Stitching on Winter Soltice

I may rename this one "Winter Solace".

I hurt my back trying to adjust my chair at the office the other day and normal doings, like just walking, make me shake with pain.  The plan is to spend the day sitting in my new sewing chair upstairs with the heater pulled up close, and stitch on this one. Yeah, and get up and move and stretch every twenty minutes or so.....

The sun is bright today but the temps are still in the teens. Brutal. The hot colors in this one are little fire spots. I want to be careful to not over stitch this one as the scraps I used have enough color and character going for them I think.



Jimmy made a batch of chili yesterday so I'm off the cooking hook for the weekend. More heat!


Several people have asked about my method of attaching a finished piece to canvas so I'm planning a tutorial that I will post here in the upcoming week.First I have to find the right sized canvas, a pesky square 22"
Here are some closeups    one   two

Glad Tidings

I'm thrilled to announce that  "Companeros"  and "Supernova" , most recently in Chandler, Arizona at Art Quilts XIV: Significant Stitching ,have both been acquired by a private collector.  Making both of these pieces was all fun.

Companeros is covered with french knots and heavy running stitches  which I did while sitting with my mother she was in the hospital for a stretch. Supernova is newer, one of the first pieces I worked on while at my call center job.

Social Networking

Talk about your slow cloth. I've been dragging this one around with me since the middle of December. Colin pointed out my usual value issues and rather than paint or stitch to amend them, I'm going to mount this one on a canvas leaving a two or three inch border and paint it a flat gunmetal gray. Finding the right size canvas will be the trick.

I've joined Slow Cloth on FB and am amazed at the lively conversation taking place around what's normally a solitary and contemplative pursuit. My personal reasons for working in this manner are purely practical, in fact, almost enforced by circumstances. I don't have a whole lot to say about it but it's interesting and fun to see what others are thinking and doing.

         Sweetie and Colin

"Dirty Pool"

Some time in the night,I got an email letting me know that someone bought "Dirty Pool". 

I did a little research and found that this one goes back to 2005 when I first started blogging. There are links here and here that tell about it.

Update..I spent the afternoon adding eight piece to the store some as old as this one and some that have never seen the light of day!

Concentrated Focus  (the original Handmusic, 2005, unfinished)

wippin'

There should be music here but I dont' know what to play. A tango perhaps.

Winter afternoon light

As if I needed another path to follow, a new piece has sprung into being. I'm still shuffling the spots around.

The afternoon light over my shoulder in this new chair has rekindled my flagging interest in this piece. Under the fluorescent lights of the office I was getting mighty bored with all that gray kantha stitching. New things have been revealed.  And here are two other pieces in progress, one barely thought through and the other one about to be let go. Catch & Release.

Happy New Chair

Not really but a new location. A nice spot where I can catch some afternoon light over my shoulder. And a new perch where Sweetie can watch Squirrel TV. The bold little buggers actually come up and put their paws on the glass! Just wait until she can go outside.

This chair is actually part of a suite that we bought from This End Up back in 1980. In fact, we still have most of the pieces. When you buy this kind of furniture, you had better really like it cause it's going to outlive you.

No pithy thoughts here for the new year. There was a SALE in the store and I have a lot of new ideas perking. Who could ask for more?

read the manual!

I've had this camera forever and I just figured out how to adjust the macro setting for closer focusing.

Back to work

I continue to find things in the studio that have never seen the light of day. Photographing them and listing them at Hand Music will be a daily priority until I finally get to the bottom of all those tubs stacked around the place.    

Four "new" things added to the store today. Time for a break. 
This is Candyland





Do you believe in cat reincarnation?
I do now. Sweetie has crept out of the bedroom and followed me into the studio where she is full of mischief and needs a wary eye kept on her.

The first time she jumped up onto the work table to attack an innocent piece of string I had a chill of mistaken identity and then the warmth that can only come from kitten foolishness.

Christmas

I guess I am coming out of my bahumbuggery about Christmas .   We had a lovely, quiet little Christmas here. Jake was here for the morning and came back later for dinner. Colin took Raquel to see her family in Florida but should be back tonight sometime.

For years I have been wanting to find a place where they skip Christmas altogether and go there a week before Thanksgiving and not come back until after New Years. I'm sure the Scrooge-ness is part homesickness and part stress related. I was glad to snatch about 24 hours of peace out of the season this year. Someday I will learn from my mother's example. When I was growing up she and my father managed, with four kids and blue collar budget,  to pull off a Christmas Orgy that would put Martha Stewart to shame and she did it in stride. Her trick was to start shopping sometime back in August. Someone remind me this year, please!

Letting Go

Please know first that I am not complaining here. These sales could have not come in a more timely fashion. It's just an emotional time of the year. Normally, I am happy and proud as a parent putting a kid on the school bus for the first time when I sell a piece and ship it off, but packing up "Memories Feast" this morning put me in a strange place.

When I start a piece, I certainly don't have "marketability" on my list of design considerations. More often than not, I'm on autopilot. I didn't think anyone would ever see and feel this piece the way I did, but they have and off it goes, priority mail.

One thing I do know for sure, and anyone who had seen artwork made with textiles will affirm, everything looks so much better in person. I know that every one who opens one of my packages will be captivated by the reality of the thing they only imagined from an image found in the internet. Happy Holidays!

Color coming on

Along with the sun being just so in relationship to our ball of mud, the stars must have been rightly aligned.

This piece danced out of several scrap heaps in the studio in a short hour, re-aligned a few bits of itself and was basted in place before my last break.

I spent the last two hours of my shift just eyeballing it and thinking about stitching possibilities.  Now the challenge will be to finish it's predecessor with the same vigor and joy. I feel color coming on.

Solstice

Stitching continues on this one, I've come to love building mock floss from 4,6, even 8 strands of regular sewing thread, cottons and rayons together with a strand of metallic thrown in for pizzazz. "Chess 3" just before mummification ( I solved the problem of the process darkening white fabric!) and something new just started to celebrate the turning of the year. Did someone mention that there's a heavy holiday breathing down my neck? Jim just left to find us a tree!

Sweetie fits in

Sweetie has become a member of the household in a limited way for now.
We have kept her secluded in the master bedroom without putting any other feline noses out of joint. Our cats are free range, coming and going as they please through a cat door, but more often standing with noses pressed to the glass of the slider mentally compelling you to get up from the couch and let them in. So far, Sweetie rarely ventures out of the upstairs and we probably won't let her learn the outdoor property until Spring. She seems content with her domain for now.

in a tiz

I recently popped of to have my say at The Painter's Key in response to an article about an issue that been on my mind - working big, working small.  This twice weekly  newsletter has become one of my favorite daily reads. It's becoming more relevant to me as I move to step out of the "fiber" artist box without abandoning fiber as my medium.

And, thanks to Jude for the mention of her recent acquisition of "Mayhem", I have been scrambling to upgrade my store and commit to selling some recent things that I wasn't ready to part with. The response to her post was a great emotional lift. Actual SALES! 

There have been a lot of inquiries about the fiber fossils (thanks for that too, J) which sounds a bit more inviting than what I was calling them - fiber mummies - and I am going ahead with mounting a few other pieces in the same way.

And before I forget AGAIN have you seen this absolute wonder of a piece?
I am so proud of you Arlee!

naming names

I've finally come up with a name train to go along with the series I've been working on. This was the first and I've put it up for sale at              Hand Music. 

"All Unknowing" is 18.5 " x 16.5" unmounted - you can tussle with your own notions of how to matte and frame it - I am fresh out of those ideas. and I am pretty sure I can still get it shipped for Christmas. Even so, imagine getting a wonderful gift a day or so after all the holiday fur has stopped flying.

tracking back

I have not bothered to figure out what that means in blogeez but I have looked back over this current process and the results of this series so far and it's a comfort to discover some order in my art-work-life.

If there is nothing in my go bag to work on I start grubbing about in the studio for cloth souls that are getting along and hold auditions. Sundays are for composing the ground and rounding up the elements. There's a day of two of chess playing.

I am orchestrating the somethings, making them fall into an order, a snap shot that appeals to me.

The next step is a technical comfort - basting densely so I don't have to suffer with pins through the rest of the project which tends to make me resentful and blood spots were not a part of the original design consideration. The embroidery is a whole new adventure in design on the fly. Stitching and picking out. I have some new stitching in mind for this one to help balance and direct.  Jeez, for someone with not a lot to say about the art there are a lot of words today.

I did make a couple of changes from yesterdays post.  A couple of shifts and one addition. Today it's stronger, less wishful.

further exploration

The quickest way for me to be contrary is to put my intentions on paper.  These haloed circular elements originated back in '07 during a particularly frenzied dye fest when I was discovering the magic of discharge using dishwasher gel . I had it all over my hands and picked up pieces of fabric only to find them covered with discharged finger prints after the washout.

I shuffled this piece around for about eight hours yesterday. I had it pinned to my cube wall at the office and moved things around while I talked with the clients. It felt like I was playing Chinese checkers with myself. As the evening wore on the game became chess and I'm now satisfied that I won the match.

One of the first pieces I used these elements in continues to please me.  As I tell anyone who cares, it's a great life if you are easily amused.Below - "Hopped Up" from 2007

third and final

I think I'm done with this one.Twice I've sat down with it and couldn't decide where else it needed to go. Time to let it go and move on. I also have to decide if I want to mount this one (and the other two) on canvas sealed under the plastic. Too soon to tell.

following the trail

I never get lost, although I may lose a little time but I never count that loss because I almost always find something important along the way.  Some have wondered why I don't post links to other places...the list would be too long. I kid you not, there are over a hundred regular linkages in my bloglines list. I love Bloglines because it lets me know when a new post is up. From there, it goes like this:

First stop - Lorraine Glessner's  "oh, what a world, what a world" and I defy you to say it without the Wicked Witch voice. From there I found Rebecca Shapiro's site and her wonderful post "Best of 2009 - Moment of Peace" - a wonderfully personal and insightful post about how an artist feels about connecting with a medium. And that medium? Rebecca's link to Wagner Encaustics, Inc. took me down an incredible rabbit hole to the site of Elise Wagner (you think she gets a price break?) and her incredible art. Looking at her work has made me recognize some of the things visual things I have been trying to find using textiles.
Could it be a time for a change for me too?

PS - I remember that I used to touch crayons to the light bulb to watch the colors run. Of course the smell would always bring Mom running and hollering too.

Holiday Sale

I've put everything in this shop on sale so I can make room for some of the latest things I've been working on. If you'd like to see more images, email me.                 

I'd be glad to gift wrap and send things direct to your recipient - I know a lot folks can't get out to shop this weekend because of the winter weather.  The Post Office is still do-able here in Georgia but there is no time for any international shipping.

New circles and friends

First, this is not Jinx. She is lost to us and the sore spot on my heart and the empty spot in our household will be fresh a long time.

The phone rang at nearly midnight. Colin said that a woman saw our poster about Jinx at the pizza place and was sure she had her locked up in her garage. A month later, and miles away? I was beyond exhausted and beyond hope. Still, I was up dressed and out the next morning in the cold rain.

    It was not Jinx, but a teenaged stray who looked so much like her I had to do a double take. She was so anxious to please a total stranger I could not call her anything but Sweetie. She had the misfortune of finding herself lost, possibly pregnant and in a household of dogs that held no future for her. Caring people who took the trouble to follow up on a lost cat poster - I thank them. I had to think about it all of four hours while I discussed it with Jim and found a low cost spay/neuter clinic. How did they know exactly how much my monthly bonus was, I wonder. We brought her home from the clinic last night.
  Here is  Sweetie enjoying her post surgery drugs.

just waiting for the spell

perspective

                      I'm beginning to see these circles as windows or portholes into some where or some time other than the here and now. Always hazy. Just out of reach and focus.

new looks

Colin and I both went for haircuts yesterday. There are no before pictures for a very good reason. I left more hair on the floor of the salon than I now have left and Colin was looking like the bear's butt.

Work continues on this piece. I don't have a stash of embroidery floss so I find myself literally building thread, one strand at a time, from sewing threads. Six and eight strands at a time will make you slow down and be precise or the nest-knot monster just waits to pounce.You can click on both these shots for a close look.

Innocent Bystanders

                                          

"Innocent Bystanders" is back from the Skinny Envelope Show in Florida.                 According to statcounter, someone in Oklahoma has been lingering over this piece. It's one of my favorites but if you are interested, get in touch and we can negotiate a price that will work for both of us.  Here is a link for a detailed look.

The damasks and metallic washed hand dyed fabrics are hard to photograph accurately but anyone who has seen this piece in person will tell you that this is close....

in Nelly's hoops

It's cold and rainy and twilight dark at lunch here in Georgia, with tornado warnings for dessert. All I'd like to do today is hole up and stitch but it's off to the whine mine shortly. Hopefully all the middle management out there will see this full moon eve as a good day to slack off and leave me a few contemplative moments tween contacts to move some thread around some thoughts.

monday's work

I just finished - well, it's only basted together - something to take to work with me. Monday's are funny. It could be slamming busy with one report after the next of human stupidity and greed, or it could be eerily slow. At least I'll have something new stitch on and fool with if the moments present themselves. New music on my Ipod too. So I put this one up on the design wall beside the other two recent things and find the ongoing theme keeping up a pace, a circular rhythm that I wont' fight against.

no heart for art

Somedays the art the you start will not pick you up and carry you along if your heart is not in the making. Neither of these things went any further than this but elements of both have been rescued and repurposed into something else, something that may just sail away without me.


Too soon to tell. No photos as yet.










On the sunny side of my mental street, my neighbor (who is moving) asked if I knew anyone who could adopt her son's adult cat - he was also moving away and could not take the two year old Novi with him.  It just so happens that I did know someone who lost all three of her long time family pets within the last two years.

                            Novi moves on and Jan, Christian and Ryan were ready