the work in progress

I've been contemplating what to do with fifteen (you read that right) years of babbling here. All of these bits, bytes, and pixels are as ephemeral as a cloud rolling across the moon. One blown transformer somewhere critical, one bored hacker and all of it gone as it if never existed. I've downloaded a few posts here and there, but my recent computer crash - the hardware sort - has given me pause about this electronic life.

Right now, I'm just grateful that I didn't have to dig too far for the provenance of "Cave Dreams". It's still a long way from finished, but I know what I want for it and how to go about getting the effects - mostly a lot more hand stitching. 

Until it's completed, here are some links to its evolution:

From the earliest raw cloth.  Compositional fumblings here and here. To a more solid starting place.

Digressions  and   displacements..this is about when the Black & White series took over my studio life. All thing color got put on hold for a very long time.

self pep-talks are good.

(from  Tuesday, March 17, 2015)

nailing it

If you are any kind of creative every now and again you'll step back from what you are up to and go “Yes!” or “Good!” or, in my case “Fuckin' Aaa!” and you'll throw down the tools and get that little chill and be thirsty for a celebration because you nailed it. You won't even feel the need to drag anyone into the moment for their agreement. This moment is for you alone.

Last night I was pondering the demise of the writers group that I've been going to for a little more than a year now. The two founders have drifted away. Life, of course, must take precedence over follies like gathering over bad food with snotty waiters and embarrass ourselves and each other with our attempts at writing and so the group has floundered. It's been a learning experience and my only semi-social connection to the world since my husband died. I will be looking for another bunch of similarly plagued individuals and if I can't find what I'm looking for, I'll found my own.

So I made the mistake of looking over a bit of the book I've been working on for almost a year. I worked on it constantly while I was at the FOF retreat last year in FL. 

The writing was puffy, awkward and self-indulgent. I was bummed thinking how I thought I was closing in on a rough draft when all I really had behind me was clouds crap. I sulked and went to bed. The last thing I remember was that there were a couple of lines out of some twelve pages that were really good. Keepers.

In the dark hour before waking, on a day when I didn't have to get up, I turned that chapter inside out in my head. I had a sit down with each of the characters. Assessed their needs and their wants. Established who knew what, when and why it mattered. Addressed the problems and found answers, all before ever putting my toes on the rug.

I've got this and knowing it feels great.

Heart's blood

I was just starting to get the hang of text on cloth when I stopped making these badges.

I ran out of red cloth.

Never a favorite, I'm as hard to please red-wise as I am black. It has to be just the right shade or I won't use it.

That will be a dye project in the upcoming season.

Blood on the tracks.

Some fresh air and sunshine

running low

Nope...these are mine. Don' touch.

I've run out of some colors and it's making me edgy.


Here's the updated inventory on the Dirty Threads, on sale until they are gone.

Sunny Jim

I put this up on a FB textile group on Thursday in appreciation for the sunny warm weather we were having.

It's cheerful, yes, but 77-degree weather in the first week of February?

To me, these weather anomalies carry a foreboding that is hard to ignore.

I dragged all the big houseplants out onto the deck. Last night it got cold again and had to bring them all back inside.

Sorry kids.

Charlie Tuesday

My apprentice.

I was about this age when my grandmother put me to the needle and thread.

It was 70 at the park this afternoon.

cave dreams

"cave dreams"    44"x30"

I'm not fully satisfied with this orientation. That may change as time and progress is made.

as yet untitled

All that picking and sorting. I auditioned dozens of pieces of cloth, but nothing grabbed me.

I hadn't quite finished putting everything in the basket when I got a call that Charlie needed to be picked up from school. He was having a Bad Day. I abandoned the basket of wishful thinking. Probably a good thing.

Nana to the rescue and glad to do it. The weather emergency fizzled and I was home by dinner time.


The next morning I set the basket aside and rummaged in the closet where the UFOs lurk. Came up with this as-yet-unnamed piece. Not having named it makes it hard for me to search for it in the archives. Probably from 2012 or early '13.

I'll try to get a decent overall shot of it tomorrow. It reminds me of cave paintings.

 It's kind of a big, sprawly, unfocused panorama. I'm counting on these lines to make some sense of it in the long run.

storm prep

They say we may get some winterish weather on Tuesday. Chances are, school will be canceled which means I'll be spending a day or two with Charlie so I'm prepping the river basket.

 I have something in mind so I pulled a bunch of cloth this morning and actually ironed it just to see what I really had. My grandma would have had a fit - I ironed sitting down!

I don't know how to capture the iridescence of damask that's been ironed. This picture almost gets it.

Now, for the patience to take my time composing - not threading a needle until the design works.

Lately, the rush to stitch has only lead to misery.


Right now stitch needs to take me to the place where the words grow.

Bomenrij  by  Jan Mankes   1915

The Stars Out of Place

The eclipse the other night reminded me of this piece. The sky was so clear - a rare break here in Georgia - I was sorry it was so cold and I was supposed to be working, so I was running up and down the stairs to monitor the progress.

19x17     250.00

"The Stars out of Place" was finished in the spring of 2010.  It was inspired by a nightmare, the kind that is so real that you wake up in a cold sweat gasping for air.

I was almost nine when Sputnik was launched and we had a neighbor who let us lie on the roof of their screen porch at night and watch that tin star crawl across the night sky while we bounced back and forth between AM radio bands listening to Murry the K or Scott Muni.

It all seemed pretty benign to me and I didn't understand how some adults perceived this to be some kind of threat from the Russians. That all became clear to me after I read "Hiroshima" later that year. That damn book sure took all the fun out of Godzilla.

Still I became a night sky watcher for the beauty of it and became intimately familiar with the locations of the heavenly bodies and the names of all the constellations. Total immersion in the Zodiac soon followed.

In my nightmare, I went outside on a crisp winter evening and looked up to find the stars all jumbled and the moon full and leering, too close, in the wrong quarter of the sky  and shedding wisps of pink poisonous looking gases.  The air was too thin and tasted metallic. I closed my eyes so hard they hurt, woke up in sudden disorientation and willed myself awake for the rest of a long night. Despite my best efforts to forget, it was a keeper.

detail 1

detail 3

angels

           
   Found while looking for something else. I can't remember taking it or seeing this picture. Warms me. Jimmy & Karma were an item.

mending this day

It got so dreary today, temps in the mid-thirties before sunrise and not much more after, then it started to rain. All my bones are suddenly on the warpath. There was nothing for it but tea, drugs, and mending.

The damasks I used in this quilt were old when I found and dyed them. It's interesting how this some of this cloth seems to evaporate with time and use. Sometimes, the look works - shabby chic - some call it.


Not in the case of this quilt. It has some personal provenance and  I'd like it to stay around awhile, not be perceived as something tattered or disposable.

When I'm satisfied it's whole and strong enough, it will be a gift signed "Nana".