More Guts and Voodoo

The Intestines are mostly done but I want to use more of that iridescent sheer stuff but I guess I will have to track some down and actually buy more. And here is a rare photo of Voodoo voicing his opinion.

Not a Quilt

...at least not according to the rules I've seen from time to time. It's a full-on, no nonsense collage. While I was discharging some hand-dyes last night I was bemoaning the fact that stuff always looks more vibrant when it's still wet. What could I do to keep things looking wet? Why, mummify them with acrylic gel of course. I had a jar of goo on hand, some blank canvas and a jug of flibbertygibbets (fabric snips too small and wonderful to throw away) so while the morning news spewed it's lunacy, I got creative. I love the way you can shape the fabric to your will once it's wet with the goo and then nail things in place with a flick of the brush. No pins, no needle, no thread. Something's happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. Autopilot 10x10 fabric collage

New Work from Old Mistakes

The repeating circles are a theme I don't even try to escape. I can make them with the rhythm of my heartbeat until there is no more room on the page but I will let you in on a little secret...It's not about the circles at all but the spaces they bound and protect. Things are getting back to normal in the studio - as normal as they ever were. Sad pieces of icky hand dyes destined to be backsides are saved from ignominy by a flurry of discharging complete with a spin in my new microwave. And YES! I even bought some antichlor. I cross my fingers and splash it on the finished pieces like holy water hoping that I haven't paid 1.79 for a bottle of ditchwater. These two pieces are cleverly disguising the huge pile of folded and basketed fabric I relocated from the cutting table so I could get a better look at what the lizard was up to. You can see by the things hanging and lurking about my studio that I have been making 3D fiber things for a long time. I have had that clutch of blue nylon snakes for about ten years now. What was I thinking?

the Whole Cloth

Here's a view from the floor where I am doing my home made physical therapy. I can't get the colors quite right in this room. There's a lot of blue bouncing around in here and my camera doesn't like it. Mandi wanted to know HOW. The top panel is one of my top secret tube dyes and the bottom one was dyed in a mason jar and batched overnight. I sewed the two panels together and then handpainted the circles using metallic acrylic paints. I will heatset this from the backside but, since I don't have any plans of washing it, I won't worry about that too much. There will be a LOT of what I call super-garnet machine stitching and some hand appliqed pieces too.

After a Bad Start in the Night...

My husband left for work at 4:30 this morning only to come back into the house to let us all know that Nikki's car had been broken into. Although the car was parked on the street right under a streetlight, they broke the trunk lock and stole the expensive stereo system that Jake has been installing one piece at a time. You know, the obnoxious kind everyone loves to hate. I must say that I have never heard them coming down the street - being young and in love, they still have much to say and share with each other. I was only grateful that the thieves didn't take the whole car. Tonight I want to put a folded note on the mailbox with this message "TO THE THIEVES...here is a number you can call about the vaccine you will need within two days. We thought you might be coming so we left a little something on the amp and speakers you stole. " and then I will add the number of the local police department. Wonder if I will get arrested for domestic terrorism? So the bad night became a good day. For some reason I woke up with someone else's back - one that didn't moan and groan over every little movement. My house has been neglected since the holidays so I focused on one filthy corner of my kitchen and scrubbed everything I could reach from high up on the cabinets to the floor. That and a few loads of laundry made me feel like a productive human again. Soon the sun was streaming into my studio so I went in there to see what new cobwebs had grown. One of my denim jackets was fresh from the wash so I took a moment to organize something to cover a corporate logo over the breast pocket. Some of that vintage damask that I dyed last summer - Then I started looking around for something else to get into and found two large pieces of hand dyed cotton cavorting on the floor. They were so great looking together I took them to the design wall, turned them this way and that and discovered my next large piece well under way. It was a great day to break out into the outdoor studio and get some painting done.I have been craving to do more like this since I put the sleeve on "Rubric" back in the fall.

Ongoing "inner" meditations

Bet you can't guess what this is going to be. One of the reasons I am building these parts by hand is that my husband and son are working some very peculiar hours so that when I get home from my job, I have to creep around and generally respect the fact that there are two very tired people sleeping in the house. Banging around, playing music and running the sewing machine in my studio are out of the question. I filled my porto-studio basket with a selection of fabric, thread and tools and work in the living room. On a different note, I am thinking about having a SALE on older work to fund my annual fiber education week. When the new Arrowmont catalog came last week I was so excited to find that Emily Richardson was offering a class this summer I started getting hives thinking about ways to come up with the money I need to attend. The first thing that occurred to me was YARD SALE! Then I quickly pared that back to Virtual Yard Sale. Stay tuned.If you have ever craved a Lacativa original, you might be in luck. I need to make room for the new so the old has to GO...I sound like a car dealer.

Liver

The spleen eluded me but I seem to have a lot of preconceived notions about the size and shape of livers.

Guts Update

Here is the finished Imaginary Heart from the Uninformed Guts series. I am going to have to learn to take better pictures of 3D fiber work. another view:

Guts - Part One

Yesterday, Jan Thompson and I terrorized the freeways of Atlanta (Jan pilots a Corvette) threading our way through Spaghetti Junction with the talking navigator guiding the way. We arrived alive at Jan Girod's new shop, Fiber on a Whim, a new "inspiration" store for fiber artists carrying enough unique and wonderful goodies to keep me goggling all morning. After gorging ourselves on thread, cloth, paint and books, we went the Cheesecake Factory in Buckhead and ate like Romans. All this and a copy of Surface Design Journal. My senses were properly overloaded. After I got home and polished off my Key Lime Cheesecake, I settled in with the handwork basket, a few cats, the TV remote, the phone and started work on this piece. I can't imagine a better way to use a rainy day. Inspired by Arlee's heart research and the new rayon threads I bought just yesterday at Fiber On a Whim. When I followed the links that were posted on the QA list I just took a quick glance at one black and white illustration and decided I would rather go with what I thought I knew about biology. I took AP biology back in the stone age and we dissected a horse heart and of course I am a graduate of the NBC-ER School of Medicine. I know the plumbing on this one is purely made up but it was fun to do. Lots more stitching is planned. Looking back through my 2D work I find more than one reference to the interiors of various creatures, like my crocheted livers and intestines. 3D seems the bigger and more interesting route to making these guts tangible.

I took the day off from the office to get my own paperwork done. It took most of the morning to do all the necessaries to get a show entry into the mail. First thing, I decided that one of the three pieces I had settled on was weak and a replacement player was jumping up and down on the bench screaming for attention. Then I had to reshoot most of the pictures, burn a CD, fill out the paperwork. And doncha know by the time I got to the post office half the town was there on their lunchbreak all stamping their feet and aggravating the staff with general impatience. I swear I am going to move to Montana. In my haste, I wound up mailing the entry to the gallery instead of the Country Quilter in Somers where it was supposed to go. A quick email to Jane Davila assured me that I wasn't the only one to make this mistake and the gallery was on the lookout for strays like mine. -3 points for haste. I am excited about entering SPUN because it's being held at a gallery in the town where I grew up, Katonah, New York. If I get a piece into this show, I will want my whole name up on the little card. Someone just might know who Deborah Useted Lacativa is. "Get Out of the Water" is a wierd little experiment along lines that I am going to pursue again. You can't tell from the photo but it's amost an inch thick. I folded and layered a largish piece of cheepo hi-loft polyester batting and stitched it into shape with a few big loops of Nymo. Then I proceeded to mummify it with pieces of what feels like cotton lawn but is actually some cotton guaze scarves I bought and hand-dyed last year.