It's not every day that a surface designer (gasp! is that what I've been doing?) gets highlighted in three separate places. Humble thanks to the artists who have showcased my work in words and pictures...it's so gratifying to see what someone else makes of my groundwork. That's one of my damasks wrapping around Jude's "
Redefining Growth".
Arlee Barr continues to work magic with my fabrics and
Mendofleur is about to.
Lorraine Glessner keeps popping amazing new work into my sight line. I keep coming back to
Joshua Brehse paintings and thinking about middle eastern calligraphy.
Ever thoughtful Elizabeth Barton has been posting about
The Preparatory Sketch (or not ) and the
Seduction of the Surface. Both topics are brain worms for me at this fallow moment. Although there is work at hand, these little things are mere wishes, sketches I suppose.
Pieces have been coming to me as a vision or dreams and I am so reluctant to even sketch them out. It's as if once committed to paper, the magic evaporates and I'm not even inspired to lift the scissors. The two small things I am working on right now have spawned enormous daydream pieces but I know that the scale of all the fabrics I have been creating just won't translate to ten-pace pieces, the things you have to view from across the room, the ultimate limitation of the seduction of surface that EB talks about so eloquently.
I can't speak for what drives others to work at surface design. I certainly don't do it with the intent of building a pallette to work from. I've learned that lesson but I am deeply grateful the other artists who find my efforts to be a jumping off place for their own dreams and visions.
I bought a yard of 2 sided fusible a while back and knew this day was coming. My scrap baskets are full to overflowing, the cards are all cut out and now all I have to do is please myself one 4"x6" space at a time.
These are all headed to market..and speaking of which. Does anyone know just what the market will bear, price-wise,for mailable fiber art postcards these days?
I am without a clue, all input gratefully considered.
Another satisfied customer.
This young lady chose the fabrics she wanted - all I did was bring them together.
As usual, the hand stitching doesn't add a thing design-wise, from a few steps back . Up close and personal (once drawn in) I'm still liking it and will add some more.
There will be some painting to address value issues and quite down the chaos a notch but for now, it's on the design wall where I can spend some time eyeballing it while I put together a couple of flings.
I find adding hand stitching to a piece already machine stitched to be very challenging. It really is apples and oranges so I'm taking pains with the handwork so it doesn't wander too organic or trixy. I want the lines to get along and compliment one another. no fighting for attention.
After three or four false starts (hours to stitch and minutes to pick out) I've come back to the ever faithful split chain but I'm building the thread out of 4 or 5 30 wt. machine threads; rayons, cottons & metallics - so each stitch has to be guided slowly top and bottom or whacko nests ensue instantly.
Where is my Thread grease?
