Moments that Sing in the Heart

I love this picture. You can click on it get a better look.I shot it through the car window while we were waiting for our hosts to catch up with us at their house. "Yoo Hoo, honey, the Men in Black are here." I got up with an aching back this morning and wasn't all that enthused about grocery shopping but I wanted to cook so I had to do the necessaries. The Publix bakery worked their worst voodoo on me but while I was walking around in the store adding things to the cart, I had a change of heart about those two cannolis I was going to devour so I walked them back to whence they came. As I put them back into the cold case, who should appear over my shoulder but my best Angel, the ganster on the left in this photo, catching me red-handed being good. He was in the store picking up lunch things for his crew. Love you my darling.

Temporary Eye-Candy

Pass out the shades! For lack of anything current to examine, here's my second ever art quilt from 2001 0r 02. I was working the late shift at AT&T answering a phone that never rang so I transferred my phone number into the conference room and kept myself busy by building this queen-sized monster on the huge conference table one hand appliqué at a time. Unearthed in the recent studio move, it's mostly machine quilted and not bound, but real warm over the back of the couch. It adds to my "pirate's den/gypsy camp" decorating theme doncha think?

Home Again

We're home from a visit home to NY where we attended Eleanor's funeral and reconnected with family and friends in a wonderful and poignant balance. Visiting this small liquor store in Rosendale to buy some wine for our hosts was a mere excuse to experience some major comic relief. This is Sake Lee, Liquor Store Assistant, who has had write ups in several local papers and now about to be an internet star.

Eleanor & Donna

My mother-in-law Eleanor passed away today after a long illness. We will be leaving for her funeral in New York tomorrow. Eleanor was an "old school" kind of Mom, her kids and family came before anything else. She was the Very Best mother-in-law, trusting me to do right by one of her finest creations and never meddling with my job as wife and mother although she was an expert and I was a rank amateur. We always treated each other with love and respect and she will be deeply missed. When Jimmy and I first made our intentions for each other known to our families some thirty years ago, Eleanor was the first non-skeptic. I'm a bit older than my husband and at first our families were a bit freaked out about it. After my first dinner with his family she and I chatted while doing the dishes. Well, she grilled me lightly as a mother should. I guess I gave the right answers because I always felt we had her blessings from that day forward.

Broken compass, New directions

While I was waiting for things to cook Thanksgiving day I spent some time blindly stabbing at Maria Elkins artist's links. If you've never been to this site, be prepared to lose a few hours. Add to that links to some of my favorite artists and I got a whiff of a glimmer of an idea to follow. I feel like a bloodhound set onto a long gone but very smelly escaped convict. Two of my all time favorites are Eleanor McClain and Mary Ann Jordan who have both recently added new work to their sites. I love the impact of the work of both these artists. Talk about being gobsmacked! (I only just stumbled across this blog and haven't fully investigated it yet. I see yarn, a kitten, and some real writing - I'll get back to you on this one). Add to these stops Jude Hill's wonderful story about the creation of "Listen to the River" over at Spirit Cloth and Judy Martin's adventure in overdyeing a completed quilt. Don't miss Judy's magical water color work while you are there. Because my project involves dyeing, I'll need sunshine and warm breezes to carry out my ideas so I will probably have to wait until the Focus on Fiber retreat in April before I can work on this project! Talk about your distant back burners! I may be reduced to reminiscing with tiny Rothko puppies like this one from 2005. Where is this one I wonder? The dyeing I could do in my kitchen but the drying of unrinsed fabric will have to take place out on the deck where I'll have to string some clothesline. There will be cutting and piecing (did you know I was a closeted Amish?) and discharging and overdyeing going on too. In what order and how and when I am still pondering. Jeez, I don't want to overthink this one....grrrr. In the meantime, it's back to the studio for more work on this one including meditating on a suitable name.

Thanksgiving Day

Don't you just love a bargain? I just got back from what I hope is my last pilgrimage to the grocery store for the things I forgot to get over the last three trips. These flowers were marked down to 2$ and were about to be tossed in the trash! I passed on the 3$ peach colored roses. So there's a 22 pound turkey bathing in the kitchen sink that still has some ice crystals up where the giblets are stuffed and I'm blogging. It doesn't have to go into the oven until 1:30 (thanks for the calculations, Poppy) because Jimmy won't be landing at Hartsfield until 5:30 if all goes as planned. These two little pieces were made for an invitational art auction and have to get in a priority mail box tomorrow to reach their destination in time. "The Egyptian Room" was inspired by the film "A Night at the Museum" which I finally saw last week. Both pieces are fabric collaged onto 5"x7"canvases with acrylic medium.

Home Towns

Take a look at this list. Do you recognize your home town? (If you do, send me an email and say "Howdy") This is a very partial list of locations for people who have had the interest to stop by my blog or website for a few minutes and look at my work and read about my life. It just staggers me with hope and gratitude that so many people all over this planet can care about something as fleeting and inconsequential as the art-making of a middle aged lady in Old Dixie, America. It reminds me that all over this world, in hometowns everywhere, we all have the same big concerns about family, hopes for the future and desire for life on this fragile planet. We all breathe the air and drink the water. I give thanks.

Self-indulgence

These crocheted cotton mittens took one documentary on Stanley Kubrick, one of his early films "Paths to Glory" and "Shakespeare in Love" to complete. Not a bad way to spend a slow Sunday afternoon. I don't really know how to crochet beyond this one stitch so I just build with this one stitch right on my hand. I was happy they both turned out the same and can't wait for a frosty morning to try them out.

More new stuff and miscellany

Pamela's talk about non-representational work and the mere mention of Mark Rothko has caused me to drag out pieces of hand-dyed damask and hand painted cottons that I could never bring myself to cut into and use them in a large way. I recently came into a few acres of a really intense, black polyester blend that has found new life as base and backing fabric. Just gonna stare at it awhile and try to see how the stitching will help or hurt it. I'm having second thought about the center element. It's starting to look like a skirt.

This is me going away with Voodoo and Jinx who are not quite aware that the other is there or mayhem might have ensued.

And this is my little pagan family protection nest.

WWU3 or maybe not

#3 is in the early stages. I resisted coming out of the blue palette but Jim insisted and he was right, but I'm not happy with some of the shapes so after the "brutal wash" there will be some hacking. The mauve/gold/white pieces of fabric are a kind of cotton that you can no longer buy and take the dye in wonderful, fine grained marbled way that I could never reproduce in any other cloth. This was originally a sheet from my Aunt Jo & Uncle Chuck Morley's hunting lodge in Flint, Michigan so it is easily fifty years old. Two summers past, it became too fragile to continue as my favorite bedding so into the dyepot it went. I've been hoarding it ever since. The cut work came from an estate sale in Narragansett, RI.