Fiberart Musings

SAQA Auction

2012-02-02T12:13:00.000-08:00

I have been working like crazy in my studio, creating new pieces for my collaboration with Paula, "A View Within", and making a small series for the Twelve by Twelve theme Metamorphosis. I also took some time to make a 12" piece for the SAQA auction. This is from a sample I made for a larger piece, trying to see if wool felting I used as batting would cause too much waffling of the fabric. Turns out, when I blocked it the piece was fine. I cut this down to size and added little handstitching. It's one of those pieces that's difficult to photograph properly, because of the black/white and because there is so much texture. This is not an official photo, just something quick for the blog.

For the body images series, I'm working on a fractured wrist next, and I wanted to do some shibori for the two arm bones (radius and ulna). This worked out really well, with some random marks left over on the side.

This will be the 15th in a series for this work, and I can't see slowing down yet.

Sketchbooks

2012-01-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

I'm not one for journaling, or even sketching, really. I'm usually good about packing a sketchbook, but I never seem to have time to take it out and use it. The one time I did sketch on a trip was at Monument Valley, and I think that's because we had lots of down time there and I was maybe a little bored.
All this is just a segue into a little project I read about on someone's blog, can't remember who. There seem to be a lot of bloggers doing various small projects in the new year and I recall someone mentioning stitching on paper. I thought about the sketchbook and what I could do with it.

I learned how to make this simple book in a Dorothy Caldwell workshop and came home and made a few that are 6 1/2" by 10".

I used Micron and Pentel pens to sketch shapes I saw, then put the book away when I go home.

I pulled it out for this project and painted the pages with Tsukineko Inks, then stitched with #12 Pearl cotton.

The backs look more interesting than the fronts to me.

I'm doing this in the evening while watching the mindless shows I'm into right now, like CSI, Unforgettable, etc. ( I can't stitch during Hung, or Boardwalk Empire, I might miss something good)

So when I'm done, it will probably go back on the shelf it came off of, but it will look nicer than it did before.

Lots of inspiration out there in blogland for this kind of project.

Back To Work

2011-12-30T11:01:00.000-08:00

I haven't really taken much time off this holiday, I just don't have much I can show you. One thing I have been working on is a new piece for the continuing body image series. I have been thinking a lot about the colors I want to use, and it's been a dilemma for me. The last piece I made using a head image was in red and turquoise, seen here. I like the colors, but wanted something different, something that would tie in with this.

I really like the burnt orange, aqua idea, and dyed up a lot of different pieces, hoping some of them work. I added in a few reds and turquoise and I think it is going to tie together just fine.

The image below is the one I will be working with, I'm hoping to focus on negative space with this one.

Happy New Year to you all

Joan Snyder

2011-12-17T10:12:00.000-08:00

I guess right now at least, my favorite artist is Joan Snyder. I own two books with her artwork in them. The first, Joan Snyder by Hayden Herrera, focuses on her paintings. In it Snyder is quoted as saying"Painting is my religion. It is the altar I go to to face myself."

Another essay by Norman Kleeblatt, from the same book says "Her structural reliance upon the grid and her gestural resistance to its constraints remains another oft-cited example of the contradictory aspects of Snyder's practice". Now, I'm the type that looks at the pictures then goes back and reads the text. This quote had me going back and looking at the paintings again.

It was interesting to look at these with the idea they started at some point with a grid.

The other book I own about Joan Snyder is titled Dancing With The Dark Joan Snyder Prints 1963 - 2010. by Faye Hirsch and Marilyn Symmes. In this book I learned that Snyder started out in college at Rutgers making wood cut prints, and continued making prints throughout her life.

One of my favorite pieces by her is Resurrection, 1977, which I don't have a picture of here, but includes oil, acrylic, fabric, wallpaper, newspaper and tissue paper, gold paint, paper mache, and graphite on canvas. Talk about collage!

I'll leave you with this "... to get from one place to another I had to do certain kinds of work which didn't always get my message out, but I was always struggling to get it across. Over the years, I built a visual language which now allows me to say anything I need to say."

Richard Diebenkorn

2011-12-03T15:06:00.000-08:00

Another one of my favorite books is Richard Diebenkorn In New Mexico with essays by Gerald Nordland, Mark Lavatelli, and Charles Strong.

I own a few books about Diebenkorn but what captures my interest in this book is the use of line. Diebenkorn was only in New Mexico for a few years, but it seemed to be a very prolific time for him.

One of my favorite descriptions from the book is this
"He described three ways that lines can be used, implying that successful abstractions employ all three. Lines form the outlines of shapes; lines move independently of color fields or shapes; and lines exist behind or within color fields."

Words to ponder when I'm making my art.

Book Reviews

2011-11-17T15:16:00.000-08:00

I am a complete and total art book whore. I justify this with the idea that I really do study them, treasure them, and honor them. One of my recent purchase was this treasure.

PUSH Stitchery: 30 Artists Explore the Boundaries of Stitched Art

This book has a very diverse group of artists whose medium is stitch and I found something interesting about each one of them. I have a few favorites include Joetta Maue, whose blog http://littleyellowbirds.blogspot.com/ I follow and Gillian Bates, http://www.gillian-bates.com/default.aspx,
who has these wonderful British seaside canvases she makes using reclaimed fabric and machine embroidery. Here is one of her canvases

I found out pretty quickly that she has an etsy shop, and purchased one of her canvases for a very reasonable price.
If you get a chance, check this book out, it's a real gem

Catching Up

2011-11-11T15:09:00.000-08:00

I came home from Houston to construction going on in my studio.

We had visited my artist friend Deb Weir http://www.deborahweir.net/, and saw the wonderful skylights in her her home studio. All the way home we talked about them, how much natural light they added to the room, and decided to look into it. I packed up my room before I left for Houston and this is what I came home to.

I was ok without my work area for a few days, but by Wednesday I was ready stitch. We had set up my machine in the library and I'm working away on a piece I'm making for my collaboration with my friend Paula.

Before I left, my daughter Steph brought our new granddaughter Marlee to visit. We took her to visit great grandma and they both look excited to see each other.

Then cousin Riley came over to check things out, and she looks interested in this new creature too.

I'm still on a glow from Houston, and excited about deciding on our new project, hopefully to be revealed in the next few weeks.

Houston 2012

2011-11-07T15:10:00.000-08:00

I'm back from Houston, exhausted but exhilarated. What a wonderful four days. I was the first Twelve there, and this is what I saw when I walked into the exhibit hall. We had an inside area with the Theme Quilts, and an outside area with the Colorplay.

Brenda arrived a few hours later and it was so wonderful greeting an old friend for the first time. This is a picture of our display area.

We were so fortunate to have Del Thomas as our sponsor for the exhibit. She made this dream come true, and we owe her a huge debt of gratitude. I wish she could have been there to see it in person. The comments we received ranged from "You changed my life" to "I don't get it"!

The exhibit area was never empty, and we all had fun talking to the viewers, explaining our project, basking in the compliments.

We were all sad Françoise, Helen and Kirsty couldn't make it, but they were there in spirit, and Gerrie printed out photos of them so we could take them with us to all the celebrations.

What a wonderful memory this week was. I was able to meet Kirstin, Nikki, Deborah, Brenda and Terri in person, so I have now met eleven of the Twelves. From our display table I could look over and see my other quilt in the show, Spinal Study 1, which was in the Dinner At Eight exhibit. That quilt sold at

Long Beach show, so I won't be seeing it again

Houston

2011-11-02T14:58:00.001-07:00

I'm here, ten minutes before opening at the IQF in Houston. I can't find my phone, and can't remember how to download pics from my camera to my Ipad, but it's all good. These terrible pictures is with my Ipad.

Once I get over my excitment and get my electronics figured out, I'll do a proper post.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

New work

2011-10-16T11:44:00.000-07:00

I'm working away steadily on the body image pieces, this is #14 in the series. I am surprised I'm not getting tired of this, but every image is so full of possibilities, I feel like I could go on forever. We are fortunate to have friends send us images, it makes the work more personal.

Paula and I are putting together a blog to showcase our work, hopefully it will be up and running the next week or so.

Gerrie Congdon, one of my fellow 12's will be on Pat Sloan's radio show Monday, talking about our group. If you click on the button, you can find out when it's available in your area. 9 of the 12's will be in Houston for IQF with all of our quilts displayed, both Theme series and Color series. We will have our books available for sale and autographing

Ongoing

2011-10-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

Ongoing in my struggle with my new Sweet Sixteen sewing machine. Stitching with regular thread is a dream, fast, smooth, easy to manipulate free motion. My issue is with heavier thread. I wanted to stitch the piece below with something heavy and I picked up some Gutermann heavy duty polyester thread at my local Joann's because the color was what I wanted. I mentioned in an earlier blog that I was having trouble getting the tension to cooperate, and my thread was either breaking, or looping, no in between. It ended up back in the shop when I threw the timing off. I bought an upper thread tension guide from Superior, I bought a horizontal thread holder for the machine, I even bought an extra bobbin case thinking I would need to mess with that. When I got the machine back I used the tension guide and the horizontal thread holder and achieved nirvana in stitching. For a while. Then I noticed the thread would periodically come loose from the tension discs and I'd be looping again. Since I was almost done stitching this, I kept rethreading and moving on. Then I heard the ominous clunking noise that told me I had thread stuck in the bobbin case again, and sure enough I threw the timing out again. I called the company, they suggested moving one of the thread guides over so the thread goes through the discs vertically instead of at an angle. Back to the sewing shop we went, and I have ended up finishing the stitching on this by hand.

I am frustrated, because I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or something's wrong with the machine. When I pick it up this time, I'm going to sit in the repair shop and stitch with the heavy duty thread and see if they can figure it out.

With better news, my mom celebrated her 89th birthday recently, and her she is with her great granddaughter Riley, who is 10 months.

Challanges

2011-09-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a new piece for an invitational and I'm having so much fun with the process I wanted to share it. My original idea is to use black testfabric with wool felt for the batting. I'm stitching using lines on part of the fabric, and a grid on the other part. I wanted to end up with something 20 x 20, so I started at 30 x 30. I added a few buttons underneath to see if I like them. The image below is after two trips through the washer and dryer. It is really wonky and measures about 22 x 22.

I blocked it and managed to get it to lay flat. I know it's hard to see, black is hard to photograph. So far, so good.

Now I wanted to add some shapes, at first I thought circles, but decided circle shapes seem so perfect, to make them look right I would have to center them and space them really accurately, or else make them really off center, neither of which I wanted. So I decided on ovals.

Since I used testfabric, I knew bleach would bring it to white ( In my case, off white, since I never leave it on long enough . I haven't deided if I want black with white ovals or white with black ovals, and since this is a sample, I decided to do both. I used soy wax to preserve the black ovals, and a freezer paper stencil for the white circles. I mixed the bleach with print paste for the white circles, it was diluted, and I didn't get as much white as I wanted. So, I'm left deciding if I like the buttons I sewed in, if I like the line stitching or the grid, and if I like white/black or black/white, or both. I did find out after the third washing it had shrunk to 20 x 20, so next time I'll only wash it twice.

Marlee Madison

2011-09-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

Our newest grandbaby was born Tuesday. 5 pounds, 8 ounces of sweetness.

Here are her mom and dad, our daughter Stephanie and son in law Rich.

And very excited grandma and grandpa (really, he is excited, just looks dazed)

This one lives in Phoenix, so Southwest Airlines will be celebrating right along with us.

New Pillows

2011-09-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, at a show or in a class, I buy a piece of fabric made by the artist. I take them home and put them away, not wanting to cut into them. What a waste, right?

I was reading Judy's blog a while ago http://judyinthedyes.blogspot.com/2011/07/pillowmania.html, and saw these beautiful pillows she had made.

Now Judy used her own fabric to make hers, but I got to thinking about this Jeanne Beck http://artbyjeannebeck.blogspot.com/ art I bought in a class I took with her, and thought, I can finally put this out where people can see it. Front and back photos.

At Last

2011-09-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

The final Twelve by Twelve colorplay quilts are being revealed today on this site http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/, and they are great.

I'm not sure where we are going next, but I'm sure it will be as amazing as the rest of the adventure has been.

Line

2011-08-22T13:38:00.000-07:00

Our oldest daughter Julie is a part time artist and full time govt. employee. She moved recently to Big Sur and rents a place with her boyfriend on the Edward Weston compound. It's a small place, around 800 sq. feet, with a stream and a trout pond out back. We were finally up there visiting a few weeks ago, and it made me so happy to see her so happy. I forgot my camera when we visited,

but a few days ago we were at LACMA and saw an Edward Weston exhibit. I took a few photos here, and they are really bad, but I was so captivated by the lines in his work.

Seeing a bell pepper next to a nude, with similar lines just reminded me of how important it is

to pay attention to the simplest basic design principles. Switching subjects, below is my new sewing machine, with the unfortunate name of Sweet Sixteen, because of the 16 inch base. You stitch from the front end of the machine, like a long arm, and it only does free motion, and it stitches really, really fast.

This bobbin winder looks very intimidating, but it's actually simple, and the bobbin holds lots of thread, so your not changing it too often.

I feel like it's back to basics with this machine, no fancy stitches to choose from, no needle left or right, it's perfect for me.

Body Images, continued

2011-08-09T14:37:00.000-07:00

I finished thes two pieces a while ago, but am just getting around to posting them. The first one below, is titled Susan's Neck. This is from someone I don't know personally, but her MRI of the neck was very powerful to me. It made me think of all that goes on inside our necks, and how we pay no attention when everything is running smoothly, but we are very aware when something's not right.

The image below is titled Pinned. It came from an MRI of an upper leg and knee, with a pin in the leg. The shapes are a little skewed, just like the leg was.

I tried working on the baby ultrasounds, but I don't seem to be ready to work with them yet, so I'm back to working on adult images. Right now I'm doing a compilation of some spines from several xrays.

We went to the Ventura County Fair with Riley yesterday. It's so much fun to look at these events through a childs eyes. She was totally unimpressed by the animals, in fact, my daughter Julie said she would probably have just as much fun at the grocery store. I guess she's right, but we had fun taking her.

Starting a New Series, Continuing On.

2011-08-02T10:28:00.000-07:00

This past week I've moved laterally in my body images series, and started thinking about my daughter's fetal ultrasound images. Right now I have two daughters images to choose from, and they have generously shared them with me. I dyed a lot of the fabric I want to work with, a lot of earth tones this time, and now I'm looking at the images, picking out what I want to emphasize in my work. I love the way the images seem abstracted already, although I'm sure you can pick out the spinal column here. Above the spine is the wall of the uterus, and I'm working on depicting that.

One of the techniques I'm using is shibori, I think it gives me the patterns I want, but I'm not good enough at it to predict the outcome.. With the piece below, I drew my marks to make this shape ( , and I know enough to stitch opposite the lines you want to end up with.

This is exactly what I wanted, although I'm not crazy about the color, it's to dark. I can fix that later.

Yesterday I found this piece that I had stitched for a Jan Myers Newbury class, but never finished. It was wavy lines, some of them trailing off the fabric then starting up again.

It was tricky getting the dye just where I wanted it, and theres a few unwanted spots here. This sort of looks like vaginas to me, and I didn't want to go that far back into the pregnancies :), but I think I can cut them up and use them somewhere. I ordered Sue Cavanaugh's book "Extreme Shibori", and received it yesterday. Wow. She's amazing. She talks a little bit about her process near the end of the book, and it's really fascinating. I emailed her to order the book, her email can be found here http://www.suecavanaughart.com/Contact.asp

I've also started messing around with soy wax and bleach. I'm able to control the results better than with shibori.

Paula and I haven't stopped working on the other body images, just shifting gears for a while.

Lynn's Spine

2011-07-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

I realized yesterday that I had posted the same piece of art twice, which I didn't mean to do. These two are from an MRI of my friend Lynn's spine.

Up until now I have been able to use fabric from my large stash of hand dyes and am very thankful I have them. In the piece below, I did some discharge on hand dyed black that became a light bue gray color. Discharging is so random with the results, but this ended up suiting my color choices perfectly.

I've posted eight of the twelve pieces I've made so far and when my tech department gets around to it, I'll add it to my side bar. I'm thinking about getting rid of my website. I haven't updated it in ages, and I'm not sure it's necesssary anymore, since I can put everything on the blog side panel. Any have any opinions on this?

Moving Along

2011-07-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

Here are two more of my series on xray's, MRI's and CT scans. This first one is from an xray of my friend Lisa Miller's foot. In the original xray, there are lots of pins in her toes, and I was able to use a piece of rusted nails I made a while ago. Rust is really difficult to sew over, and I busted a few needles, even on these little bits.

This hip fracture belongs to a friend of Paula's http://paulachung.blogspot.com/, and this woman has had the misfortune of breaking several bones due to severe osteoporosis.

I'm using wool bedspread batting in all of these, which shrinks just enough to add some texture, unlike the wool felting I've used in other pieces, which seems to shrink about 4 inches for every 20 inches of fabric. I'd love to try that on a larger piece, but I don't think I could ever get it to lay flat.

I'm Still Here

2011-07-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

I haven't been blogging much lately, but I've been crazy busy in my studio. I'm working my way through the body parts series I've been absorbed with, and this is number 5 in the series.

I haven't named it yet, but it is from an xray of the pelvic region. Here's a copy of the xray, and I'm sure

you aren't seeing what I see, but that's the beauty of abstraction. I just love studying the picture, trying to figure out what I see in it, and how to represent that in my work.

And these days I can't help but put in a few pictures of Riley. She's 7 months old now, and enjoying 4th

of July with her mom.

Body Parts

2011-06-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

Before I talk about my own work, I want to show you nature's work in my backyard. This Trumpet Vine is about 10 feet tall, and full of flowers.

My own work is not so tall, about 4 feet by 3 feet, and is a continuation of my series on MRI's. This is a very badly fractured hip belonging to the friend of a friend. She has osteoarthritis, and has fractured her hips more than once.

I've finished 10 pieces for this series, and plan at least 2 more. After that, I'm starting on some sonograms from two of my daughters' pregnancies. That will be more personal work, which I think is why I'm spending a lot of time thinking about it, but haven't been able to start on it.

Roadside Artwork

2011-06-07T14:18:00.001-07:00

While driving to Monument Valley we saw several abandoned buildings with artwork on them.

We weren't able to stop until the trip back, and only managed to find three of them.

I'm not sure who painted them, if it was a project of some sort, or an individual.

It was so interesting to see art work onto middle of nowhere.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Monument Valley redo

2011-06-06T11:30:00.001-07:00

Ted and I went back to Monument Valley after being snowed out earlier this year. The weather was perfect, in the 80's, and all the rooms at the hotel look out over the valley.

I'm not much for showing travel photos, but as you probably know, I love texture and lines.

We took a jeep tour the second day for 4 hours and saw some wonderful petroglyphs. The area is governed by the Navajo nation and they leave everything as is, no preservation, but also no climbing the monuments, no off road vehicles, no private cars on a lot of the roads. They know that some day this will all be worn away, some of the monuments are starting to crumble, and the petroglyphs are fading, but they believe it's all just the cycles of nature.

I'm not usually that interested in the desert, in fact Ted dragged me to 4 Corners which was a complete waste of time in my opinion, but I really started looking at the lines nature made and they are really cool.

I have two more Twelve by Twelve pieces left to make, and I think I'll concentrate on line.

I'm thinking about Kantha stitching,

or using soy wax and my new Ukranian Easter Egg decorators to draw really fine lines. We'll see.

Spice Colors

2011-06-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

The Tweles are at it again, we have a new reveal today. The colors are spicy, and you can see them all here. http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/

This is one of my favorite techniques of using wool batting, lots of stitching, then tossing it in hot water to shrink it.

More Dorothy

2011-05-18T04:28:00.000-07:00

Tomorrows the last day and we are winding down. It's always surprising to me how tired I am each evening, I don't feel liked I've worked terribly hard, but I think the mental stimulation is exhausting. I'll leave you with some images.

These are some little books we made.

This is an AIDS quilt from India, made by a women's co-op. Those orange things around the edge are condoms.

This is a piece I started using the Kantha stitching. I'm starting to do some research on fetal ultrasounds, this one being my daughter Stephanie's baby at 16 weeks.

This strange thing was started in Bob Adams class with discharge screen printing using Thiox, then in this class, I put soy wax on the black areas and discharged the rest in bleach.
After a week of Margaret's wonderful cooking, I'm not looking forward to grocery shopping and laundry when I get home.

Dorothy

2011-05-17T16:06:00.001-07:00

I'm at the Crow Barn taking a Dorothy Caldwell class this week, and trying not to let the cold wet weather get to me. The pictures below are some of the inspiration Dorothy posted for us.

This photo is some finger painting done with India ink,

And this is a paintbrush tied to a 3 foot pole for some painting using my left arm

Today was all about stitching, and tomorrow we start on wax! Dorothy is a wonderful teacher, very patient and inspiring, and the Crow Barn is an awesome place to take classes.

Dinner with Gerrie and Steve

2011-05-13T13:20:00.000-07:00

Gerrie, a fellow 12 and her husband are on a road trip and we were able to catch up with them in Santa Barbara.

We had a great Italian dinner and wonderful conversation. They are off to 29 Palms, and I am off to the Crow Barn for a class with Dorothy Caldwell. This class is about mark making, and having taken a similar class with Dorothy a few years ago, I know I'm in for a good time.

Dinner At Eight

2011-05-06T07:34:00.000-07:00

My piece "Spinal Study 1" has been accepted into the invitational "The Space Between" by Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jennison.

To read an interview about me, check out the blog site http://dinnerateightartists.blogspot.com/. This piece is the first in a series I am doing related to x-rays, MRI's, CT scans and ultrasounds.

26 miles AcrossThe Sea

2011-05-04T06:53:00.001-07:00

Actually it's only 22 miles, but Santa Catalina was awaiting for me. You know the old joke that life begins when the kids grow up and the dog dies?, well sadly Oscar the wonder dog died last week, and the kids are hopefully gone for good, so we are taking a spur of the moment trip to Catalina. I grew up in So. Cal. and I've never been here, and we got an incredible deal at the Wrigley Mansion so here we are. This is the view out one of our bedroom windows.

Apparently Calvin Coolidge slept in our room and I hope he was tall because you have to climb a ladder to get into the bed.

Bob Adams Class

2011-04-19T16:02:00.000-07:00

I just finished taking a discharge class by Bob Adams http://www.bobadamsart.com/index.html locally at the Quilters Studio in Newbury Park http://quiltersstudio.com/. Bob is well known for using multiple techniques in a single piece of art and below is one example of that.

This was a 5 day class that covered bleach, Formusol and Thiox in every imaginable form. We sprayed,
pasted and painted. Then we heat set everything and got wonderful results.

I always find it interesting to see the way others work in classes. At least one student was focused on making a work of art by the time class was over. A few of us used the same image several times over on different types of fabric. Others had specific fabrics they wanted to work with. I think everyone was satisfied with their results.

These were some of mine, with an image I like repeated on the right side using cotton and silk/cotton blends. Bob's a magnificent teacher and I'm lucky enough to have take two classes with him.

Chartreuse

2011-04-12T15:24:00.000-07:00

Our Twelves had a reveal today and the color was chartreuse. Check it out here http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/. This is mine

Stuck in a Rut?

2011-03-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

I'm stuck home today prepping for a colonoscopy, which is a good thing because I have lots of time to think about my latest series and where I'm going with it. My friend Paula Chung (this months Quilting Arts cover girl) and I are working on a series together involving images from MRI's, xrays and CT scans. Paula's images are more reality based, mine are abstract. The first piece I made is my favorite, and I can't show it to you yet because it may be in an invitational show. Below is the second piece.

I've noticed a change in my thought patterns as I work through the pieces and I'm not certain why. I felt like I was getting my groove on with the second and third pieces (below), but now, working on the fifth and sixth pieces I'm feeling a little like I'm stuck in a rut. I'm trying to recapture the enthusiasm of the first piece, and while I'm still excited about the series, I am feeling a bit repetitive, sort of same old, same old.

So today I'm laying them all out to try to see what my mind is saying I'm missing. I have felt very pushed artistically by this series and I don't want to let that go. Maybe while I'm under that twilight sleep tomorrow it will come to me.

In the mean time, here's another gratuitous Riley photo.

Research

2011-03-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

Ted and I were to Hawaii with our daughter and SIL for the last week and a half. They were on vacation and I was doing research for the latest Twelve by Twelve color theme chartreuse http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/.

We stayed at the Sheraton, but spent a lot of time over at the Hilton, mostly because there were lots of interesting things to see and do there.

I wandered around snapping pictures for my research, while they snorkeled with giant turtles and dolphins.

The Hilton is a really large complex with some fabulous art displayed on the outside walls of buildings, mostly Pacific Island art. I couldn't figure out how to photograph most of it because it was enclosed in lucite.

I took my usual close ups and line photos, good for later thermofax screens and inspiration.

We were in our hotel a few nights into the stay when the sirens went off for a tsunami warning. We were evacuated to the parking lot of a nearby shopping center where we slept in our car and on the grass traffic islands, and the sidewalk in front of stores. I forgot to bring my camera but it was an sobering sight seeing so many people sleeping out there. From where we were staying we didn't see the tsunami hit or any of the damage that night. The next day we found out some local buildings had been destroyed.

My heart goes out to the people of Japan. After one night of some minor uncomfortableness, I can't begin to imagine to how it must feel to lose your loved ones, your homes, your possessions. To see your life wash away.

Dark grey thread

2011-03-01T12:48:00.000-08:00

I went to the thread store up in Ventura for some dark grey thread and came home with this. Of course, once I got there I saw lots of dark grey, and medium grey, and then I launched in on a few neutrals, and some blues I knew I didn't have, and then a chartreuse Gerrie would die for. Aren't these yummy! Maybe one of the 12's should have grey as the starting color.

The Twelve's colors for this challange were blue, brown and sage and here is my piece. I've let myself relax a bit with trying to be deep and meaningful, and just started looking at line and shapes. This piece doesn't say anything other than I am pleased with the composition.

I think I have enough thread now to stitch my way through any challanges that come up. If not, I have the store hours memorized.

My strange vacation

2011-02-23T10:15:00.000-08:00

Ted and I had this really awesome trip planned to Monument Valley this last weekend, we were going to fly into Phoenix, then drive 5 hours up through Flagstaff, then stay at this great hotel looking out over the valley. The weather gods intervened, though, and it snowed so hard in Flagstaff the road was closed. Our daughter and SIL live near Phoenix, so we visited with them a couple of days, then decided to go down to Tuscon to see a friend of ours and to check out the art museums there.

We ran into some terrific dust storms on the way down, so bad we had to pull off the freeway and stop while they passed.

In Tucson, we saw a wonderful exhibit at the art museum there of the de la Torre brothers http://www.koplindelrio.com/content/einar-and-jamex-de-la-torre. They make wonderful in your face political statements out of glass.

We headed up to Jerome next to look at a lot of arts and crafts shops. Jerome is on the way to Sedona, and we could see the red rocks in the distance.

I took a few photos for my thermofax collection,

and rescheduled Monument for June.

Book Release

2011-02-11T15:45:00.000-08:00

I have been a very bad blogger, it's been a month since my last post. I can't really show you any new work, most of it has timed releases, but I can show you this!

I received my advance copies of our colaborative book Twelve by Twelve, The International Art Quilt Challange from Lark publishing today. Riley helped me open it and looks fascinated by the cover.
To follow what our group is up to, go to this blog link http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/.

Eggplant, Wine and Emerald Green

2011-01-13T17:02:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the new reveal of the Twelve's colorway series. Nikki chose eggplant, wine, and emerald green and I have to say it was difficult for me to come up with anything I liked. I started five different pieces before I settled into this one. To check out what everyone else has done, you can go to http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/

While these colors were a challenge for me, and in fact making anything with assigned colors is a challenge for me, I did find myself thinking about this in the back of my mind for most of the two and a half months. I find it really interesting how people think through their art. I'm sure some people can come up with a design and assign the prescribed colors to their places, and I know others try to find something about the colors that corresponds to something real in their life. Or some people can even find that colors remind them of an experience they have had. I don't seem to be able to do that and wonder if it is a skill that can be developed.
I've struggled through all the colorway challenges, whether I've liked the color choices or not, because I'm hoping it will open up new pathways in the way I think about my art.

New Work

2011-01-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

It probably seems to you that I'm ignoring my blog and just playing with the grandbaby all day. I wish! I've actually had a burst of creative energy and been working on lots of things. This one below is something I started a couple of months ago, and didn't like the way it was heading, so it sat on my design wall for a while until I could figure out what to do with it. I started out thinking about my construction photos I took several months ago and came up with this design, which when reflecting back is not so great. I used a lot of dyed fabrics that I laid out and stitched heavily to the background. I put in some buttons under the background, stitched around them and threw the whole thing in the wash. It shrunk a bit, adding texture, but the colors were bland and the overall design was bad. I was frustrated because I put so much time into it.

My crit group suggested livening up the colors, as they were all one value. I don't have a picture of the bright colors I painted it, but bad design continued to be bad design. At this point I figured WTF, it was ruined anyway, so why not just paint over that wonderful texture, I could always cut it up right?

Well, I think I made the right decision. I painted over it a couple of times, with the first layer showing through a bit, and the stitching making the piece move a little. I'm keeping it whole. I initially wanted to put it on canvas, but this can't be wrapped as it's too thick, and it's an odd size, so I'd have to cut it down to fit a standard canvas, so I'm pillowcasing it.

And in case you thought I forgot about Riley...

Stupid Sock Animals

2010-12-23T14:23:00.000-08:00

It's not like I don't have enough to do here, deadlines approaching on a few projects, babies to visit, but at my critique group meeting last week, Pam http://pamprice.blogspot.com/ brought this book. I immediatly ordered it with rush delivery, I couldn't wait to start making these.

Only mine are not so cute. I'm not a great follower of directions, and I need lots of pictures. The book kept saying it gets better the more you make, and how great it is to improvise. The first one I made, on the left was made using supplies included in the book kit. The second one is from socks from Target, and yes, that purple across the center are lips. I'm thankful Riley is only 3 weeks old, and hopefully won't judge her grandma too harshly

I bought lots of socks anticipating a whole village of creatures. This may end up a rather small family.

Lost in Life

2010-12-16T12:11:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot going on here in the Rips household, and I haven't had the time to blog. I'll catch you up here briefly. First, the art. My friend Paula and I are trying out working on a series involving body images, including MRI's and ultrasounds. Paula works very large, usually 6-8 feet and she works very quickly, considering the amount of stitching involved. I tend to work slowly, sometimes leaving a piece of work on the design board for days, so while I'm while doodling along on the first one, I think she's working on the third one now. This first image is what I put together based on an image of the head and neck. In my critique group. Loris pointed out the long blue "spine" was to centered. Of course she was right, but I had already stitched the whole thing, so there was no way I could move it.

I ended up chopping off some of the left side. I thought about reattaching it to the right side, but it didn't work. I also muted the blue down a bit with paint. The piece is ok, but I'm not really excited about it, so I started another one, this time larger, not so busy. I'm not ready to show it yet, maybe next week. I'm not so sure why I can look at a friends work and immedietly see if something isn't right, but my own work is so hard to critique, even the obvious stuff. I do photograph it and look at the image, and sometimes that helps, but showing it to others, whose judgement I trust really makes a difference.

Our son Sam left for Australia last night. He's planning on being gone about a year, traveling the country, working, and hopefully traveling on to other parts of the world. A grand adventure for him.

I hope this is the trip of a lifetime. I hope he does not meet and fall in love with a wonderful Australian girl, get married and live there forever. If so, Brenda http://www.brendagaelsmith.com/ will have to become his stepmom!

Riley Grace

2010-11-30T06:56:00.000-08:00

I don't know about Riley, but I've been waiting a long time for this day. Isn't she gorgeous!

Everything went well and everyone's feeling great.

Lots to be Thankful For

2010-11-28T09:47:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving day all our kids were home so we took a family photo with the mom to be front and center.

Our daughter Steph is on the left, with her husband Rich behind her. Our son Sam is showing off his belly, I'm behind him, then Ted, then our daughter Valerie, who is due any day. Her husband Fred is next to her, and our daughter Julie is at the end, showing off her not pregnant belly. Of course, that's Oscar dog cut off at the bottom of the picture. Everyone's going home today, and I'm hoping to get a little bit of art done before the baby arrives. I hope everyone that celebrates it had a great day.

Drek

2010-11-22T14:52:00.000-08:00

That is what I've been making the last couple of weeks. I couldn't figure out what was going on, it seems like everything I thought was a great idea turned terrible once I started working on it. I have a few things I need to get done by certain dates and that's adding to the stress. This morning I had an epiphany. It's Thanksgiving this Thursday and I'm having lots of people over to dinner, and next week my daughter is due to have our first grandchild. In the back (or front) of my mind, these dates have been hanging around and I can't concentrate on anything.

Today I decided to give in to the rest of my life, and cook. Cooking relaxes me, and it doesn't take a lot of thinking. I made lots and lots of manicotti, vegetarian and meat based. I'll take some over to my daughter for when she comes home from the hospital, and the rest is for the night before Thanksgiving, when the rest of the kids will be descending. In the background you can see some Rice Crispies, I'm making some R.C. treats next. It's amazing to me that when I'm doing something mindless like this I can come up with some interesting ideas for my art.

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-07T13:16:00.000-08:00

Ted and I went to Sequoia and King's Canyon for a couple of days and saw a few of these black bears,

Lots of these giant Sequoia trees, with perfect fall weather and very few people.

Ted and I both remember being in Sequoia when we were kids, but neither of us remember King's Canyon.

The drive there was spectacular, it took us 3 hours to drive 37 miles because we kept stopping to enjoy the landscape.

The park ranger told us these were oak trees, we'd never seen any like this before.

Of course, I never stop looking at pattern and texture

This is granite on one of the mountain walls we drove by. I came to a screeching halt to see this.

This time of year there is no place to stay in King's Canyon unless you camp, which we don't, so we drove back to Sequoia the same day.

I had finished a piece just before we left that I think put me in the mood to see these fall colors.

Now we're back waiting for the first grandchild to arrive, sometime around Thanksgiving.

Twelve with Rust

2010-11-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

For the Twelve by Twelve challange chosen by Terri, the colors were rust, plus some aqua/green. I happen to love these colors, and had enough in my stash to make several quilts, but I settled on two. The final choice is posted on the Twelve blog site http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/. This was runner up, the reason being it doesn't really do anything for me. I think the design is a little too busy, and I can't rest my eye anywhere. The construction method is similar to the other piece, but I added three little pieces of paper that I got off the top of a spiral bound notebook, that happened to be this aqua color. I painted them with matte medium and stuck them on, thinking I was so clever, but they don't add anything, and are kind of a distraction to my eye.

One thing I love about this 12 x 12 format, is it's easy to have do overs, you're not using a lot of fabric, and they don't take much time to assemble once the idea is there. This little piece will lay around for a while until I can't stand looking at it and either change it or pack it away.

Finishing up Some Loose Ends.

2010-10-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

I've finished this month's photo interpretation for the Digital to Textile group, and to read about the process, you can go to the blog site http://digitaltotextile.blogspot.com/

I also made another change to the large painted piece I tortured recently. I decided it looked better in thirds, so I took the rotary cutter to it.

I'm not going to mount this on canvas the way I like to do because I would use too much fabric wrapping it around the edges. I could mount it by stitching it to the canvas front and painting the edges of the canvas, which is a technique Diana uses http://dianaparkes.blogspot.com/ and I might still do that, because I think this piece looks more like a painting then fiber.

The Final Product

2010-10-16T14:15:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last several days trying to figure out what to do with the piece I made in the last post. I didn't really care for the initial image, so I decided it didn't matter a whole lot if I wrecked it by experimenting. I almost did. The first thing I did was take out the fiber board I had put in because after I washed it a few times, it fell apart. I then stitched over that area to de emphasize it. I overdyed it. I decided to try painting some bleach on it to take color out. I used paint and a thermofax image I had to add circles. I washed it in dish soap to try to shrink it more as Terry http://studio24-7.blogspot.com/ suggested. Nothing worked. I was ready to cut it up and try to work on several individual pieces, when I sat back and looked at it and realized I really like the stitching in this piece.

I knew that to emphasize the stitching I had to cover up the images, and I didn't think this would work very effectively with dye, so I got out my fabric paints and went to work. This method is reminiscent of the art Deidre Adams http://abstractions.deidreadams.com/ makes and I think it is very effective in showing off the stitching.

I have two photos, one with the flash, one without, because I was in a hurry and didn't want to take the time to set up my tripod, lighting etc. So the top photo is the real red and the bottom photo is the real blue. it's kind of hard to see, but in the top photo, you can still see bits of the images from underneath. I thought about covering them up, but I think they add some depth to the piece.

As far as shrinkage,, this piece ended up 52 wide by 39 long, not much shrinkage. I am not sure this method would have worked if it had shrunk a lot, because the crevasses might be too deep, but I happen to have a piece with crevasses that I'm going to try it out on.

Lesson Learned?

2010-10-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

I talked in my blog on Sept. 19th about using fiberboard in a large piece with wool batting. I've made several of these type pieces in the 18 to 24 inch size, and the batting I used was 100% wool felt from Joann's. The felt comes in 36 inch width and since I wanted to make a large piece, and accounting for shrinkage, I wasn't sure how to work this. Then at the Long Beach Quilt show, I ran across batting from Hobbs that was 100% wool and came in King size bedding size. Perfect. Or maybe not. The piece I made started out 56" x 40". I stitched it with cotton thread covering every inch of the piece. I painted on the dye, batched it, then threw it in the washer, hot water, then dryer. Twice.

It shrunk 4 inches on one side, and 2 inches on the other. Now, this might be great if you are making a regular quilt, but I was really counting on a lot more shrinkage and I didn't get it. The picture above is the post washer/dryer piece, and the picture below is the same, just upside down.

The wool batting is thinner than the felt, and not as dense, neither of which I took into consideration when putting it together. So now I'm trying to decide if I should just leave it alone, cut it up, or add more processes to it, maybe discharging or paint. And if I make another one, and I want it large, can I stitch together 2 pieces of felt, and will it hold during the wash and dry cycle? I guess I'll just have to try it, this time on a much smaller basis.

This is a close up of the finished piece.

Baby shower

2010-09-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

My daughter Valerie is about 7 months pregnant and this weekend is her shower. I have been emerging myself in baby stuff and realize it's a whole new world out there. I went to help her register for a few things and did you know they have baby monitors now that have videos in them, and we saw one that monitored whether or not the baby had moved recently. And the car seat choices were overwhelming.

I came home and bought some outfits from Dharma and got out my soy wax and started playing around. The thing I had to remember is how many times you have to wash this stuff to get the dye out with a baby wearing it. I don't pay that much attention with my fiber art, but I don't want bleeding on all the other baby clothes

Of course I had to make her a baby quilt, which reminded me how far removed I am from exact seams and pointed edges. This pattern was from a Freddy Moran book. I was able to use up a lot of my store bought fabric. They had one for Farmer John too, so I'm ready if a baby boy comes along in the future.

Challenges

2010-09-19T10:07:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about a new piece of fiber art I want to make, and trying to figure out how to best approach it. This is one of my favorite parts of making art. I want this piece to be large, at least 4 feet long and 3-4 feet wide. I'm going to try using the C.June Barnes method of stitching the piece on wool batting then throwing it in hot water to shrink it, as you've seen me do in a few previous posts. The challenge here is can I make a piece that big using this method? When this fabric comes out of the dryer, it usually is kind of wonky on the edges, not laying flat. The other problem (challenge) is that I want some parts of this to remain flat, such as the buttons I did in the other pieces.

In this case, I want a long line, or two or three to roam around the piece. I've been thinking about how to do this for the last couple of weeks when I had to stay off my foot. I came up with a couple of ideas. The first involves Foamies , which are pieces of foam sheet you can buy at Joanne's. I found some thick ones, about 8mm that were about 3" x 8". I thought maybe cutting them in strips and laying them out on the fabric, then stitching around them like I do the buttons might work. As you can see above, it does create a line of interest, but I'm not sure I want a broken line.

So next I tried a ten by fifteen inch sheet of this stuff, only 3mm thick. I cut a long strip of it and sewed it i place This worked ok, but I would have to butt them up against each other to make them long enough.

I was talking to my husband Ted about the best way to go about this and he suggested fiberboard. Fiberboard is used by glass artists to dam up the edges of their glass while it is in the kiln. I'm sure it has other uses too, but I don't know what they are. I wasn't sure it would withstand the washer and dryer, but I made up the above sample and it worked out just great. This stuff comes in long roles, so I can cut any size piece I need.

My next decision is to figure out if I want to leave the edges unfinished, and maybe apply it to another piece of fabric, letting the wonky edges do their thing, or try to contain it with a backing.

Auctions and Shows

2010-09-14T16:11:00.000-07:00

The SAQA auction starts Sept. 20th. For more info, go to http://www.saqa.com/ and check out all the beautiful pieces available. This is my entry below, titled Undergrowth.

Another piece I made using the same technique is titled Beneath the Bridge, and was selected to be in the Healing Arts show at the Community Memorial Hospital in Camarillo.

My art work is traveling way more than I am these days. My recent foot surgery has left me hobbling around the house, unable to stand for very long, which is making me very cranky and in need of making art. I'm making lots of sketches, and doing lots of hand stitching.

This weekend was my mom's 88th birthday. That's her on the right, and the lady on the left is her sister, my aunt Betty, who's 93. She surprised my mom for her birthday. My mom walks a mile a day around her neighborhood, and my aunt Betty volunteers at her local senior center, helping out the old people :). I think I come from a very good gene pool.

Sketchy Ice Creams

2010-08-31T17:30:00.000-07:00

I saw this yesterday today on http://www.gruts.com/ Some days are just like this!

Beep....Beep....Beep

2010-08-30T14:01:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks have been a little nuts around here. We kept hearing a smoke alarm beeping and none of us could find it. We have some alarms that are tied into the electrical system and some on batteries, so after a week of standing on ladders and putting our ears up to them, we finally called our contractor to check it out. He went up in the attic thinking maybe the builders had left an old alarm up there. No luck. He called the electricians to find it and they disconnected all our alarms. The beeping continued. They went up in the attic and insisted it was beeping in a few places up there. They called the framer, who went up in the attic and tore up all the insulation looking for it.

Well, it was finally located using my stethoscope between the bathroom and closet wall.

A large hole was cut in the wall, and there it is,

just under this pipe, which is what caused the noise to echo around so they couldn't locate it. I'm really hoping that's the only one they left sitting around.

On a happier note, my husband Ted has started his own blog, called sanityartgalss.blogspot.com and he's changing the look on my blog. I love having my own IT department

Some New Work

2010-08-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

I've been neglecting my blog, but not my work lately. I finished 2 new pieces using the shrinking wool batting method. The first one is called Dry Season and mounted on a piece of canvas to make the finished size 16 x 20. I used the C. June Barnes method of stitching the layers of fabric with a wool batting, dyeing it, then washing it in hot water to shrink the wool. It has some hand stitching in it.

This second one is called Beneath the Bridge and it's slightly larger, at 18 x 24.

I like making these, they are somewhat unpredictable, but you do have control of most of it.
On the home fronts, our son has moved back for 3 months to save up money to travel to Australia. I'm undecided if this is good news or not, as he is leaving college 14 units shy of his BA in English, on the other hand, he is unattached, has few responsibilities and maybe this is the perfect time to travel. He left college on a good note, making sure if he enrolls next year he doesn't lose his seniority, and the ticket has been purchased, so I guess it's a done deal.
I have been having trouble with my left heel, plantar fasciatis and now a broken heel spur, so I'm having a little minor surgery to do some repair work next Tuesday. I will have a soft cast for a month, then hopefully I'll be back to normal. I have lots of handstitching that is calling out to me, so this should be the time to catch up

Final Prints

2010-08-11T10:26:00.000-07:00

I went to my last class in clay printing last Monday. The teacher will continue for a few more days, but my feet gave out. I have plantar fasciatis, or heel spurs, due to years of standing on my feet while nursing. We recently remodeled our house and I spent 6 months walking on concrete, and now we have hardwood floors, so my feet are really sore. This class was held in a room with concrete floors, and involved hours of standing, so for now I'm done.

This is one of the last prints I made. The one on the left is with raymee, then the middle one is heavy pellon, and the last one on the right is sheer. I painted the clay with burnt umber slip, then used a syringe to make the x's. You can see a bit of the previous print coming thru with the blue color. This is one thing I love about this method, you get colors from your past prints if you want to, simply by applying less slip to cover it.

Here is a closeup showing some of the clay slip left in the fabric. I have sprayed this with Thompson's water seal to keep the clay in it, and so far it's working out. The water seal does give it a slightly heavier feel, but I used a lot, not knowing what is ideal here.

I made this print by painting a rectangle in blue, then using the syringe again for the black. I didn't use any paint on the rest of it, and was happy with this. The silk sheer on the left has the clay left in it, which I sprayed with Thompson's. The piece on the right (again silk), I washed out just to see if the colors held up.

Here's a close up with the clay left in. All this is in preparation for some more work on my construction series, percolating in my mind.
We are leaving tomorrow to visit our daughter in Pacific Grove, then up to San Francisco to see the American Craft Council show, hoping there's some fiber represented (and of course glass for Ted)

Last minute convert

2010-07-26T19:59:00.000-07:00

Today was going to be the last day I went to the clay printing class. I had not been happy with my experiments with cloth, so figured I wouldn't have much use for it. To show you a bit of the process, I have some photos from the last few classes. The first photo shows you the matrix, which is the basis for painting your clay color on.

It's made with a frame of plywood, dammed up on the sides with door moulding, then painted to seal it. You set it out in the sun to dry, which takes about 15 minutes on a hot California day. The next step is to paint it with slip, which is a mixture of china clay and water. This dries, then you start mixing your colors,

in this case some sort of burnt orange. The color you use is pigment, bought at a hardware store in the paint area,

or you can use this Akua Kolor, which I have no idea what it is.

After letting it dry, you put the raymee, or in my case fabric down on the matrix, and use a pizza roller to print the color onto your cloth. The picture below is my painted matrix before I put the cloth on top of it. The problem I ran into with this, is that by the time I got it home, it had faded tremendously. I was really disappointed, and figured this wasn't something I could use.

I decided to go back this week and try one more time, this time with a sheer polyester. As my grandpa would say, bloody hell!!, this turned out great!. The teacher explained I could keep the deep colors by spraying this with Thompson's deck sealer. Who knew.

I laid the sheer over my matrix, then laid a piece of the raymee over it absorb any extra print. The photo above is the raymee,

and this one is the sheer. The white area is some clay that came up with the print, which looks really cool in person. The photo below is the matrix after printing. What happens now, is I will paint it with some more china clay slip, then paint a new design on it, and be ready to go again.

So cool.

Another tool to be learned

2010-07-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my friend Carolyn invited me to observe her printmaking class at CLU (California Lutheran Univ.). Her teacher, Kristi Colell is running a casual summer workshop on clay monoprints, and instead of observing, I was invited to jump right in. Rather than go into detail explaining the process, you can look at this artists work here http://www.mitchlyons.com/.

I made the frame, filled it with clay, painted on the china clay slip, and was off and running. The print above was made on something called raymee, which feels like a medium non woven interfacing.

This print was made using thin cotton fabric backed with freezer paper. This was a second pull so it's not as dark, and the fabric separated from the paper, causing wrinkles. The original clay frame can be reused for years, as long as you keep it moist. I'm going back Monday to play some more.

New and old

2010-07-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

We are almost done with our remodel, just some painting and cabinet making left. In our bathroom, we changed the color from blue to this yellow, which in reality looks more mustard then this shows.

I dug out this quilt that I made several years ago when I was still making large quilts, and it now has a new home. It goes really well with the tile, and fills in a large space, and it finally gets displayed.

Kyoto Revisited

2010-07-01T18:27:00.000-07:00

Today is the reveal of our new Twelve by Twelve theme, which is complimentary, purple and yellow. This is my contribution. To read the story and see the rest, please visit our blog http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/.

Gone too long

2010-06-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

I know I have been back over 2 weeks and haven't blogged, but I've been really busy. Our new floors didn't start going in until the day after we came home, all the stuff we had packed up beforehand remained packed. Of course that meant no kitchen, no studio, and lots of people in my house with hammers and drills. It's almost done now, just the stairs and the baseboards need finishing, and I'm back to cooking, which I haven't been able to do for 6 months. It was worth it.

While in Korea and Kyoto, I didn't have much opportunity to shop. If it had just been Ted and I, we probably would have done more, but with the two boys, we were focused on other things. I did manage to get to a great paper shop in Kyoto, and bought the paper you see above. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but I needed it.

This is my finished piece for my group Digital to Textile. To read more about it, go to http://digitaltotextile.blogspot.com/. This week is also the reveal of the newest Twelve by Twelve, so tune in on Thursday.

Last vacation post

2010-06-13T03:13:00.000-07:00

Last night we went to the Gion district in Kyoto, which is where the really old buildings are and where the Geisha hang out and the gentelmaens clubs are. We wandered around taking pictures,

and turning down offers to play Pachinko and eat at every establishment we passed by.

The restaurants below were enticing as they were right on the river and it was really warm out.

I'm pretty sure this is the opera house which still shows popular plays such as Chorus Line, Lion King etc.

For dinner, our concierge had recommended a shabu-shabu place, which is a restuarant where you cook your own food in the pot in the center of the table. We had thin slices of beef, lots of veggies, and some noodles. You use chopsticks to wave it around in the broth, then dip it in a sauce and eat it. It was good, but I've had better in Little Tokyo in L.A.

Today we took the bullet train to Hiroshima, which Ted and I had been to before. It is an amazing place, with a wonderful museum which does it's best to promote peace and nuclear disarrmament. The boys were sobered by this excursion,which made us grateful we had taken the time to go there.
Tomorrow we head home, flying to Seoul first, then on to the U.S, arrivng a few hours before we leave!

Back and Forth

2010-06-11T04:57:00.000-07:00

We were home early from sightseeing today, so I thought I'd blog a second time. Before we left Jeju Island, we walked down the steps to the beach in front of our hotel. This is the view from the bottom of the steps. Lots of lava rock and sandy beaches. Surprisingly to me, there were no tidepools.

This is looking up the cliffs back towards the hotel.

I thought this was a plastic bag until I saw a few more of them and realized it's a jellyfish. They really look like a small plastic bag blown up.

Now we're back in Japan yesterday at the Golden Pavillion. It's covered in gold leaf. It was originally built in 15th century, then burned down by a mentally ill man in the 1950's. It was rebuilt because it had become such a tourist attraction.

Your not actually allowed to go anywhere near the pavillion, but the grounds around it are beautiful.

Today we went to the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine which has this beautiful torii tunnel. We ended up getting a lillte lost and came down thru some old houses and private cemetaries.

Kyoto train station has some of the most impressive architecture I've ever seen, and we spent the afternoon walking around the building. There are department stores, restuarants, and even a concert venue in this massive place.

The picture below shows steps leading up several stories, and also the steps you sit on to watch concerts, with the bandstand down below.

Tomorrow will be a light day for us. The boys are doing their own thing again, and Ted and I are going to look for some indigo dyeing areas in the Gion district.

Japanese Baseball

2010-06-10T18:51:00.000-07:00

We took the train and subway to Kobe yesterday afternoon to see a baseball game between the Youmeri Giants and the Orix Buffalos. We got there two hours early and the place was jamed with people already. Our tickets were right behind home plate.

See the guy on the right with the big head? I sat behind him.

Sam wanted to keep score, so they went into the press box to get him a score sheet. Of course it was all in Japanese, but baseball is baseball.

Beer guy. Draft beer right at your seat.

The stadium was split right in half with all the Giants fans on one side and the Buffalos on the other. We were sitting with the Giants fans, but rooting for the Buffalos. We were homers.

The Laker girls... Home teams have their own cheer leaders, and there were competing bands in the bleachers.

Thunder sticks were everywhere, although the Japanese fans as always were repectful.

It was a great night, and again we got home about midnight. I have much more to say, more pictures to show, but for now we must run to today's events. We really have a light day tomorrow, then to Hiroshima. So I will catch up on the blog in the morning.

I'm sooo tired

2010-06-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

It's Thursday around midnight and we just got back from a baseball game in Kobe. I'll post everything in the morning. Goodnight.

Jeju Island

2010-06-08T03:37:00.000-07:00

These pictures are not in the right order, but I'm to tired to rearrange them. We are on Jeju Island and it is really beautiful. It's balmy, breezy, tropical and very much unlike the rest of Korea. The picture above is of a giant golden Buddha that I had to climb 500 steps to see. Ted conveniently had to go to the bathrooom when this was going on.This Buddha is about 20 minutes by taxi from where we are staying in Jungmun.

The picture above is of the boys asleep on the bus after getting in at 5 am. They are having a good time. They always manage to find someone who speaks english, and they are willing to try any food, any drink, any adventure. I have to remind myself they are 22 years old, and would be doing this kind of stuff whether I was aware of it or not.

This is the view off our hotel balcony. This whole island is volcanic with lots of black rock outcroppings everywhere.

Last night for dinner Kenny ordered the famous Jeju Island Black Pig for dinner, which I forgot to take a picture of, but this is a picture of the things that accompany every meal in Korea. On the left is cold kimchee soup, then kimchee, which is a spicy, vinegary cabbage, after that is the sesame oil vegetable, then marinated mushrooms. I can eat a piece or 2 of Kimchee and use it to season other things, but it is really spicy. Ted had a noodle soup with mussels and clams in the shell, and abalone strips.

Today Sam and Kenny rented Vespa's and road all over the island. Ted and I walked and took buses and taxis around.

This is a picture of a bouy and a womans head. The story here is that the island is famous for its Haenyeo, who are older women (in their 60's) that dive for 2 minutes at a time holding their breath, to gather seafood such as shellfish, sea urchins and octopus. They keep it in a bag tied to the bouy and once in a while swim to the beach with their catch, where other women in the group cut it up and serve it with various side dishes,

The woman above is rinsing the seafood in fresh water before she slices it up. This is a dyeing art, as their daughters don't have any interest is continuing the tradition.

This picture above is of lots more buddhas. It is so amazing to me how many shapes and sizes these images come in and they are all interesting to me.

Bulguksa Temple

2010-06-06T04:34:00.000-07:00

We are in Gyeongju for a few days exploring the many World Heritage
Sites here. Gyeonju is near the south east coast of Korea and has the humidity of our south east coast. We went to the Bulguksa Temple today and spent about 3 hours wandering arund. It is in a mountainous area with lots of pine trees and ponds and nature around. We met a woman from Philly on the bus and hung out with her the whole time.

These are random pictures of the temple area. It is a Jewish tradition to put pebles or stones on a gravesite when you have visited, and we have noticed this carries into other cultures also. The stones above were piled high in several areas of the Temple grounds.

I haven't seen many temples with this stonework, most of them are made of wood which is why so many of them have burned down over the centuries.

This lake was loaded with koi and very peaceful.. On a side note, we have all noice that the children here are really well behaved and we have no idea why. We've seen lots of children fall down, one even fell of a broken bus bench and whacked his head, yet none of them cry, in fact they look embarrassed. In the restaurants, they sit quietly at the table, no yelling or fighting. I never here the parents raise their voices, and they seem to indulge them. I don't know what their trick is.

This is another Buddha picture. Believe it or not, they are all slightly different. Last time we were in Japan we were with some travelers from England, and they had a phrase, ABT, which meant Another Bloody Temple, but so far I haven't felt that way.

This last picture is just a doorway at one of the buildings there, and I loved the colors.
I had thought it would be fun to go to the University this afternoon to have lunch and hang out. The map the hotel gave us was unfortunately not to scale, and when we got off the bus at what we thought was the closest stop to the university, we ended up walking over a mile before we said forget it, as we didn't seem to be getting any closer. Ted kept saying what a great adventure it was, and how sometimed getting lost is the most fun. Not. Luckily, we ended up at a French bakery (go figure) and carbo loaded our lunch. Tonight we ate at an Italian restaurant in the hotel. I think we are getting a little tired of Korean food. Tomorrow we head on to Jeju island wich is supposed to be like Hawaii. I have my doubts. We are planning dinner at a Mexican restaurant we heard about.

Things I hopefully won't be eating

2010-06-05T06:07:00.000-07:00

We walked around the local market in Juengju today, and saw plenty of things we don't want to eat. Above is octopus. We were told by our guide in Seoul that a delicacy here is live octopus chopped up and eaten while still moving. I would have to drink a lot of beer to try that.

I think this is some sort of seaweed, heavily salted, which I might eat in a soup.

Here is more fish, above and below, the ones below with flies on them. Yum

And this is one of the markets here in town. Lots of shoes, bedding and purses sold in this one.

When we mentioned we were going to Jyungju, no one we knew had traveled here, even though they have several world heritage sights. We discovered today that very few people speak English here, including the staff at the Hilton. Tomorrow we plan on visiting a few of the sights, but it should be a real adventure figuring out how to get there.

DMZ

2010-06-04T04:55:00.000-07:00

I'm back. I think I had a little carsickness yesterday, fromriding around in the back of a van. Today we went to the DMZ which was something Ted and Sam were really looking forward to.

The picture above is the razor wire you encounter everywhere when you get close to the area.

And this guy here is a North Korean soldier looking at us through his binoculars. We are about 60 - 70 feet away from him. Our guide said they recently switched to wearing the hard helmets instead of the usual caps which is ominous to the soldiers there.

These are the South Korean soldiers looking back at the North Korean. They do this all day long. See the one on the right is standing partially behind the building as a safety precaution. They tend to stand with their fists slightly clenched in a Tae Kwon Do position which is their readiness position.

These are the hats you need to wear when you take the tour of the 3rd tunnel, which is a tunnel discovered in the 70's by the South Koreans. Sam and his friend Kenny went inside for a tour, but the tunnel is only 2 meters tall, so Ted and I skipped it.

This is the soup Ted had for lunch with beef,rice and vegetables. Very spicy, he loved it.

Our guide told me this is the best women"s bathroom in Korea. There is artwork on the door of each stall, which lights up when you lock the door. And there is a button inside with plays a flushing sound when pushed in case you don't want anyone to hear you!

This is a gorgeous tree right outside the DMZ

Here we are, Ted, Kenny, me and Sam and some stranger that seemed to want to be in our photo. This is looking at a North Korean building from the south (obviously). My impression - very creepy. I felt a little uncomfortable all day, and was glad to get back to the hotel. The guide we had was fabulous. She gave us a lot of behind the scenes info the UN guy didn't share, such as letting us know about the tension in the area right now, which the UN guide denied.

Tomorrow we are off to Kyeunju on the bullet train. Hopefully the hotel will have an internet connection and I can continue the nightly blogging.

Go Lakers.

Korea Day 2

2010-06-03T04:24:00.000-07:00

Good morning from Seoul, Korea. First of all it must be noted that today's blog is the product of a guest blogger, mainly me... Ted.. Karen's husband. A combination of jet lag, strange food, a very hot and smoggy day, all nicely packaged in a ride through the city in the back seat of a van has claimed Karen. She is currently sleeping comfortably and is feeling much better, and she has asked me to leave my mark on her personal blog.

Our tour today took us to an assortment of Buddhist Temples, Royal Palaces, Shopping Centers, and a revolving resturant in the tower that marks the highest point in Seoul. While yesterday's tour involved about twenty something people from every hotel in Seoul, today it was just the four of us, so the tour guide indulged our every whim.

We began the day taking in the morning services with a high ranking monk (you can tell by the robe he is wearing...

The temple was jam packed with Buddhas of every size from hundreds of personal gold colored Buddhas...

to a beautiful giant Buddha that sort of reminded me of the flying nun...

Many of the shrines had incredable paint murals that depected the life of a particular patron, or was some kind of a parable (I wasn't listining but the murals are beautiful).

Our guide told us the story of a very lazy man who died and was turned into a fish with a painful fin or something on his back, he made a moaning sound. The fish below is him, and when the wind blows you can hear him regretting his previous existance of lazyness.

As I said, it is quite smoggy here, as seen from the resturant window in the tower where we ate (and maybe Karen got sick).

More Seoul pics...

This picture was from yesterday but I kind of liked it. This was at an outdoor market

To conclude... we did have a wonderful day. Tomorrow we are going to the DMZ and the United Nations center that straddles the border between North and South Korea. Hopefully my whit will not cause any kind of international incident... (maybe I will get to see President Clinton if he has to come an get me).

Please Note..... The above blog represents my own words and do not in any way reflect upon or represent Karen's professionalism. I am quite certain that she will NEVER let me do this again! Good Night where every you are.

PS.. To my mother in law... Karen is doing fine, just a little upset tummy.

Jetlag is a Drag

2010-06-02T05:34:00.000-07:00

We have arrived in Seoul and it is great. We arrived here about 6 in the evening and after a 1 1/2 hr ride to the hotel, we were wiped out. We walked around for a couple hours to stay awake, and ate some weird soup that had no identifying pieces and ended up in bed by 10 pm. This is a picture out of the hotel room at sundown. Note that mountains in the far background are actually in North Korea.

The next day we went on a tour with a tour group which has its good points and bad. The good is that we were forced to stay awake all day, and that helps with the jet lag. The bad, is that there were 20 of us on the tour, at 8 different hotels so it tok over an hour to pick us all up. We went to Jogye Buddhist Temple, which had the colorful paper lanterns hanging everywhere.

This is a photo of Sam,his friend Kenny and Ted walking aroud the Temple.

This is the changing of the guards which we caught at the end of the act, and they looked so hot and miserable, but they were gracious enough to let us take pictures pof them.

This is the Gyeongbok Palace which was quite beautiful, and I can't remember anything the guide told me as I couldn't understand her. Good thing I read up on these palaces before we left.

We decided this could be next years xmas/hanukkah card. There's 8 of us right?

OK, Sam and I shared a bottle of wine for dinner tonight, and Kenny and Ted shared a

bottle of something they thought was sake, but turned out to be whiskey, so we are all sleeping well tonight.

Off to Korea

2010-05-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

We are leaving tomorrow morning for Korea and Kyoto, and I'm hoping to blog every couple of days with lots of pictures. In the meantime, here are some photos of my cement floor, soon to be covered with wood. I think they would make interesting thermofax screens.

Or even design ideas for a future piece of art.

This one below is a picture of the new limestone countertop and 2 of the glass tiles Ted made.

And a closeup of one of the tiles

Stressed out

2010-05-16T14:12:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling a little on edge these days. We are leaving for Korea and Kyoto in 15 days and will be gone 2 weeks. Our son wants to see his native country, and his friend Kenny who is half Japanese, is going along to see part of his country. This is all good and we are excited about the adventure. To add to the fun, we are finishing up the remodel on our house. In fact, while we are gone, they will be putting in the new flooring, so we are trying to pack up everything we can to get it out of the way. Here are some pictures of the almost finished house. The room below will be the new guest room.

This room is going to be a library. We hope to put in wall to wall bookshelves and a desk in the corner.

The family room is the same color as the library.

And the kitchen is waiting for new limestone countertops, going in tomorrow.

The outside patio is not going to be finished until we get back.

And I have two projects I'm working on, one for Twelve by Twelve, http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/ , and one for Digital to Textile, http://digitaltotextile.blogspot.com/, both of which are due a few weeks after I get home. My creative space is a little challenged these days.

So I'm trying to get a running start on both of these pieces and trying to pack at the same time. I had a great idea the other day which involved some paint and a syringe, and I only had to unpack 3 boxes to find the syringe. Sure I could label the boxes, but what fun would that be.

SAQA auction

2010-05-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

I made this piece a while ago, and while looking for something for the SAQA auction, decided it was perfect. When I made it, the piece was about 16 x 16 and I really liked it that size, the problem is, it was very wavy around the edges. I think this type of work tends to have that problem. It was very heavily stitched, then because of the 100% wool batting, it shrunk heavily in the hot water wash and dry. I cut it down to 12 x 12 and carefully stitched on the backing as it was still a little wavy. I'm calling it Undergrowth as it reminds me of what you find when walking through the woods.

Energy Flow

2010-05-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

Today is the reveal of our latest Twelve by twelve challenge and the results are posted here http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/. The explanation of how I made this is on blog, but I have included a side view here which hopefully will show the depth of the piece.

Twelves

2010-04-29T07:36:00.000-07:00

I just had to share this picture with you, it's from Melbourne, Australia where all of the

Twelves theme quilts are hanging together for the first time. You can see more pictures on our blogsite http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/

Construction Triptych

2010-04-22T15:54:00.000-07:00

I've finished the construction triptych and mounted it on the 1 1/2 inch deep canvas. The mounting is not finished, I need to neaten up the corners, and I think the piece on the right side looks a little off when following the line of the brown/tan beam, but I may be able to remount that a little lower without throwing off the upper black and white line too much. Conclusion? Very gratifying to work on, lots of design issues that were fun to work thru, and overall I think it works.

Adjustments

2010-04-14T10:41:00.002-07:00

Karen, at http://karoda.typepad.com/, asked me if I thought I would lose some of the red motif when I wrapped it around the canvas. Yes, actually, this was a big concern for me, but I really wanted to wrap around, so I had to come up with something that would work. Since I've never done this before, I am probably making it much more complicated than it needs to be, but the only way I could think of to judge the wrap around was to wrap around. I noticed right off the bat that the black and white strip on the top was too high, so I ripped out the stitching I had done on this (on the left two pieces) and then wrapped them around canvas, pinning them on the sides to give me an idea of whether this would work. The piece on the right is in its original shape, and hangs down several inches. Karen suggested some painting on the fabric if the red didn't show up and I may end up doing that. So far, I think the two pieces on the left work well, although I think the black and white is to high up. I have been trying to avoid making it the same angle as the tan/brown piece on the bottom, but that might be too asymmetrical. I need to rip out the stitching on the black/white on the right side piece and pin it up on the wall the see if there is enough red on the front. This is my favorite part of the process, I like having to figure these issues out.

Triptych

2010-04-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

I have challenged myself to work a little larger, and to try to split an image by doing a triptych. I purchased some 12"x 36" canvases and set about designing something which would work together and separate, not an easy task. My first design below, has the movement I wanted to show, but doesn't do much for me in the two outside panels.

I liked the design, so I started stretching it, and adding more interest to the side panels. I liked it enough to start stitching on it, so I stitched around the boxes on the purple fabric on the right, then added some more boxes, and stamping them with black paint. I think I will continue this idea into the center panel.

What I'm showing you right now is larger than the finished product, as I wanted to include the side edges in the design, and the canvases have 1 1/2" edges. It may not work, as the straight lines "line up" right now, and that will change when the piece is wrapped around the canvas, so I'm not sure if your eye will follow it, but it's all a grand experiment, if I can't figure it out, I can always cut it up and make it a little more abstract, right?

Disperse Dyeing

2010-03-31T09:44:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned last week, I took a disperse dye class with Holly Brackman at the SDA/SAQA conference in San Francisco. I wasn't sure when I looked a the list of classes if this was the one for me, because disperse dyeing is used mainly on non natural fabrics, such as nylon, polyester and rayon acetate. These are not fabrics I would normally work with, but I had seen some samples of this process and decided to try it out. Wow. First of all, the results are much faster than mx dyeing, and I think it's easier to control the image you want to end up with.

As a little background, in this class we worked by painting the surface of paper with the dyes, letting it dry, them heat setting it onto the fabric. When we first started painting, I thought, I'm really not going to like this, it's not my thing at all. Then Holly started pulling wonderful examples out of her bag of tricks, and I was hooked. This first piece was made by painting several different papers with diluted dye and letting them dry. Then I tore them up and laid them on top of each other, finally I stitched through the paper with nylon thread. As you can see from the paper image on the left, the colors on the paper are much duller than what you end up with. I used a piece of 100% polyester fabric in my sample, pressing it for 1 minute in a clothing press (you can use an iron also) and the sample I ended up with is very 3 dimentional looking.

In this second sample, I painted the paper purple, let it dry, then painted thickened turquoise dye over it and ran a hairbrush through it. After this dried, same thing, one minute in the steam press. I'll bring out more samples another day, but now I'm trying to figure out how I will use this method in my work. I can easily see using it on sheers, but I'm not sure about stitching on the polyester, I guess I'll just have to try it. I think that one sample I made is going to be perfect for the Twelve by 12 challange this time, http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/ , but no previews yet.

Construction Series continued

2010-03-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

This is the third piece in the small construction series I'm working on. Since I've finished this one, I've moved on to working with a larger piece, a tryptic, which I'm figuring out now. I'm really challenging myself with this, because it's a lot more space to fill, and I'm having to look at the area differently. Sometimes I feel like I have too many choices in how to proceed. I know I want larger images, not a lot of small ones, but I don't want a lot of empty areas, so the fun, challenging part is how to make this work.

SAQA/SDA conference

2010-03-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

I was at the SAQA/SDA conference in San Francisco this past week and while I have lots of images in my camera, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, so I took a photo of some of the work I made in a Holly Brackman workshop. Holly is a fantastic teacher http://www.hollybrackmann.com/index.html and the class was about using disperse dyes on synthetics. I wasn't sure I wanted to get into synthetics, but after this class, I'm hooked. I'm hoping to write more about the conference later, but I need to mentally unwind first.

Demolition Series 1

2010-03-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

Dinner at Eight Artists presents Beneath the Surface, a special exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach, CA - July 22-25th at the Long Beach Convention Center. Sponsored by Moore's Sewing Centers and Brother International and the Dinner at Eight blog http://dinnerateightartists.blogspot.com/

For the second year in a row, I was invited to participate in the Dinner at Eight challenge. This year the theme is "Beneath the Surface" and I decided to interpret this as what goes on during a remodel. I took lots of photos of the demolition process and have started a series interpreting what I saw. Shockingly (not), I had lots of deconstructed screenprinted pieces that have worked out great for this series. I've made three smaller pieces, mounted on canvas, and just bought 3 more canvases, 12 x 36 to try a tryptic.

Love that Bob

2010-03-15T17:03:00.000-07:00

This week I took a stitching class from Bob Adams http://www.bobadamsart.com/ and it was fantastic. This photo is of one of the quilts he brought to share with us and a close up of the stitching.

Isn't this stitching incredible. Bob is a master at using thread to change the color of the fabric, adding depth, and there is a glow about his work that makes it a real pleasure to look at.

After two days of exercises, we started stitching on a piece of our own fabric, and I used a piece of deconstructed screenprinting I had. I used polyester thread, without any shine to it, and I'm happy with the results.

Ventura County Museum Art Show

2010-03-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

This Friday is the opening night of the fiber art show at our local museum. The Ventura County Star newspaper sent a photographer out to my house to take a few pictures for the paper. Juan Carlo ended up staying 2 hours. He took pictures of my work, me working on my work, our construction work, and even my ideas for my work. Then he asked me to talk into a tape recorder and explain what I do.

This is the video he made, which is linked to the newspaper online. I hope you can come by and see the exhibit if your in the area.

Construction Series

2010-03-04T09:01:00.000-08:00

I 've finished the second in this series on the demolition in my house, and there still seems to be more percolating around in brain, so I have a third piece up on my design wall. I'm running out of the background fabric so I may switch gears. I also think I want to go bigger, in fact I ordered three 12 x 36 inch canvases from Dick Blick, and I'm thinking about making a tryptich. I've never done this before where they are seemingly connected, so I'm thinking about either making one big piece and cutting it up, or cutting the fabric beforehand and making sure the pieces all flow together.

Terry at http://studio24-7.blogspot.com/ asked me to explain how I mount these on canvas. I can't remember where I learned this, and I don't even know if it is the "correct" way of doing things, but it works for me.

The first thing I do when I know I'm going to wrap a piece around canvas is try to stop stitching where the edge will be, as I want to avoid wrapping the felt batting I use around the edge. This just makes it really bulky to work with and I can't get clean edges. When I have a piece with a straight edge on the front, that would look "off" if it didn't line up, I pin the piece on the side first to hold the straight line in place.

This has been a problem for me in the past, as when I staple, I tend to pull it tight, and sometimes that throws the line out of whack. When I have one side lined up, I start by stapling the opposite side from the center, working to the edges. I then go back to the pinned side and secure it down with staples. After this, I finish off with the top and bottom.

For the edges, I do a fold into the corner,

Then a second fold to parallel the edge.

This gets stapled down and to finish the piece off I staple a piece of fabric with the edges turned under to the back covering up my first staples. I will usually sew the label to this before I attach it. I then put in the same hanging method you would use for a picture.

Blue,Black and White

2010-03-01T10:20:00.000-08:00

We had our reveal today for Twelve by 12 http://www.twelveby12.blogspot.com/ and the results are spectacular, please go to the site and check them out. The colors this time were blue, black and white and I ended up making three different pieces. I'll show them all to you here. This first piece was made using painted interfacing and cheesecloth. I was just back from Florida and added the black stitching that reminded me of fencing on the beach in South Beach.

The second piece is also a memory of South Beach, this time the skyline. I started by stitching the outlines of the buildings, then painting them with fabric paint. My husband thought this looked too much like a New York skyline, so I tried adding the drifting thread at the bottom to give it a more casual, beachy look, but I don't think it is very successful.

This last one is my favorite. You can read about it on the Twelve site above.

Starting Construction

2010-02-23T15:05:00.000-08:00

I finished this first piece in the construction series I'm working on. It's 16 x 20, mounted on canvas. I started with a piece of screen printed fabric I made in a Benn/Morgan class. I added some more screenprinted fabric, some discharged fabric, machine stitched it, then painted it, then stitched it some more. I've got two more in progress, based on lots of pictures I've taken of the construction.

Big Beam

2010-02-19T09:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the workmen brought in a 30 foot steel beam. It was supposed to go by crane over the top of the house which would have been so cool. Instead, they brought it in from the side street, which was also cool, but not as much. My husband Ted took about a thousand pictures of this. I took two.

Then I started looking at the detail. To me it's way more interesting.

Construction continued

2010-02-17T09:50:00.000-08:00

The guys working on my house are so clean and tidy, I have to really look for messy photos to take. I don't think they understand this artists need for disorder(at least until the photo is taken.

When they leveled the back of the house yesterday, I was left with some cracks in the grout in my bathroom and splits in the drywall, but hopefully the shower pan is intact, we won't know that for a few days.

Tomorrow they are lifting a 30 foot long beam over the house with a crane, which I think will be the most fun part of the whole addition!. Lots of photo ops happening.

This is some of the fabric I dug up to play with. The three background pieces are something I made in a Claire Benn, Leslie Morgan class last year and never thought I'd use. Glad I kept it.

Making art where you see it

2010-02-13T19:18:00.000-08:00

We are doing a remodel here, moving the back of the 2 story house out to expand the kitchen, family room, and two upstairs bedrooms. Since the kitchen had been demolished, we have moved a temporary kitchen into the dining room, living with a microwave, toaster oven and fridge.

No sink, but we are getting used to paper products. I seem to be needed for endless discussions about when to do what, and how do I feel about crooked beam, and by the way if we straighten it, the bathroom tile will crack. OK. So I'm hanging out here at home, and to stay out of the way, I'm hanging out in my art room, and amazingly, I'm making lots of art. I have no excuse not to.

I started photographing some of the stacks and piles, and I'm sorting through my fabric, finding loads of stuff that looks like construction.

I also started putting some fabric out to be rusted. I did this over a two week period and and now have it just about where I want it to be.

I've made one piece, for a show I'll be in soon, and will show it to you as soon as I'm allowed. And now I'm starting on a series, as I have so much to say about this, and lots of time to say it.

Circle game

2010-02-07T14:35:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about circles and dots lately. My new challenge with my group Digital to Textile has lots of dots in the photo, and while I originally didn't want to use them, they are starting to grow on me. I have also been reading Terry Jarrard-Dimond's blog and she is focusing on dots herself. Finally, when I was looking for circle inspiration, I turned to one of my favorite artists, Pacita Abad

I got out some fabric paints and made a circle stencil and started to experiment. I picked out only circle images in my stash of objects and began using them to see what I could come up with. I wish the colors were a little brighter, and I still think I want to mess it up a little, maybe with some large freehand circles painted with a syringe, or maybe another shape entirely. It's a large piece of fabric, 3 feet by 4 feet, so I might cut it up and make a tryptic out of it. Or it might end up in my stash!

Embarrassing Apology

2010-01-27T06:05:00.001-08:00

The Three Perspectives show I am in with Deborah Weir and Melissa Frankel is at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, and over the last few days we have discovered that the center is not open the hours they said they would be. According to the director, budget cuts have pushed them into a one man operation, and that man is not always around. He will be there for our artist walkthrough's which are Feb. 3rd, at 1pm, and Feb. 16th at 11am, and of course you can see the art during the intermission of the various theater shows put on there. I apologize to all of you who have driven over to see the show only to find it locked up tight, and thank you for the phone calls alerting us.

Past Projects

2010-01-26T13:59:00.000-08:00

I have had several deadlines to meet in the last few months and for some reason this has made me stressed out. I should have been looking at this as a time for design opportunities but instead I let my panic mode set in and was convinced I wouldn't be able to accomplish everything. Well, I did what I tend to do when stressed, and started making lists. I am one of those people that instantly feels better just writing things down, I don't even have to do anything! But I did, and I managed to get everything finished with time to spare (the fact that the Twelve by Twelve reveal isn't until March 1st instead Feb. 1st when I thought it was helped).
This little piece is something I dug out of my unfinished projects drawer when I was looking for room to

shove more stuff in. I added a few french knots and now I'm going to mat it and call it a day.

Opening night

2010-01-23T14:55:00.000-08:00

Last night was the opening of a show I am in with Deborah Weir and Melissa Frankel, called Three Perspectives. The venue is the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center and the rain let up long enough that we had a pretty good turnout. I always find it interesting to see my work on the wall in a setting like this. For some reason, I look at it differently, maybe it's the lighting, or having it share company with other work. This red piece, behind Melissa, is something I was unsure about until I saw it on the wall. It's called Silent Cry and was finished in early 2009. I stuck it away in the closet and didn't look at it again until I hung this show. It received more comments than any of my other pieces and that made me feel great.

Three Perspectives

2010-01-07T11:00:00.000-08:00

If you're in the area, please join us!

Key West fun and sun

2009-12-18T18:21:00.000-08:00

My husband and I are in Florida this week for a wedding and decided to take an overnight trip to Key West to check it out. Not the sun shiny place we had hoped it would be. It was pouring rain all the way down there but did stop long enough for us to walk around

But back in Maimi, we went to a wonderful museum called the Wolfsonian which had a display of linocuts and woodcuts from the 1920's titled Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1930. It was so great we ended up spending all afternoon looking at these.

My other favorite place was the everglades which we drove thru and took a boat tour of..

The everglades were nothing like I expected, I was thinking it would be more jungely,but there were huge areas of marshy, grassy palins that were just stunning, and of course the occasional crocodile to liven things up

Yard Art

2009-12-11T15:12:00.000-08:00

I was standing at my kitchen door this morning looking out on the rainy day, and this colorful sight greeted me. My husband is a glass artist and these are his "reject" beads that he wrapped around an old candelabra he found at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet. My yard is full of his beautiful glass, he calls it yard art if he doesn't think it's house worthy. I am one lucky lady.

Digital to Textile

2009-11-24T17:06:00.000-08:00

Sunday was the reveal day for a fiber art group I belong to called Digital to Textile: Eight Views. Every other month we interpret a photo one of us has selected. Check it out...http://digitaltotextile.blogspot.com/

Book Deal Is Official!

2009-11-20T19:58:00.000-08:00

The Twelve by Twelve artists are excited twelve times over to announce that:

(drum roll, please.... )

Sterling Publications/Lark Books will be publishing a book on our Twelve by Twelve Collaborative Art Quilt project! We are thrilled beyond words to have this wonderful opportunity, and so happy that our art endeavors and friendships are turning us into authors, too. We know that Lark was impressed by the loyal folks who follow our blogs and website, so thanks to all of you friends-of-Twelves for your encouraging words through our explorations!

We'll keep you posted as we know publication dates.

We are lifting a virtual glass of champagne to each other and to all of you for your support!