black and white lightning

inspiration and instigation for using all the black and white things I have been making continues to strike

"Los Dados Encantada" was born this morning at 11:43 ...there are spots of blood everywhere - the base piece had five pounds off pins in it and I was in a spazrush to see these shapes fall into [the right] place..



more pictures when the time is ripe

switching gears smoothly

 I went out on the deck last night around 3am and caught two shooting stars scratch across the night sky like matches being struck. signs and portents.



While I was at HoAnn's yesterday couple of batik fat quarters leaped off the rack and grabbed me by the throat and forced me to used my coupons to spring them from the store.  I went there for a yard of white polar fleece and a giant cookie cutter and came home with degenerate cloth!

Once I came to my senses, I plunged them both in the black dyepot and later worked them over with softscrub. This morning it was evident that they take part in the WIP via the Machine now that I am confident that I can integrate both kinds of stitching in this one.

Now it's back to the dyepots - the humidity has lifted and the sun is hot - it's going to be a beautiful day and I want to wring the max out of it.

lashes

2:45am and I'm wide awake in anticipation of several hours worth of thunderstorms passing through the area.
 If I am tired enough, maybe I will sleep through them but I doubt it. The air is so thick outside that the freight train announcing itself in the distance sounds more like an ocean liner bellowing for a tug out past the lights of the harbor.

I've found a way to stitch many marks, bold enough and quickly enough to use on large pieces - this passage is roughly six inches across - was done with six strands of floss, doubled  in a split chain and then wrapped with the same 12 ply..it really sits up and signals.

I stitched this while listening to/watching an hours worth of  "America in Primetime" on PBS. A dialogue about the nature of storytelling. It has me thinking of ways to bring the sprawl of this piece under control, get it talking.

a mad hand

"Memory's Feast"  2009

I've been working on the large  black and white piece and find myself getting grumpy and unsatisfied with my hand stitching. Twice I've sewn long passages only to spend an hour picking the stitches out. Mulling it over, I looked back over some other pieces with hand stitching and found some reminders about Keeping Things Loose, Not Getting too Trixie and few other examples of the exuberant hand...hard to maintain when you are looking at Acres of work. Every day I have to take it out of the hoops and get it up onto the design wall to make sure that the stitching isn't getting too precious.  other lessons...don't forget the last minute shreds and white fleece makes great batting if you need it.

riot on the wall

yesterday's graduates...a cheeky lot. Now I'm not going to be able to sleep until I get them dancing.

gambol and cavort

 

 I think I need to find some real live baby goats to draw. Still pictures are just not helping. They move so fast and seem to be going in several directions all at the same time..capturing that kind of energy is going to take some first hand observation.

There are heaps of cloth to cull, iron and stow, more raw cloth steeping in the sauce and there are a bunch of deadlines for venues that I am going to have to get serious about.

So what did this slacker do with her enforced idle time?  Updated my "Buy Art" page since I'm getting a lot of traffic generated by the show.

and across the deck

color playing the boundary game. pieces poaching in the heat and humidity.

more B&Ws

Some B&W experiments this morning  didn't turn out as hoped. Too much dye creeping on dry cloth but still interesting.

And then discharging brings in a whole new way to look at things.

transparencies

four different weights of silk and two of cotton waiting to become transparent wisps of color...vinegar for the silks, soda ash for the cottons..



I'll leave them until tomorrow and tend to the batch from yesterday. It needs some TLC - Aquasafe, a gentle wash out and rinse, drying and ironing. Enough for one day.

remember that white linen dress with the little shell buttons on the bodice?

timewarping vintage cloth

A little research and I found that the Colombian Line operated between NY and Colon in the mid 30's.

This piece had a few holes and when I made the mistake of hanging it, the weight cause the wet cloth to tear in a few places. Tender as the night.


More tomorrow.

The new palette  has some surprises..

practicing for Los Dados

the cat house

After Friday night's excitement all I wanted to do this weekend was hide away and do the work - and so I did.

Had lot's of help in the studio. The words stitched into her quilt say "You can help by sleeping here"...of course it's the first time any cat has done what it was told since I made it five or six years ago.


She's being more than the usual Mommy's girl because a stray is lurking in the wings. We are putting up signs today because last week a tearful little girl bravely knocked on the door asking if we had seen her cat..at that point, no. But two days in a row a pretty little longhair with turquoise eyes has poked her bold head in the front door and eaten dry food from Juicy's bowl. With a cat door, for all I know, Little Stranger has been sleeping on the couch.

but right now...we are preparing for a DYE DAY!!  

 

Did you know cat hair is an essential ingredient!

Show Time!

makers mark

I made this piece back in May of this year and I need to find it in the stash..on the "mine" shelf, I hope. Something made me think about it today and I have a craving to make more along the river of this one. The Makers Mark.

Two big boxes were waiting for me when I got back from putting the finishing touches on the show. One from Dharma with some new-to-me colors, soy wax and a few yards of sheer silks and cotton, and a large box of beautiful double damask won from Ebay. These and the linens I picked up the other day  will have me  lost in  dye wonderland for the rest of the summer and deep into fall. 

now dashing

We got called on short notice to come over and get the show hung today rather than tomorrow. I'm actually pleased to get it over with and to give the pieces a chance to relax their various storage cramps and crimps.

While I screwed around fitting dowels inside metal rods and playing with the art, Jim and Colin got the whole job done in just about sixty minutes. Tomorrow, I'll go over and put up the signage and arrange a few smaller pieces and try to get some decent photos. Note to self..bring good camera, backup and tripod!

The carpet guys will be there tomorrow putting in a beautiful ocean colored carpeting and in the evening there will be a book signing by author Hedy Habra who is promoting her collection of short fiction called "Flying Carpets".

What wonderful kind of serendipity is at work here?

Jim and Colin got this done in no time at all...

while this character occupied a meditation room.

Zooming

While I was looking for a tiny scrap of something else, the major players in this grouping rolled off a heap and spread out at my feat, dazzling me the same way they did when I first rolled them up together for "someday"...well, someday is here kids. Those weird, store-bought sheers frosted the cake.


I've been looking at a lot of contemporary painting- artists known and obscure - and I  have been zapped with the need to get new things out of my head and onto the design wall hopefully with the same spontaneity and energy of the work that's inspiring me.

I've come to a place of acceptance about the fact that not much about my choice of medium can be hurried and still turn out satisfying. I was reading the back of a tube of acrylic paint in the store yesterday and there was something about drying times - 30 minutes to 3 hours - and I started laughing out loud..the kind of laughing that you have to struggle to get a grip on. Creative hysteria?

<<word has come that we may have to hang the show THIS morning and not tomorrow, I'll know more in about an hour>>

dismembered

I did what I said I was going to ...just took the big scissors and cut it into the piece parts. I like all of them separately. Even the backside was interesting.

For now, I'll set them aside until I have some unencumbered brain time. 

We've done a few simple upgrades to the dye deck - a new sheet of vinyl for the working surface, both tables are now level and flush and the replacement tent was brought out of storage.

Today I scored a half dozen interesting silk and linen garments from the Nasty Thrift up the street and a large bundle of double damask tablecloths fell out of the Ebay ether yesterday. I ordered a few replacement colors from Dharma and more soywax...I feel a monumental dyefest coming on!!

-

It was a morning for quiet contemplation.

Word came last night that our dear friend Donald passed away after a long illness. He was just here with us in the spring, celebrating life as he always did. Here he is with Jake back in March.






And here, in sweet days gone by, with Peg and Jake again. 

                                                                                                                                                                                      

the path

 Jake continues to take boxes of Stuff out of the garage sorting and mostly filling the trash can. I found my first tarot deck, complete with crib notes,  still wrapped in a square of blue silk.

As I walked up the front walkway I shuffled the deck and drew these three cards - past, present and future. I'm good with it.

Life of Pi

I couldn't explain the book to people when it first dazzled me. Now this! I can't wait to see it in the theater.

making ready (part 2)

There's much list making and scampering around going on but everything feels under control. I bought a variety of hanging rods and fixtures yesterday and over the next few days we'll experiment on our own naked walls to see what works best. The business cards should come in today, cross your fingers.

I've gathered up a squad of smallish, unmounted pieces that I am going to attach two a neutral cloth banner which will hang from it's own rod, two or three pieces per banner.

I found several small things that were left unfinished and reminded me, like this one, what I love about what I do. These are pieces of hand dyed silk organdy and cotton gauze stitched over what might be linen.

working fabrics

SOLD....!

 I would love to hear from you if you've purchased any of my cloth burritos but, more importantly,  I want to see what you've done with any of it!  I'd love to put up links or images.

Sometimes when I look at my stacks and rolls of finished cloth and nothing jumps out an smacks me saying "HEY!" it helps to see where they have led others.

making ready

  I met with the shop owner this morning to make some final decisions about which of the larger pieces would be hung. These in the chair didn't fill the bill,... this time.


I brought all the pieces that she chose from my website and another ten that I thought would work..several that have never been on my website because I never had a chance to get good photographs.  Something I plan to remedy as soon as we can get them up on the walls.


Colin toted the rolled up quilts for me and we carpeted the big room with them..sorry that I didn't take a picture of that.

The riotous array was pretty overwhelming but Candace had no trouble making her choices and ordering them along the walls. This is not something that I would be good at so I was very glad she was ready for us.

I'm particularly happy that she wanted "Front Runner" , "Pirate Circus" and "Giraffe Crossing"  - none of them have ever seen the world outside the studio.

Now that I know what's going up I'll be rounding up the necessary hardware. Starting to get excited.