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.

WIPS

These two pieces have come together for me in ways that I have to call mystical. They are made from the hand dyed antique damasks and cutwork lace pieces that I have been collecting for a while now and based on that wonderful, cut-rate, ancient cotton muslin I scored at OHCO. In some place the holes in the fabric were just there from age and laundering. In other areas I used sandpaper and a rock to abrade the raw edges and thin places for tearing - cotton damask is rough stuff. This one (55"x40") finished with less painting than I first thought. The second piece has more stitching in it's future, some hand stitching and painting . They are both large, this oneis 57"x 42" , both too big to photograph inside the studio without picking up furniture in the frame but it's still dark out. After the top was constructed and hand basted, I put it through a rough, hot machine washing with some work clothes. When I went to build it, I found that I had exactly enough batting left, to the 1/4 inch. I didn't see those spooky eyes until after it came out of the dryer. Thinking about working on these pieces leaves me feeling vague and slightly possessed. I like it.

Flow & Recuperation

After taking to her bed for a couple of days with lethargy and mopery, a 124$ trip to the vet for a look-see and some pink medicine, Jinx came into my studio today and jumped up onto the new WIP, rolled about and generally proclaimed herself on the road to recovery. We are all relieved. I finished up work on what is now titled "XX" and pretty quickly "XX 2 " came together on the design wall. As big as it is, it turns out that I had exactly, to the quarter inch, enough batting to get this piece built. I did some things differently this time, distressing some of the fabrics with sandpaper and rocks to get the worn feeling I wanted. ps. the original working title of this piece smacked of plagiarism according to the author of a book by the same name. He sicced his literary agent on me and the smell alone was enough to back me off and change the title of this whole series. We'll see what's in a name now that the book will not be mentioned here or anywhere else by me.

Stymied is my middle name

Seeing what Marie, Rayna and Dijanne have been up to is driving me nuts! There is a huge pile of PFD fabric, a big bag of soywax and a dozen new tubs of mx dyes waiting for me in the studio and whatever scraps of free time I have, I seem to only be able to accomplish SLEEP. Before any of that I have a deep need to tiptoe up on the current WIP and do things to it while it's not looking. It's a monumental piece as much in scale as in meaning for me and I'm worried about screwing it up but the vision calls for a little more. My baby sister Patty was here just overnight and I had 72 hours of anxiety over the fact that I perceive her as a disciple of Martha Stewart .Her daughter Kim says she walks around with a sponge in her hand and a glazed expression on her face. In my house I (half) joke that I had better do some domestic engineering before the Board of Health starts nailing notices to the door. Of course she was a gracious guest and we enjoyed the first all-Georgia family sit down dinner in longer than I can remember. Pat was here representing Wildlife Artists, Inc. on a sales call to the Georgia Aquarium toting with her a huge duffle bag full of the most adorable collection of stuffed creatures you could imagine. Some folks get all the fun! When she's not pushing plush she's a kickboxer!

A Day in the Country

Here we are set up (before there was any light to see by) for a day of a little marketing and a lot of people watching at the Bostwick, GA Cotton Gin festival. Optimistic as ever, I didn't think about wearing a jacket and spent the better part of the day looking for a patch of sun to stand in. The "porto-Public" facilities were atrocious so I just didn't consume any liquid for most of the day. When I say this place is out in the country I mean COUNTY. But just because we are in Georgia, don't think "redneck". This town and it's people are steeped in the culture of an American farming community and it was just plain nice to see hardworking people having the only good time for 50 miles around and none it having anything to do with what passes for contemporary cultural past times. A few ladies who might have had a nodding acquaintance with needlework paused by one of my quilts and then fell back clutching their hearts over the high price tag I had on it. "Honey, are these real diamonds sewn on here?" one remarked smartly. "Just WHY is this one so expensive?". My answer seemed to satisfy them- "I just really don't want to sell it". The day started with a parade down main street that consisted of countless John Deere tractors, most of them vintage, and a few old school hotrods. The parade ended up in field just adjacent to the pecan grove where we vendors had our tents pitched. A good time was had by all.

BOO!

As ever, my yard full of ghosts did a good job keeping the less hardy trick-or-treaters at bay. Tied to the ends of the tree branches, these are particularly effective when there is a breeze and I stand behind one of the trees and moan menacingly. One adorable baby giraffe made up for a squad of surly zombies and a parade of Paris Hilton wannabes. What were their parents thinking? I feel like posting a sign on the walk "NO ONE OVER THE AGE OF 10 PAST THIS POINT!" I am going to have to open an wholesale used candy store.

Now that the Season is Over

I congratulated my Dad early today on the Red Sox World Series win and now retreat into a "zero sports" mode until next April. While waiting on a batting purchase for the Big Blue Monster I'm trying to loosen up my freemotion moves with these little practice pieces. At first I had wild notions of hand stitching it. I spent an hour at that this morning, took another look at the deadline and changed my mind. I can make my Janome do what I need for this piece. Saturday I got down to OHCO an snatched up 10 yards of 90" cotton then made a special trip out to Snellville for batting and soda ash - a dyefest planned if the thermometer climbed out of the 60's. It never did but a quick check of dye colors on hand to find a seriously limited palette so a dye day will have to wait. Besides, I'm supposed to be getting ready for Saturday.

WIP fall edition

There are errands to run and a baby shower to get ready for so of course I started the day tinkering further with this WIP that I started on last night . I don't normally conjure up work for specific exhibits but this call for entry "BLUE" from Translations Gallery in Denver piqued my interest especially when I looked at the things I have done in the last few years and found Blue to be seriously under represented. When I was little I always used every single color in the crayon box during a coloring session because I had this notion that if I neglected any colors, they would get mad at me, or maybe feel left out. Blue, I hope I'm forgiven.

You can't go "house" again

This was the house where I grew up in Golden's Bridge, New York, the lower Hudson Valley area just a short train ride to Manhattan but still very rural. I went home for a short and sweet visit this past weekend. ...and this was standing where the old house stood for 5o+ years! My brother is building a palace in it's place. It's an astonishing sight - the neighbors all slow to gawk as they drive by. I told Rob he should put a tip bucket out by the mailbox. He has put an incredible team of workers together to get this far since the first week of August. With any luck, they will be able to move back in before real winter sets in the way Indian summer has been dragging it's heels up in New England. The trees were barely thinking about yellow and orange! We took advantage of the balmy weather to break Mom out of the nursing home to enjoy a construction site picnic the day before I left. That's my brother Rob, my Dad (the ecstatic Red Sox fan) my mother Rose and one of my sisters, Kitty. She's a hair stylist and has worked a miracle on me. If I can make it do , with brush and dryer, what she did, I'll post a picture. If not, it's still a fabulous cut. Mom & Dad celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary yesterday. Whew! We took a ride up to see Jim's family about an hour's ride north in the Catskill area - it was wonderful to see them too. I took my sister to The Country Quilter in Somers to get my fiber fix and she became entranced with the ranks of bolts of fabric and put herself on the mailing list for future classes! A new fiber convert! They have a scrap bin there that should have a sign on it "QUILTER's CRACK" . All the scraps you can stuff into a quart sized baggie for $2.50 - I only got one but will send Kitty round to the shop to see what's new on a regular basis.

Blinded by Eye Candy

I'm leaving for a short visit home to NY tomorrow so I'll leave you with this.

fabulous treats in the mailbox

Today's snail mail was especially wonderful. These are some hand dyed cottons from the dyepots of Gail Myrhorodsky. For the moment, too wonderful to cut into but their time will come . (cue the evil cackle)

Artist's Statements - updated

Update - Here's the final version and thanks to all my brilliant friends.

"Mudmen Procession” is part of a series of whole-cloth, dye-painted and stitched works exploring the translation of simple gestures I call "arc and hesitation". These gestures commonly interpret as beings in various attitudes of interaction ; the similarity of forms and the repetition of actions echoing the behavior of humans congregating, as they will, like for like.

_____________________________________ Your job is to determine if I used the online BS generator to create this artist's statement, or not.

"This piece is part of a series of whole-cloth, dye-painted and stitched works exploring the translation of simple gestures I call "arc & hesitation" into representations of beings in various attitudes of interaction ; the similarity of forms and the repetition of actions echoing the behavior of humans congregating, as they will, like for like."

Jeez Louise, I should get paid for writing these things.

for my birthday I got THE CHAIR!

I had quite given up on finding a comfortable chair for doing handwork to put in my studio. Wasted time looking at pictures of chairs but never got my ass out to get acquainted with any of them. As more and more things came into the room there seemed to be less for even the notion of a comfortable place to sir and sew. When I got home yesterday afternoon I found that once again, Jim knew my mind before I knew I had one and had hunted down and brought home the Perfect Chair, one that met all the rigorous "must haves" and "gotta be's" that I must have been talking in my sleep about, and installed it in my studio. He also had a half pound of cooked shrimp waiting and a good thing because by the time I headed home from the meeting (more on that in another post) road kill was looking good. Previously loved and hardly ever sat in, it's the perfect size, shape, color, fabric - the list goes on. I'm one of those shoppers who most often comes home empty handed due to sheer pickyness. Jim found just what I was thinking about and made it happen for me.

the Baby Blanket Boogie

Did I mention that pending star is a boy? Here it is complete with stitch-in-in-the-ditch! This one is made for love, play, wash & wear and start all over the next day.

baby blanket time

Some fun being had.... One of my best friends is soon to become a grandma for the first time and these 8" sqaures will go into making a Wild Baby blanket for the pending star. Just picking out the fabrics for this one was fun. I stayed with the commercial fabrics for durability but the backside will be one of my favorite pieces of hand-dye that I've been saving since I started dyeing my own fabrics. If this side could be called "Sunny Day" the other will be called "A Sky full of Stars".

Two days, two finished

I'm running out of space on the design wall. Right now, it's seven pieces deep if you only count the ones big enough to overlap. I've gotta get sleeves on all these and take proper digital shots or I'll wind up calling them table cloths and tea cozys and bring them to the Bostwick GA Cotton Gin Festival. Jan Thompson & I are going to be splitting a booth down there on Nov.3 . All I have ready are a bunch of postcards and a half dozen velvet scarves. This is the latest of the whole cloth,dye-painted group. 45"x45" as yet untitled but it's one of the Mob series.

hear the trees and plants and critters sigh

The woods behind my house look lush - there's a creek down there somewhere - but we have been in a serious drought for a long time. We need a month or more of this kind of rain, all day, everyday, ending at sunset each day to let the earth take up the water and distribute it to all the parched life. And I wish people would stop needing LAWNS of all the useless man-made conceits. When we first moved into this house in 1998 the lawns looked like a golf green. I swear they were tweezed! Then I looked inside the garage to see an entire wall of boxes and cans of various chemical and toxic lawn stuff. I told the broker that they would have to take all that crap with them. Since then our lawn lives on whatever falls from the sky and dog piss.If I had my way, we'd have sheep but we are still inside town limits here. There's been a watering ban in effect for most of the state and people have been turning in their neighbors and going to jail over Watering The Lawn. Insanity. Plant something that will survive without artificial assistance! Grow Food in the Front Yard! Have a meadow! Grow rocks like they've figured out in Florida and Arizona. People in Georgia are going to have to come to the realization that climate change is going to impact the status quo but then again there are still folks down here that don't get that the Civil War is over and their side lost.

affirmation

Getting the acceptance letter is one thing. A big thing. Then getting an email with a list of the other artists chosen to be in this exhibit gave me pause. The works of several of these people represent, to me, the pinnacle of accomplishment in this media. Not being known for BS, I won't say "what am I doing here?" but I will say "holy shit!"

Fall

Two days in a row I stepped over this leaf on the front stairs coming into the house.I think it wanted to be immortalized. Once I remember to take it out of the scanner, I'll tuck it deep into the pages of an old favorite book that's gathering dust on the shelf. While looking through old files for inspiration for this rug hooking adventure I came across a picture of this fabric and was diverted to digging it out of the closet and readying it for some stitching. Looks like Halloween somehow. It's about 30"x40" and some ongoing cyber discussion regarding line in art (and stitching on quilts in particular) has me thinking hard about making a new approach to the stitched line.

Summer's end

I was still going in the pool right up til Friday but the night time temps have dropped off and I've been running a fever on and off for a few days. Probably something I caught from swimming in September. We'll struggle daily to keep ahead to the falling leaves until the cover can be dragged out from under the house and installed. The Braves just finished their last game of the season, their long-time TV announcer Skip Carey made his goodbyes and I found out (where have I been?) that Turner Broadcasting will no longer be carrying the Braves games to the nation. Sad. So far nothing on the upcoming season seems worth watching.

Hooking for Fun (no profit in it)

I picked up a couple of wonderful books at the library the other day and set about to see what all the fuss is about. I like that rug hooking can be a real recycling art using almost anything at hand, and I got lots at hand. With a quick stop at JA's for some burlap (shudder) and yet another crochet hook that I didn't really need. The fact that they didn't have a real rug hooking tool tells me that this technique is not on the trendy scale here in the South. At this particular JAs they are still up to their butts in scrapbooking materials/supplies and probably consider rug hooking to be a bit provincial like churning one's own butter. I worked up this little sample in no time and I like it. The burlap doesn't thrill me but the potential and the notion of using whatever charms me. I missed the chance to observe some pros at work at the ACA retreat back in March; I was too intent on my own thing and boy, they were intent as hell over their things too.

webwork

Come on over and see what's new in "Like Hotcakes". It was tedious as hell getting all them little buggers posted but if know one ever sees them, who will know?

the gesture theme continues

It hasn't taken a lot of contemplation to realize that this new direction is actually a continuation of a theme that I have been working on for almost two years now. The arc, just half a circle, is the simplest track of a desultory lift and fall of a hand. You don't even have to make the effort to join up the ends and there it is. Tongues, tombstones or tonsures, make of it what you will - it's a mere flip of the hand.

backsides and more

Friday brought great mail - this postcard for my new favorite crack house and an acceptance notice from Quilts=Art=Quilts for "Mudmen Procession". I have to think about how this piece should be shipped to minimize the creases in the acrylic paint. The backsides of my work has been preying on my mind but Rayna Gillman over at studio 78 notes has eased my mind about a quilt's less-than-perfect quilt backsides by going public over the matter. Given the simplicity of my stitching you'd think that the backs of my pieces would be fairly tidy- NOT!. I'm sure my machine is overdue for a professional tuneup - the least little change in thread, top or bottom, or needle or fabric, for that matter is usually cause for nests, skipping and other hidden horrors. As long as things look hunky dory from the topside, I'm satisfied. Then I start to think about whether the jurors are going to spend any time looking "upskirts"as it were. I mean really, if you went into an art gallery and started lifting paintings off the wall to check the backs of canvases you'd be ejected . I am still so strongly tempted to go ahead with my idea of making pre-printed stitch or iron-on labels for the backsides of art quilts that say "WRONG SIDE STUPID!" or "NOSY LITTLE BASTARD, AREN'T YOU?" or "WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU LOOKING AT?". Think I could sell a few? I've been stitching on a piece started a long time back - it's been growing on me as it nears completion. No surprise that I had dreams last night about a variation on the same piece that demanded execution first thing this morning, I mean before sunup even. I don't know what part pleases me more - the hand-dyed flannel, the color scheme or the little 3D tongues standing up smartly and being different colors from different directions. More of this to come for sure.