. Here is the "before." I have no idea of what the 'after' looks like, so I'm eager to see the photo. I'm also pleased that Nancy has bought my quilt for her own collection -- but of course, it is now beaded.

focal point

This is a finished piece. Or is it?

It is quilted. It is faced. It is hanging on my wall. It is lively. It is yardage. I can't seem to find the focal point I thought was there when I made the piece. And I'm not sure whether I can fix it or whether I should just name it and leave it alone. It's trying to tell me something, but I don't quite know what. And if it was talking before I finished it, I didn't hear it. If this were your piece, what would you do? Marty said I should just write FOCAL POINT in big letters and draw an arrow pointing to where I want people to look. Ya know, he might just have something there.

I weep for Wendy

I gasped as I saw the front page of this morning's NY Times -- Wendy Wasserstein is dead at age 55 of lymphoma. It can't be! But it is. I have felt sad all day. But it wasn't until I read the brief and very personal editorial tonight at dinner that I wept. I am mourning as I write. While I only met Wendy once, when she spoke to the audience after we watched her early play "Uncommon Women and Others," I feel as though I have lost someone I knew. She graduated from Mount Holyoke 8 years behind me, and "Uncommon Women" was how we referred to ourselves at Holyoke. The play was her senior thesis and it covered familiar ground. She and I had, after all, lived in some of the same dorms, had shared many of the same experiences and professors - and I, like so many others who had gone to a 'girls' college in the mid 20th century, understood so many of the experiences her plays were based on. "The Heidi Chronicles," dealt with all-too-familiar issues to those of us who came of age in those years...and those who are still coming of age. Wendy was funny, smart, independent, and talented beyond belief. Famous, yes -- but always approachable and down-to-earth. I am bereft.

the last word

I knew this would happen. The place is so peaceful and neat that I just want to sit here and stare into space. Or maybe that's because I'm too tired to do anything else.Just for the record, and I won't bore you with it again (for a while). Here are a few shots of my neat room. Of course, I don't know where anything is...but it looks nice. Any bets on how long this will last??

I am still ironing

and I am still sorting scraps of all sizes. Remind me not to hire a space consultant again for another decade. When I am finished and can post about something some more interesting, I will.

Mrs. Closet

I spent the day with Mrs. Closet, my space consulatant. I probably should call her Dr. Closet, since she looked at my studio and diagnosed both it and me with the same serious disease. However, you have seen pictures of my workspace so you can easily imagine that the cure is not so easy. To begin the long road to a cure, the cheerful Mrs. Closet insisted that we leave the house and make some purchases. She took me to Drug Fair, where we stocked up on plastic shoe-boxes and 12 quart containers. Then, on to Staples to buy more milk box-type bins that stack and have wheels. (see post-modern sculpture on left). After a few more errands and a divine Indian lunch where we ate far too much, Mrs. Closet and I came back to start the real work of the day: REORGANIZING. Chore #1: Color-coordinate the containers. Mrs. C. insisted that I stack 3 white containers together so they would at least give the illusion of being organized. She had also insisted I purchase containers in the same silver as the two I already had -- for the same reason. Much as I dislike admitting it, she had the right idea: the room looked better as soon as I stacked like color bins together. Chore #2: Empty all the bins, iron and sort the fabric. Put into shoe boxes and 12 quart containers. Do you think this is EASY?? Mrs. C. had the easy part: taking out the bits of fabric and handing them to me. While I was sorting, I was putting fabrics on the wall. This is how my new work emerges. Chore . #3: While you are sorting, TOSS the horrible ones. This was easy. Trust me, there were some real dogs in there. They are woofing away in big black garbage bags. #4: Make a "Can this fabric be saved?" pile and send them to rehab. This, too, was easy. I have a container overflowing with fabric that needs therapyI will not bore you with another picture. Tomorrow, Helene and I are going to see the Rauschenberg exhibit at the Met -- a much needed detour from the path Mrs. Closet has set me on. And then, I can continue the cure over the weekend ahead. Stay tuned.