babbling

Thinking about what to write for an artist statement  has made me think about the origin of the piece and how and why I've been working with vintage fabrics. This naturally led to thinking about my own artistic process, the steps I take, and it was like striking a match to tinder. For me it always starts with color. In the wake of a long and productive dye season, I've been overwhelmed with beautiful cloth..even if I do say so myself. For a while I have had a design in mind - an iteration of a previous piece - and this morning light helped me choose a palette of cloth and take it out of the studio where there are too many color distractions.

I already knew what the base piece would be (which came right from here)  so I selected a double handful of colors to go along for the ride promising myself that I wont be using every crayon in the box...this time. The design will be relatively simple so the colors will have to be limited.

Squeezing the paints out onto the palette is what artists do...marshaling the materials. Ahead of time I know this piece will be permanently mounted to a large canvas 36" square, so my design has boundaries to consider. A piece of batting has been cut to fit and will act as my design wall as the piece develops. Hard decisions will be made about what cloth will be cut and which will be left whole.

The design itself is abstract but will have inferences and suggestions that always come right from the cloth.

(notes for the statement - Reasons why I work with vintage cloth)

I am old fashioned Yankee frugal or just plain cheap depending on your point of view. I could lie and say I'm all about recycling for the good of the planet but then there would be people taking exception to my use of contemporary dye processes and they would be right. I work with whatever my vision calls for- vintage fabric is everywhere and can be had for next to nothing and a little dye goes a long way. Long ago the fashion of setting a white table was the rule and a lot of that cloth has outlived the fashion and I am happy to be able to reap the harvest. I have my favorites, Irish double damask and cotton lawn, but I'm an indiscriminate collector and don't mind if a piece has holes, stains or burn marks- it's all going to be transformed anyway. I've surmised that because of changes in the manufacturing processes, cloth that was made sometime before the 60s takes up dye and other surface treatments better than "new" cloth. Fabric that has never been treated with fabric softener takes up the dye almost fiercely, yielding colors that could be described as translucent, even iridescent. You can begin to see my "whole box of crayons" dilemma.

I like the randomness and serendipity of the results of my dye process on vintage cloth. When I used to use acrylics on canvas I never, ever used a color straight from the tube, in fact, I rarely cleaned my brushes completely leaving them pickling in jars of dirty water waiting to be wiped off (on my jeans) and used to reveal hints of whatever color had come before  a reminder and echo of the previous days work.

There is a deep sense of personal history inseparable from these cloths. Many of the pieces I collect were created and used in ways that no longer exist. I hold a length of cotton flour sack in my hands, examine a hasty, unskilled mend and think about the life of the person who worked that rough needle and thread and what repairing this cloth meant to them - how important and completely utilitarian cloth was in their daily life.

I pick up a large damask dinner napkin that is as thick as felt with the depth of the fine weave and layers of jacquard design embossed in glossy white and monogrammed with the mark of the owner, the possessor of the cloth done with incredible complexity and skill by a person of low social station, her skills taken for granted and cheaply bought.
 I can drift away thinking about her sitting on a stool by a window with cold New England sunlight coming over her shoulder as she works the fine threads into the hooped napkin. Time traveling at it's best.

Ripping into these cloths and transforming them with color sometimes feels steeped in hubris. Not so much ballsy as lunatic.

I digress and have sidetracked myself but I'm rolling on two rails right now..writing about the how and why and starting something completely new. Really? 100 words?
Good times, noodle salad.

assignment

You spend hours working on a piece. Later you feel like gambling and rather than run off to buy a few lottery tickets you spend hours deciding which pieces to enter into a prestigious exhibition. The nerve!

Then you spend more hours re-photographing them and obsessing over the paperwork and meeting the deadline, barely.  Then, one day after you've forgotten about it, the Fat Letter (or Fat Email)  arrives to let you know that your work has been accepted and your job is far from over. "Lavanderia" will be going to Art Quilt Elements 2012  and I am incredibly honored.

I submitted my three entries without artist statements and now I have to come up with one hundred words either about my work in general or this piece in particular.  You say "How hard could that be...she never shuts up here on the web.."

Well folks, this time it's going into print and I don't want to make a fool of myself.  I didn't write a statement in the first place because I wanted the work to speak for itself. Now I have to speak for and about it carefully and thoughtfully. I probably shouldn't go on about how the basic composition came about while I sat in my car parked in the winter sunshine outside the local lavanderia (I like that word so much more than laundromat)  waiting on three huge loads of wash to dry and observing several older women inside go back and forth between heated arguing and companionable agreement as they watched their own laundry churning.

redecorating

It was time to do a little interior redecorating. Most of you would be appalled to know that the walls inside my house are still the "realtors oyster" as when we first moved in.
I hate the idea of painting a room a specific color. I get tired of whatever color it is before I'm even finished painting! Instead, I like to hang curtains and let the light coming through color the room. The blue curtains in the master bedroom are getting pretty old and faded but it's a whole lot easier to redecorate here. The new banner is a detail from "As Yet Unbaptized".

stopping

If anyone knows of a class on knowing when to stop, let me know. I still don't know what's going on here but I can't bring myself to call it done because ....well, just because. Part of the problem is the pleasure in the process. Just the act of sitting and stitching on cloth is it's own reward, whether something comes of the effort is always a crapshoot.

 

stitching on something with an end in mind is no less satisfying...here's another feather bound for Jude. The base cloth is a vintage linen napkin with a stamped design that someone left unfinished and Grace found abandoned in a second hand store that was going out of business . Once headed for oblivion, it's going to keep on working a while longer...the threaded needle was still in it and still incredibly sharp. I'm using it to work the feathers.

lazy Sundays...not

This household does not have that kind of Sunday. Jimmy gets me the NY Sunday Times and I'm lucky if I open it before Wednesday!  I take the time to do the housework I should have been getting after during the week . In a while, I'll make a point of getting outside and get some fresh air, sunshine and exercise.

First I'm doing some marketing experimentation...I can't sanction another dyefest until I move out some of the creations I already have! Thinking that the Magic Cloth Burritos may be too much cloth for people who are working "smaller" these days, I put together a new offering called "tatters"...more about it here...