art anyone

With two consecutive non-art related posts I am ready to move on. Never mind that I have a 5 star cold with sore throat & fever that cost me a dental appointment yesterday (but NOT my vote - apologies in advance to all other voters who I may have infected- mission accomplished). And never mind that we are under a tornado watch here for the same set of storms that caused such terrible loss of life in the states due east of us. It's muggy, the sky is heavy and dark and thunder mutters in the distance. I am laying out fabric for some soy wax experiments and if the roof is still on later, some kitchen dye magic. This is two yards of fabric with soy wax crumbs sprinkled between the layers. The bundle is bound for the oven for a few minutes. Fever makes me crazier than usual.

Yes We Can

Thank you Terry Grant for posting this - now someone pass it on from here -

Superbowl Hangover

Sorry about them Patriots Poppy. Me, I watch for the commercials!

No unfinished business

I've been in New York all week sitting at my Mom's bedside in the same hospital where I was born. She is busy at the work of dying. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon. I think she is satisfied that she has no unfinished business. Then again she could fool us all and be imperiously bossing her way around the nursing home by Spring but I think not. My sisters and brother have been with her round the clock because she gets anxious and disoriented if left alone despite the best efforts of the nursing staff. I spent my shifts talking with her and doing a lot of hand stitching on this piece, more than I expected to. More slow cloth, the stitches marking out the moments as they passed. My Dad was well enough to visit with her one afternoon and she spoke to him on the phone the next day briefly.These days she always ends her conversations with "I love you." Northern Westchester is a wonderful facility and with a retired postal worker's medical insurance, she's getting the kind of treatment usually reserved for movie stars. Christopher Reeve, Superman himself, lived his last days right down the hall from her room. There is art on the walls everywhere. This installation by Kim Tamalonis is across from the main elevators on the Lobby floor. At first I thought they were glazed tiles but on closer inspection each element is a separate canvas. It's called "The One That Got Away". Much thought has been given to the needs of caretakers here. There is a center where they can go and rest, have a snack, use the internet. There's a massage chair great for having spent the night sleeping in an upright chair and a quiet room with deep leather chairs and waterfalls on the wall. There is a baby grand piano just outside the doors of these rooms and a talented man was playing something from the Standards songbook, I forget exactly what but it felt appropriate. Somehow it didn't feel right to luxuriate there but the music was enchanting.I guess I haven't been at the caretaker thing long enough. Meanwhile,upstairs, Rosalie was sleeping peacefully for the first time since I arrived. I got home to Georgia late last night and my Mom goes back to the nursing home for Hospice care today. Many thanks to all the kind folks who are thinking about us and helping first hand with this, Life's final project.

Damn Disney!

Damn him! I just got off the phone with my Dad who called early this morning to let me know that my Mom has had a heart attack and is in the hospital. She has been living in a nursing home for more than a year now and has been in failing health for a long time. She's in the hospital and responding to excellent care. Both my sisters and brother are either with her or nearby. I sat down on the couch to absorb all this information and take in a little electronic anesthesia and what do I see? The scene from Dumbo where his mother is locked up in elephant jail and can only reach through the bars to hold her baby while the choir sings "Baby Mine", a very sweet and tender lullaby that I would have loved to sing to my own babies long ago except that I would be bawling my eyes out and scaring the kid.Thanks Walt. So I did some of that and came here to talk about it to myself. Here's my Mom, Rosalie, on the left and Jim's Mom, Eleanor who passed away just a few weeks ago. This was taken at our wedding in 1977. Jim and I both have a keen appreciation for strong women and their accomplishments.

In the Middle of the Night almost

I got just enough done on the new piece yesterday to call it a good day's work. I have to look at it awhile to decide how next to proceed. Hand stitching to replace the basting? Paint to work/rework value issues? Build the sandwich using that new wool batting that I got from OHCO? It's kind of heavy but has the depth that this piece will be happy with. The damask has a love of weavy give. Throw in a dentist appointment (where I finally got my teeth into "Art & Fear") , two loads of laundry, a really good meatloaf, and updated my Work In Progress page for the first time in a year and I felt no guilt about creeping into the sack at 7:30. Of course, that gets me up at 3:45 and there's a long day ahead but that will fly by too.Registrations for HGA's Convergence 2008 are coming in and we are working hard to get everyone's class assignments into the database and paperwork mailed out. June is bearing down on us like a freight train. So here in the wee hours I did a little Follow The Links game and, thanks to a long overdue (and deeply inspiring) post by Danny Gregory, found the work of his mum, Hazel Kahan filled with some of the most exquisite images of leaves, a theme I've felt has been done to death in fiber art lately but newly inspires me find them, make them into my art. And, if you don't already know her, come by and see Anne's work. The next time y'all start whining about not having the studio space to do the things you want to do, think of Anne and get on with it! Here she is in her "wet" studio. That Green piece just knocks me out!

New WIP on the Wall

I've been casting about for ideas on how to re-arrange the furniture at my main website. It was a busy and productive year and it's time to bring the new work into the big room. To help me think about it all, I grubbed about this blog and found images of almost all the major pieces that were completed last year grouped together here in approximately the order in which they were made. Getting things to relative scale was more headache than I wanted to fool with so I put in the sizes if not the titles. The one that kept catching my eye and bothering me to come back and be friends was this one, "Up on Wheels" much of it done with the antique cotton damasks that I dyed and discharged. It's confounding to work with, slithering around and full of life as a bag of snakes but so rich and full of surprises. I still have quite a selection of those re-purposed table linens so the new piece will be number two in a new series. In my files and folders I found this statement that I wrote for my free listing over at The Painter's Keys Art Directory: "I combine my love of color and abstract painting with a continuing exploration of the possibilities of fiber art. Although the viewers are discouraged from handling the art, I want them to ache to touch it. Everything I make is about exciting the eye and engaging the viewer with the tactile draw of cloth and the drama of the colors and shapes that hint at mystery, magic and sometimes the sly grin." The "slow fiber/art" notion must be sinking in because I spent a lot of time with "Up on Wheels" and plan on approaching this new WIP with the same mindset. Hand work, painting, more discharging and appliqué - all to be considered.

more slow cloth

Remember this Beastie? my little head cold and the impending snowstorm has inspired me to more slow needling. Of course, I'm about to run out of the colors I need. As ever, the alarmist news blabbers overkilt the weather and it's merely wet out. If there was any snow at all it didn't fall in this county. As soon as it opens, I'm off to JoAnns for more floss...wait, I'd better check with Jan first, she said she's got tons languishing.... Nope - no outings for nonsense. The snow finally started falling along with the temperature. For a day or so we will get some real winter.

winter

It snowed a little bit last night. Just enough to send the native Georgians screaming to the market to buy the last loaves of bread, gallons of milk and 12 packs of beer they could get their hands on. I keep forgetting to set up my roadside stand at the first mention of a few flakes. I could sell all the above for three times the price right out of the trunk of my car out on highway 29. As punishment for my superiority and lack of compassion, I've finally succumbed to the cold that's been thriving in everyone I live and work with. My throat was sore when I went to bed last night and Karma climbed up to sleep next to my head which is a clear signal that you better have your affairs in order. Remember Oscar? Karma only cozies up when you are sick - then she hands you off to Oscar but I'm home from work today making a little kitchen magic (discharging and dyeing - you didn't think I meant cooking did you?) and poking around in the studio just brewing something mentally. Rummaging through the stash, pulling out this and that, casting about through those Left Ouevres trying to catch a Whiff or a Glimmer, just in case you ever wondered about the title of my blog. Alka Seltzer for Colds is my drug of choice. Remember this and this two classic pieces of "What was she thinking?" As both were constructed with high loft poly batting making them near impossible to quilt, I donated both of the to the Gwinnett Humane Society as blankets for the beasts in residence.

the Flibbertygibbets Bowl

I wandered in and out of the studio today just puttering. This square yard of mayhem came out of my Flibbertygibbets bowl below. My Grandma used that word to mean "little bits and pieces of crap that you've gotten on the rug that I have to sweep up" (Here is someone else's take off on that word. I don't get the connection but she's hilarious.) It was packed pretty tight in there and so time to weed the bowl out. Meanwhile, my buddy Jan Thompson has taken to the torch like a duck to water. You could probably talk her into selling you some of these beauties.

Dogpaddling & SlowCloth

This little duck pillow is finished. I'm not thrilled with the way the velcro closure looks so once I find the right herbal stuffing for it (just fluff inside for now) I'm going to remove the velcro and sew it shut. The way it is, it feels like a hiding place for valuables instead of something small to be cherished for it's own sake. I'm not sure this whole "slow cloth" thing is for me. At this moment in my life, too much contemplation seems to lead to sadness which is probably why I'll spend the day folding laundry and any other mindless tasks I find. Try to be useful. Then again, it's that time of the year to make decisions about what pieces to enter into all the various venues out there that are just warming up. So there is paperwork to be considered and, once it warms up, photos to be taken. Thanks to all the folks who make this information public. Thanks Pam, for this one and Mary Macbride for this one. Sewing sleeves onto interesting backsides is necessary and productive.