Sunday, November 29, 2009
no heart for art
Too soon to tell. No photos as yet.
On the sunny side of my mental street, my neighbor (who is moving) asked if I knew anyone who could adopt her son's adult cat - he was also moving away and could not take the two year old Novi with him. It just so happens that I did know someone who lost all three of her long time family pets within the last two years.
Novi moves on and Jan, Christian and Ryan were ready
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
ongoing
Focusing on the details can become a distraction but here each detail has a place and meaning. What they are remains a mystery, even to me. Besides, distraction is just another way to get there.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
in writing
I find that when I begin using letter forms I can't help but want to convey something snarky or entertaining. In fact, I find that when I work literally or do something representational you can pretty much bet on something weird, shocking or downright wrong going on. You'll laugh too if you don't run out of the room.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
the Wheel
The ground for this one is a piece of what I think is linen but I could be wrong. Maybe I'll snatch a thread off it and set it on fire, see what happens.
Here's a closer look
I have been thinking about the pros and cons of stitching words into this piece - all that white space is nagging me to do something about it but I'm resisting the urge for the same reasons that I don't like to write artist statements about a specific piece. I don't want to tell people what to think and don't think my own thoughts should be relevant to the observer's experience. I'd love to hear from other artists who use the stitched words in their work. It seems to be a very sharp two-edged sword.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
the Wheel turns
Thanks for all the lovely comments about the pieces in the previous post. This one was part of a short lived creature frenzy that I went through late in 2008
back when I had more free time. All of these were done on the machine in a very fast, improvisational manner. Right now, the studio is a kind of sad place for me - I don't spend all that much time there. Just digging through piles of things as I look for materials to take with me on the go. The Wheel will turn.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Morning Light
This one continues to entertain me while I am at work but probably not tonight. It's Friday, the 13th. You would be surprised to know how self-fulfilling superstitions can be. Years ago I was a telephone operator and felt certain that there should have been combat pay added to our checks for getting through a full moon Friday night or Friday on any 13th.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
newest-biggest
Make An Offer! UPDATED
Sunday, November 08, 2009
November change & suprises
Saturday, November 07, 2009
new WIPS big & little
Add to that a whole flock of vintage damask napkins and table scarves found their way into the dyepots today. For now, there's a dozen or more mason jars flocked around the little heater in my living room sort of poaching. I promise not to get up in the night and start hatching them out. Dawn maybe.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Sesame Street
We didn't go overboard in the consumerizing department but Jake had the large talking Big Bird that came with a cassette player in it's belly and books that went along with the taped stories. His mouth and eyes would move as the story was told in his voice.Jake tired of those book tapes pretty quickly and we discovered that you could feed Big Bird any cassette tape. Strauss waltzes were a favorite and one Frank Sinatra tape would cause Big Bird to open his mouth wide and roll his eyes up in his head gruesomely. One day when Jake was about three I came upon him in the living room feeding Big Bird a bottle of Robitussin cough syrup. Jake had enough on his own face and clothes to make me call poison control. Big Bird was never quite the same.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
passing time (on the left)
In the studio, two new avenues of idea and action. Above, a large piece developing with the intent of mounting it to a canvas. On the left, a new piece of hand music giving thought to an empty space in my life right now.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
distracted
Without heart for much else, I have been cleaning and putting other things to work. I found some unused canvases and have started mounting smaller hand stitched pieces with acrylic medium, basically mummifying the fabric in plastic. Once dry, the textures are still there but the hand is gone. Hand? Given that we discourage people from touching the art was hand ever a consideration for this kind of piece? This is one of the Gray Grid series now up for sale at the Hand Music store
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
bereft
She started Firefly with me just after my birthday and she finished it with me curled in my lap on Sunday morning. I am sad beyond words.
To all the kind hearts who have offered encouragement, hope and prayers, I thank you. My thoughts wander back and forth between imagined horrors and the hope that she is doing what animals do - find seclusion, curl up and wait for whatever may be.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Catch and Release
Thursday, October 29, 2009
October
The pomegranate was perfect.
Fall sneaks up you here in Georgia.
Here are my pet mosses growing in a crack out in the parking lot. I stopped and petted them the other day. I was going to up root the family and make an indoor desk garden but they seem to be thriving right where they are now so who am I to open up a Moss Guantanamo?
Sunday, October 25, 2009
re-purposing dead sweaters
Remember this poor wool sweater that I accidentally felted? (Note the bare, cold toes who are wondering how people can wear wool socks?) It was lying on the floor in the studio by my stitching chair and I just scooted my feet inside it just to see what all the fuss about wool footwear is. Amazing!
The sleeves from the sweater (which fell into a dyepot too) have been made into the toastiest, softest slippers and gotten a job as the photographers assistant. I couldn't wait to sew on the other eyes to show them off.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Lightning Bugs
This piece continues to amuse and entertain me. I hope I'll know when it's time to quit. There's a basket full of little things like this that I have worked to death.
Off to JoAnn's before my coupons expire!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Nurse Karma sez
...if you are feeling unwell, you must lie still and mend. No discussions. If you are in good health, Karma will not give you the time of day. She's too busy.
Jim if feeling symptoms of the same bug that's plagued me for a week or so. Nothing that rest and ginger ale won't fix. And cat attention.
a new scrap of time
Work continues on this scrap of time. It still pleases me. The base is one of a set of linen placemats scrounged from somewhere. I wish the other three had fallen into the same dyepot. Pale sisters, they await overdyeing. Maybe later today, my first day off since last monday but I still have PT in a few minutes. All that stuff may have come to nothing vis a vis the underlying problem. An MRI awaits.
I finally took a few minutes to go through the box Eleanor's sewing things that the SILs sent me (thank you girls). In it I found a set of hand drawn and cut templates about leaves. What kind of coincidence is it that I have making and drawing these shapes for some time. A few of you may have received fabric leaves in the mail. More will come, I'm sure. I have idle fantasies about a blanket made completely from leaves.
Monday, October 19, 2009
getting back to normal
Friday, October 16, 2009
a scrap of time
Sometimes all you have are scraps of time to gather your thoughts and get your bearings. To have a bit of cloth and thread to work with in those moments is very satisfying. I'm beginning to think that artists who prefer working with fabric are heeding the call of their lizard brain - the one that made us crazy when we couldn't find the blankie when we were two. Tactile input takes precedence over all the other senses when one is overwhelmed.
I've spent the week taking the hurdles necessary to take a chance on getting more of my work out into the public eye. It's getting deep around here. Now I sit with fingers crossed, prayers up to minor deities (who might not be busy with more pressing matters) and maybe a little roots work thrown into the mix.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
THAY SAY ITS YER BIRFDAY!!!
True to his perfect form, my GoodMan did the Vulcan mind meld on me and came up with the perfect gift - the thing I didn't know I wanted and that I would love. The initial packaging stymied me momentarily and I wound up exploding all the discs out onto the bed so I closed my eyes, groped the pile and came up with "Abbey Road" to accompany me over to the doctors office and back. What a great time! The terrific thing about this set is that the songs are presented in the original ALBUM order, so crucial to time travel, which is just what these disks will be doing for me. Abbey Road was released about two weeks before my 20th birthday. Hearing this today felt just like it did 40 years ago. Spectacular! Strange and wonderful. Something completely new and transformative. You could count on the Beatles for that.
I was thinking that music is one of those things that gets hooked into your past usually in association with people, or places and events. But for me, not the Beatles. From the time I first heard them, their music was mine personally . Not to be draped around some boy or drama. In fact, looking at the big picture of the impact this music had on my culture - the amazing things that could come from acting on creative genius the way these fellows lucked into - kept me at arms length from the kinds of societal traps that a lot of young women fell into back then. I just knew that amazing things were possible if you kept that notion in mind. I did and they were.