That Leaf Cluster

Nothing gets one in gear faster than finally getting around to opening exhibit documents to discover one has a little more than 2 weeks to finish a new piece of art for said exhibit. And so I got the needed boot to pursue a year old idea and see if it would work. It's mostly been the thought (i.e. fear) of mixing up paint to match the color in the leaf cluster I'd brought home that was holding me up. Time to bite the bullet and just do it! But I'd not even tested my linocut since carving it so that was the first order of business. Just inked with an ink pad and tested on plain paper.

Test fabric on top, "real" interfaced fabric, linocut and leaf cluster on bottom.

A week or so prior, I'd already fused the two pieces of batik to Decor Bond and pressed an additional large piece of the batik to use for trials. When I found that day with a bit of time in it to do this, I was afraid to pause for my usual checking of procedure for fear I'd lose my nerve and/or run out of time. It's been a long time since I worked through the on-line linocut course from Dejanne Cevaal but I was pretty sure I remembered enough to do some printing on the fly. Mostly, I wanted to try to apply the paint without getting any on the ridges this method leaves as you remove the background. I started with Speedball Screen Printing Ink in brown, adding black to darken it. But I needed to get some dark red in there too and found myself grabbing some Oriental Red Pebeo Setacolor paint to mix in.  I dabbed a bit on a small piece of the fabric and thought I had the color pretty close. I loaded up my hard foam brayer and started stamping, leaving the Decor Bonded strips to near last.

Normally the screen printing ink doesn't need diluting but I didn't stop to think that the Setacolor paint is normally diluted before use. That explains why the mix seemed thick prompting me to add a touch of water. And why when I picked it up off the palette there were peaks of paint standing out from the brayer. And probably why I was having a difficult time getting the solid coverage I'd envisioned. Not that this partial coverage isn't a nice effect, just that it was not what I had envisioned for my little art piece. I think it should have been thinned more.

I began to rue the fact I had not taken the time to review my lessons. And when a few days later this book arrived, one I decided to purchase on the recommendation of Dijanne, I wished I'd had it to consult before my printing session. Just paging through it makes me even more anxious to get back to linocutting and printing.

But in the meantime, I now had my leaf cluster printed on my batik, layered over Hobbs Thermore batting and muslin, ready for some stitching. I'd left out that spool of thread on the left because as it sat next to the batik and the actual leaf cluster, I just KNEW it was the perfect color for the stitching. Silly me. My first stitching would be to outline the leaf print and then maybe add a round or two of echoing. So fixated on this solid leaf idea, I decided I didn't want the variegated right next to it so used the solid burgundy on the small spool. Ok, it matched but did nothing else. So back to the variegated thread, which I did test on a scrap. But once I'd done a round of it, I wasn't so sure, yet my stubborn nature that had deemed it PERFECT prevailed. I started stitching across the background and after half a dozen lines could see that this thread that looked so reddish purple on the spool variegated to a decidedly lavender purple on the fabric. Rip rip rip! Maybe I need to go with the orange across the background, but in spite of it looking good on the sample, it too variegated to an unacceptable color (bright yellow!) and didn't look right as it ran across the browner sections. 

It's only 10 x 10 inches but taxed my abilities

I stared for a long time at my thread collection, willing the right color to magically appear where I was looking (yes, they are mostly arranged by color), and finally allowed my eyes to roam upward where I spotted the somewhat light burgundy variegated thread. Thinking it was too light, I gave it a try anyway and it turned out to be the best solution. I know some experts insist it's the value of the thread, not its color that is important, but I sure didn't find that the case here. Of course, all those lines of stitching I'd removed left needle holes, so the restitching had to be carefully done to hit or at least cover them. Yeah, what fun.

I realized I was so fixated on the burgundy thread because my original leaf had shone hints of deep burgundy along with a very dark brown. But once I got out of the poor lighting in the bathroom where I mixed the paint and did the stamping, I wasn't seeing as much red in the leaves as I'd intended. I pondered if I could paint over the leaves or in some other way add some red to them. In the end, I decided the safest experiment would be to try my Inktense pencils. Remember, I was working on a tight deadline and there was no time for starting over if I screwed this piece up. A simple way to work with these pencils is to transfer color from the dry pencil onto parchment paper or the shiny side of freezer paper, then pick up the pigment on a wet brush. I chose a stencil brush to see if I could work color not only on top of the paint but into the fabric in those areas where the paint didn't totally cover.

I think it made a little difference, but overall, this is still just a dark reddish/brown leaf. Again, nothing wrong with that and it looks good on this fabric, but it is not the color of the original leaf that got me excited when paired with this batik. Not to worry, I'll be doing this again and being more bold when I mix up my colors.

This really was intended to be a trial run for a possible series using this stamp. My idea is to wrap the finished work over canvas and put in floater frames. But because of the dimensions of the batik strips (which started as rejected padfolio pockets), there wasn't enough for wrapping. So I always knew this would go in a 10 x 10 frame. And when I do that, I always attached the finished piece (after zig zagging the squared up raw edges) to either watercolor paper or cardstock for extra stabilization. Knowing that, I didn't have to worry about burying the many thread tails that got pulled to the back., thank goodness.

Time to dig around in the closet to see what I had in terms of that board and I discovered an unopened pack of illustration board I totally forgot I'd bought. Normally I'd put a heavy needle in the machine and sew around the edge to attach quilt to board. But this board struck me as thicker than what I've used before so I hesitated.  Maybe I could just use some glue or . . . I remembered this roll of double-sided mounting tape suggested by a scrapbooking friend many years ago. Am I getting lazy or just smart? It's archival so let's just say I'm getting smart in my old age.

With the quilt permanently attached to the board, my "label" information can be penned on the back of it. When I do this rather than printing out a label, I use the initial stamp I carved as well. This frame had a Masonite back board rather than cardboard like so many cheap frames do, so it went on last. A business card with the name of the piece and price gets taped to it to meet the labeling requirements of the exhibit.

Leaf Cluster I by Sheila Mahanke Barnes 2017 - 10" x 10"

And here it is framed and ready to go (with no glass). I did have a black frame on hand but found a lovely mahogany brown one on a shopping trip that I think looks much better. I filled out paperwork yesterday and dropped it all off on time this morning. I do like it but have misgivings about its simplicity. Too minimalist? Will people view it with at most a "that's nice" or a shrug before quickly moving on? It's certainly not "great" art but I think it is ok "decorative" art. So I was a bit surprised and relieved at the accolades from the ladies checking in artwork today. They can be pretty deadpan as they do their job so to have them ooh and aah made me feel better and encourages me to keep working with this motif, exploring variations on this theme. 

It's March

Ok, say it with me. Where did February go? I know it's a short month anyway, but it got away from me as disturbingly as January did. I found myself hustling to get my March spread in the coloring pocket calendar done in time. This one really has few if any true repeats in the design, but I still found myself setting up a few guidelines of approach. For instance, all circles would be yellow. And the outer sections of petals and arcs would also be yellow. Any areas with black dots or other black designs would get the light green pencil while the same shapes sans black would get the darker green. And I also kept reminding myself to limit the number of colors. I wanted this to be a bit calmer.

I think those parameters served me well. That and the fact that I used this spread to try out some of the suggestions in the Colored Pencil Collage book that soon had to go back to the library. I know I've probably read some of this before, but this time I actually did what was presented to see if it worked better than what I've been doing. For instance, she talked about building up layers by varying the amount of pressure applied while either making small circular motions or long strokes. She described the amount of pressure in percentages, as in start with 10% pressure to cover the entire area lightly and then go back in to use about 30% pressure in areas you want to be darker. It never occurred to me to do anything but press hard from the start to get the color and value I wanted. I was amazed at how well this layering with lighter pressure worked, especially in the areas where I blended a brown and an orange in the petals. She also suggested testing all your colors with a band of light to dark pressure to see the variety of looks you can get in a single color, just by changing the value. I did this with the purple pencil where in the inner swirl I left one portion with a single layer while continuing to build up layers and darker value on the rest. That lighter value also fills in parts of the background where leaving it white was too stark. By using the very light value, I eliminated the need to introduce another color.

I also tried to add a little depth to the design by introducing shadows, a technique I learned with my Zentangling. At first I tried just darkening the value of the color to create the shadow but it didn't work very well. Last night I went over the overlapping areas with the black pencil and a very light touch. You might be able to see it if you click on the photo for the larger version. Safe to say this continues to hold my interest and is providing learning experiences and practice that I can certainly use. 

An Infusion of Energy

Rebecca and her snow dyes

My art group met last week, and after several months of spotty attendance, we had a full house including all but one of our newest members. After several years of unsuccessfully beating the bushes to swell our small ranks, last fall we were suddenly presented with four like-minded textile artists eager to join our group. Each brings her own voice and enthusiasm, and all but one attended the February meeting, some meeting original members for the first time. It made for a lively and exciting meeting. I took my snow-dyes and discovered I wasn't the only one who had been playing in the snow. New member Rebecca (who comes to us via Cody, WY where she also belonged to an art group) also had snow-dyes to show off, hers looking quite different from mine. Of course, we compared notes.

Rebecca's Challenge Quilt

Rebecca is still in touch with her Wyoming group and is taking part in their yearly challenge, this year's theme of child abuse requiring much thought and presenting more of a challenge than many in her group initially cared to take on. Rebecca wanted to focus on more than just the abuse, and came up with this design expressing how a small thing can make a big difference and provide hope. Of course, we wanted to know how she added the text, and it was by composing it on the computer and printing it directly onto the fabric.

Rebecca's Mini-Me

She also shared this guild challenge where all were given a shape like a gingerbread man which they were to use as the starting point for a self portrait. Not content to stay within that stiff form, she cut off the arms and reattached them reaching up, and added the colorful umbrella on top.

Vickie's Ode to Janis Jopline

Another new member, Vickie, sells a lot of her work through the local artist co-op. You can see some of her work and learn more about her on the Art Works site here. I suppose you would say she works rather organically, not tied to working with traditional fabrics but preferring to mix textures and types. This is her "Ode to Janis", using old jeans (leaving the edges fraying) and silks, and adding some embroidery touches. She's a great proponent of the big stitch and she uses it well.

I believe Vickie calls this "Home"

Here's another that shows off her big stitches and also love of adding beads and found objects like the key. She also often incorporates branches or distressed metal rods through loops to combine the function of hanging apparatus with another visual detail of the piece.

Vickie's WIP

This is a piece in progress that I wanted to share because Vickie often adds gold leaf motifs to her quilts. Actual gold leaf applied over dried matte medium as opposed to the foil most of us are familiar with. She feels the foil is too bright and harsh for her style whereas the gold leaf gives just the right amount of bling she is looking for. In fact, this rendition of a 1920's bicycle done in gold leaf is still a bit too in your face for Vickie. She plans to go over the entire piece lightly with white paint, just hitting the high points and giving it a rustic look.

Terrie's play with crayons on dyed (or maybe painted) fabric

Yet another new member, Terrie, runs a quilting business adjacent to her home - Moose Country Quilts. She has written several books, published numerous patterns, teaches workshops, sells fabric and sundries and does longarm quilting. It's a wonder she has time for us! She also works with kids in the classroom so some of her experimentation relates to what would work well in those sessions. Here she colored her design with crayons, often with multiple layers of colors to get just the right shade, then ironed it between absorbant paper to remove the wax. You'd never know this was done by the lowly crayon. Also, she brought along her sketchbook where, inspired by my Inktober drawing a day project, she has been doodling and sketching as close to daily as she can manage. Some of them are tryouts for continuous line quilting, others for applique designs, some just for fun. In fact, the design she colored with crayons is one developed in the sketchbook. She is such a talent.

Terrie's rain quilt - top of quilt is to the left

Since joining last year, Terrie keeps showing us progress on this "rain" piece that started as an experiment with paint. She saw a paned window looking out into the world and has been steadily working to enhance that vision. She has written with pen all kinds of rain-related sayings in waving lines like rain falling and done some hand quilting in the same manner. Her most recent addition she wanted to show was adding ribbon to create the sashing of the panes in the window, something she had not been able to make show up just with quilting. She is well on her way to finishing this.

Meg's latest "kids" fused to Peltex and near ready to be cut out

So what has the old guard been up to? Well, Meg is still creating her "quirkies" - stand-alone images that create stories as she starts grouping them on the wall. Her "Unforgettable Tree" from the Fiber Show last spring remains up, and she's been adding and subtracting to it as the seasons change (follow this link to see the June version). These kids are getting ready to have a snowball fight in front of said tree! Meg has also change her web presence again, ditching her blog site for a platform on Tumblr. Check out what the tree looks like now on her new site, Meg Marchiando Art.

Adele's computer drawings

Her daughter, Adele, was able to join us since it was a school holiday. Only a sophomore in High School, she has many talents including drawing. She and her mother have been doing a drawing a day and posting them to Instagram for over 200 days now. Adele does all her work in a graphics program, using a graphic pad and stylus to draw. She demoed it as well as showing some of her latest drawings. She makes it look so easy!

Robin's booty from her Japan trip including "Year of the Rooster" fabric painting

And last but not least, Robin had photos of her January 12 day Textile-themed tour to Japan to share, with lots of explanations. Not only did she attend the Tokyo International Quilt Festival but she also got to observe a master indigo dyer and learn how to do one kind of shibori tying. Here are some of the treasures she brought home with her, including a quick impromptu painting on fabric done for her by one of the artists they visited.

I think we all left totally fired up and looking forward to the next meeting!  

For Your Consideration While I Dawdle

Running out of room to toss the latest 7 inches of snow

I'm still on artistic hiatus of sorts, having run into time-sucking computer issues, more snow to shovel and other "that's life" sort of things. I'm really not in much hurry to get productive again, rather enjoying this time off to get long-nagging issues attended to and reading caught up on. Time moves forward though and POAC has sent out a schedule of upcoming exhibits that I can and should be a part of. They have reached a magic number of 100 artist members and want each of us to submit a new piece for a March exhibit. Yeah, I can do that, I really can. The yearly fiber exhibit has been moved from spring to fall so I have lots of leeway there. In between, ArtWalk, and several months to get my act together for that.

So while I am taking a break (and mentally mulling possible transformations of some of those snow-dyes into wall art), I can at least share some of the interesting (to me) things I've run across lately. Austin Kleon continues to be a great source, and this Tumblr post caught my eye since I have new sketchbooks awaiting and actually did recently start work in a fresh one: "I like the idea of starting new notebooks by stationing guardian spirits inside the front cover, to watch over things." Click on the preceding link to see an example. This may be a good idea, especially since I've often heard that first page of a new book creates a bit of a block. Once you do anything to it, then it's supposed to be easier to get on with your sketching or journaling.

How I recently started a new sketchbook

Austin also wrote an interesting bit on an often shared quotation of Goethe's: “one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.” Follow this link to get the story of where Goethe got onto this bit of advice which Kleon thinks is "about appreciating, not creating, which is one reason why I like it so much — appreciating (input) is the first step towards creating (output), and too often today we emphasize output over input." 

He also gets into the common advice to work whether or not you are particularly inspired to, that inspiration often comes in the doing. Goethe did not agree with this, nor Marilynne Robinson:

"I write when something makes a strong claim on me. When I don’t feel like writing, I absolutely don’t feel like writing. I tried that work ethic thing a couple of times—I can’t say I exhausted its possibilities—but if there’s not something on my mind that I really want to write about, I tend to write something that I hate. And that depresses me." 

I like the honesty in that. And have days on both ends of the spectrum: didn't feel inspired and ended up with great results, didn't feel inspired and got nowhere but frustrated. (and an aside, I have read several of her books but until I looked her up in Wikipedia, I didn't realize she was born right here in Sandpoint, Idaho!) Austin wraps up with this that I can certainly agree with:

"Productivity and creativity often get confused — anybody who has done creative work knows that good ideas often come when one is least productive. Everybody does it differently: some writers need inspiration before they sit down, and some writers need to sit down for the inspiration.

 

What seems universally true is that we could all use a little song, a good poem, and a fine picture in our daily routine. (Speaking a few good words seems entirely optional.)"

Finally, someone who I've previously quoted on my blog has recently died, author and art critic John Berger. His book, About Looking, is one I've wanted to read. Upon his passing, several videos have appeared on youtube including a late 2016 BBC documentary exploring Berger's life and work. You can also find his 1972 4-part television series, Ways of Seeing, the scripts of which were adapted for the book of the same name, also on my reading list. You can find episode one here, with the rest in the sidebar. Because I know you don't have anything else to do, right? What's 3 hours of your time on a wintry day? :-)

Storm 3 brought snow followed by freezing rain

  

 

Getting In Gear

Round 1 of weekend snow

I've been meaning to do some dyeing, maybe even snow dyeing, for awhile. I even bought 25 yards of mercerized cotton and three new dyes (totally unneeded when one views my stash of gifted old dyes) late last year so there'd be no excuses. It took this additional sequence of events to get me there: 1. While doing my January tidy-up, I unearthed Wil's directions for Parfait snow dyeing that I had printed out from the And Then They Set It On Fire blog (a terrific resource for all kinds of interesting textile techniques and surface design ideas), and  Beth's general instructions for snow/ice-dyeing printed from her blog (she ice-dyes the most extraordinary mandalas and is so generous in sharing her knowledge). Oh yeah, plenty of snow stacked up outside, lots of dye powder languishing in the garage and yards of fabric at the ready. 2. Friend Mary posted this new prairie-style art quilt on her blog, made from her own experiments with ice-dyeing (close cousin to snow-dyeing). So in love with this quilt and what an excellent way to use those interesting fabrics. 3. Then friend Chris blogged about snow-dyeing last week. Alright already! I'll probably do some snow dyeing over the weekend, I thought. And then... 4. We got about 10 inches of fresh snow Friday into Saturday. What else is a gal to do when life gives her that much snow?

I started with Wil's parfait method. If you're not familiar with parfait dyeing, it's basically laying out a piece of fabric, pouring dye over it, adding another piece of fabric on top and pouring a different dye over it, continuing in this manner with as many layers as you want. The dyes seep through to the underlying layers creating interesting and unexpected results. In this case, snow is added on top of the fabric and dye powder is sprinkled on top followed by a little more snow before adding the next fabric. Wil did her demo inside a glass vase so we could see the layers, each fabric scrunched as opposed to laid flat. She also notes that you can substitute ice cubes; she got beautiful results from both.) I didn't have a vase big enough so used a big plastic bucket. 

It wasn't until I was trying to get the snow to stay on the top of my precarious stack that I realized I'd failed to fill in the space around each layer with snow. I tried to rectify it after the fact. I think it skewed my results some as my fabrics did not come out anything like Wil's. The snow I used was very light and powdery, very little water content as visible from the small amount of liquid at the bottom of the bucket once the snow had melted. On either side of the container at the bottom that kept the fat quarters out of that melt, I'd placed a fat eighth of white muslin. Waste not, want not.

Each snow-covered fat quarter got a sprinkling of one dye color only. From bottom to top, I used seafoam, tangerine, basic blue, and maroon - all ProChem dyes. As these are quite old, some may not be available anymore. I was just tapping the dye out from the jars which worked pretty well until that last one when a big bunch let loose on my first tap. Well, not as critical as when I've done the same thing measuring a spice from a bottle right over my bowl, but it did cascade down one side which probably explains why the blue and seafoam layers have so much red. I was hoping the blue and maroon would blend into something more purple or lavender, that the tangerine would pick up some of the blue to create some greens and that the seafoam would also blend nicely into a yellow/green piece. The maroon didn't look to pick up any of the blue below it and is the only piece out of the four that as I whole looks good. The others though, all have areas on them that on their own will be usable. They are definitely cutters. And I don't think I've used basic blue before, so was happy to see what it looked like, and I like how it looks.

Here are some close-ups of the great texturing in the maroon piece. The browns in there are the dye separating into the two dye powders mixed to come up with maroon.

As long as I was at it and had so much snow at my disposal, I set up the more standard snow-dyeing process per Beth, and experimented with manipulating the fabric by folding rather than just scrunching it up. I tried two different triangle folds and two loose accordion folds, one rolled after folding, the other bound with twist ties in four places and coiled to fit the remaining space. That's a tray from a garden center, nearly taken back for recycling after it carried my pots of plants home. I realized it might come in handy for sun-printing or such, but it works pretty well set on top of a bin for this snow-dyeing. Again, waste not, want not; I laid another fat eighth of white muslin flat in the bottom of the bin to soak in the dyes that would drip down as the snow melted.

One of the things that I didn't like the last time I snow-dyed was sprinkling on the dye - either by tapping straight from the jar or by tapping it off a measuring spoon. I'd been thinking about these old salt and pepper shakers I'd put in with my dye supplies just in case they might come in handy, and now was my chance to see how handy they might be for distributing dye powder more evenly and with less of it flying around in the air. Goodness - they worked even better than I anticipated!

Here's that folded fabric covered with snow and sprinkled with dye - first ProChem golden yellow over the entire surface, then Dharma Better Blue Green in places that I hoped might hit the outer edges of some of the folds. I used a measuring spoon to add here and there some Dharma Cobalt Blue. Again, old dyes and I'm not sure if the Dharma ones are still available under those names. It always looks so gruesome to me at this stage.

But after the snow had melted off, it looked very promising! After rinsing, definitely promising!

Ahhhh - basking in my success! I love these! (click on any picture for a larger view)

These are the fat eighths that soaked in the run-off. Kind of fighting with my camera to pick up the actual colors but I think I've manipulated them fairly closely. Okay and usable somewhere, but not in the "precious" category. I actually have plans for these sparked by a textile artist I follow on Facebook - stay tuned.

Overall, my outcomes were more successful than my first try at this and here are some of the reasons I think why. I still don't quite have the scrunching down like I would like but folding the fabric really produced exciting results. I don't think I've tried this mercerized print cloth before but am very pleased with it. It barely raveled during the washing process, it's a weight and weave I like working with better than Pimatex, and the dye color looks rich and really taken up in the threads. I also tried Beth's method of heating the wet dyed fabric in the microwave prior to using a cold water soak before starting to rinse out the excess dyes in warm soaks. I've read of this method before but this is the first time I used it and I think it made a difference.

By Sunday night my dyeing was all done, new fabric ironed and tickling my imagination. By Monday morning, round two of ten inches of snow had stacked up, wet heavy stuff this time, and demanding I spend my time removing it from my driveway and path to the front door. I hear your snow-dyeing results can be affected by how much moisture is trapped in the snow you use. Will I try this wetter snow to see? Naw - I have other things to shift my attention to. But gosh, I have so many talented women to thank for getting me off my duff to give this snow dyeing another go. Be sure to check out their blogs and art.  

Slower Than I Thought

It's almost February and I just finished the February coloring page in my pocket calendar (scroll to the bottom of the link for the uncolored version). Normally I would not be drawn to this sort of design - a bit reminiscent of the 60's flower power motifs. But instead, it has reminded me of an annual I bought last spring to add to my pots on the back deck, and I dipped into my memory banks for images of similar flowers I have enjoyed over the years. This is such a different design than January's in that there is no obvious repeat of various motifs, but instead, the same motif scattered and overlapped across the page. So instead of picking a repeat design and coloring each repeat before choosing the next design repeat, this one called for completing a flower in one color scheme before choosing the next and its color scheme in order to get a good balance across the page. I decided to stick with the orange, orange-red, and  yellow pencils for the petals, with green, brown and red overlayed with brown for the centers. This one took more time than expected and again, gave more satisfaction and enjoyment than I expected. In the dead of winter, it is a harbinger of the splashes of color to come. A peek at March has me a tad overwhelmed again - it is a very in your face design with lots going on and not much repeated.

Also taking more time than expected is my cleaning and tidying project. I've let my documenting go for over a year, yet the things I put on my pages like fabric samples linger on my work space. I knew I had photos to print - I know, I know, in this digital world, who prints out photos? But it's hard for me to believe that after I'm gone someone will come upon my external hard drive backup where all my quilt photos are stored and "leaf" through it. Yet they might find one of my binders of documentation files and discover not only photos of my work but many details about it. At any rate, I'd lost track of what needed printing so started by getting out the current binder to see where I'd left off and going through the engagement calendar I use to track my progress on projects to see what I'd finished since then. Good grief - I discovered padfolios from May of 2015 was where I needed to start! So I made a list noting dates and then sat down at the computer to find the pictures to print (some get printed on 4 x 6 photo paper, others like the padfolios can be grouped on 8-1/2 x 11 photo paper). Of course, I ran out of ink in the middle of the project, and my order got delayed, but as of yesterday, everything is printed and waiting for me to pair it up with its details on a documentation sheet. I will feel so much better when this is caught up, and once done, a lot of the clutter on my workspace will have disappeared.

And during all this, I have been reading through some books I ran across at the library. It started as a search for information on fountain pens, believe it or not. I didn't find too much of interest in the "Organic Artist," not really looking to make my own charcoal sticks or writing implements from sticks or feathers, for instance, but it did have an interesting section on making paper from plants and adding sizing. I've wanted to try making paper by recycling my morning pages notebooks and recently stumbled across a great video explaining the process with simpler "tools" than I've seen before. I may be giving that a go fairly soon. I'm also feeling pulled closer to working with a book I salvaged with the thought of altering it. It's taken me a very long time to get comfortable with the idea of altering a book, getting beyond the feeling of defacing and destroying rather than saving and enhancing (I'm the daughter of a teacher, niece of a librarian), but I am finally there, and those two books on the left are doing their best to show me the way. Have only flipped quickly through the colored pencil collage book, but it looks to have good and inspiring information in it too. And you know how I love my colored pencils and keep trying to figure out how best to use them.

So fiber, textiles, yeah . . . you may not be seeing much of me in the coming month. Although I have to admit that the combination of snow piled up outside and the mercerized cotton bought near the end of 2016 are reminding me I meant to use up some old dyes on a different approach to snow dyeing than I've tried in the past. Maybe it's just the sewing machines that will be missing me... 

Focus

Willow Leaves II - Sheila Mahanke Barnes 2007

Brace yourself - this is a long one. I had several lightbulb moments last year. I find these can be one of two kinds, either an "aha!" moment when a bit of information or visual input helps all the other pieces fall into place such that I finally understand what ever it is I've been struggling with, or the head-slap "duh!" one when I realize the information was right in front of me the whole time, and I can't believe I did not see this before.

The one I'm sharing today is of the later. I was reading yet another blog post about the basics of good design when it hit. The author stated that even abstract art needs a focal point, maybe several, be it a shape, a color, something. But of course (head-slap). And how many times have I read that same advice about creating a focal point? Numerous, to be sure.

As the lightbulb glowed, I realized this answered two questions I'd been struggling with for years: 1. What is it about so many art quilts that leave me cold and unimpressed as I view what looks like whatever was on the floor tossed on a background and stitched down, or a dozen clever techniques combined with little rhyme or reason? 2. What is it about several of my own quilts that leaves me uneasy and unsatisfied? The answer to both being, NO FOCAL POINT. 

In the case of my own problematic quilts, I realized that without focal point, what I had created was not so much a piece of art as a pleasing piece of wallpaper. And sure enough, when I went searching for that post mentioned above, I discovered that someone had already made this connection and blogged about it back in 2015 - Elizabeth Barton - who gives excellent advice on how to avoid the wallpaper look. I'm sure I read it when first posted but didn't make the connection to my own pieces. My years as a traditional quilter may be partly to blame. It's rare that a bed quilt really needs a focal point, although medallion-style designs create one by virtue of a centered main motif surrounded by one or more borders. Things that might fall into the category of decorative art also might not need a focal point - think wearable art, hand-bags and totes, padfolios and fabric bowls, placemats and tablerunners. Again, they might have a focal point but it isn't necessary to their visual appeal. But if it is going up on the wall as a piece of art, whether representational or abstract, it will really benefit from having a focal point.

Willow Leaves I - 2005

I think I've been more concerned with other aspects when creating my more abstract pieces, primarily balance. Years ago I worked on an idea inspired by willow leaves scattered on the pavement after a rain. I'm fuzzy on the details of this first one but I'm pretty sure I marked leaf placements on the background before freemotion embroidering them. I know I spent a lot of time and angst on arrangement to avoid repeats in angles, then equal time in color placement. The leaves certainly do look scattered, but I don't think you can say there's a focal point. This piece did sell, and I was glad to see it go because I was never fully happy with my composition. My second try seen at the beginning of this post, came out better I think, and I do really like this version, done by using actual willow leaves to stamp the image onto the background with acrylic paint. Still, I've always viewed it with furrowed brow, sensing something was lacking. Oh yes, a focal point.

Bishop's Close Meditations 2009

Here's my other piece that always bugged me. I was attempting to do an abstract of a painting of Bishop's Close in Portland OR by June Underwood. We had challenged each other to create original works that then would be the inspiration to the other for a second piece. I was so dissatisfied with this piece that I did a second, more representational piece to counter my disappointment. You can read about both of the quilts and find links to the challenge here and here. I don't know if anything could have saved this piece, but if nothing else, I think if I'd grouped together smaller versions of the "meditations" floating upward, I could have created a focal point to make it more interesting and less wall-papery.

So really, abstract art isn't easy to design. Wassily Kandinsky said, "Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for color, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential." David Hockney goes farther: "All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it's got to be organized." In other words, as Sara Genn continued in an e-newsletter in 2014, "Balance, vibration, weighting, form and eye control, mastery of colour, areas of visual excitement and areas of paucity, grey to rest the eye and gradations: These design elements, when intuitively understood, can create a stand-alone magic. In abstraction, this intuition gets your work into the "best" pile." Oh, my poor Meditations quilt is so lacking in these!    

I more recently ran across a link that sent me to this: 5 Art Lessons from Bauhaus Master Paul Klee. Although the following quotation doesn't reference focus per se, it does once again, reinforce that abstract art isn't anything goes, but needs thought and observation from the real world. 

When Klee hosted classes in his home, he often required that students spend time observing the tropical fish in his large aquarium. The artist would turn the lights on and off, coaxing the fish to swim and hide, while encouraging students to carefully take note of their activity.

For those who know Klee as the “father of abstract art,” this lesson may seem surprising. However, Klee was deeply concerned with creating movement in his compositions. And he asserted that all artworks—even the most abstract—should be inspired by nature. “Follow the ways of natural creation, the becoming, the functioning of forms,” he taught his students. “Then perhaps starting from nature you will achieve formations of your own, and one day you may even become like nature yourself and start creating.”

I love this idea of learning how to create movement in a design by observing nature. If nothing else it validates all the time I spend taking photos and looking closely and sketching the natural world around me. This also reminds me of something Picasso said along the lines of you have to know what something looks like and can draw a realistic version before you can draw an abstract version of it. Whether that thing becomes your focal point or not, your composition best include one (or more) somewhere.

Azalea Mosaic 3 - In The Garden - Sheila Mahanke Barnes 2009

As I've written this post, I've taken a look through my quilt files to remind me of my abstract efforts. I have many that I think work fairly well, partly based on whether my initial reaction when the photo pops up is one of cringe or unease, or relaxed and smiling. I've tried then to take the ones that please me the most and see how they stand up to the design criteria mentioned throughout this post. I think my most successful are from my Azalea Mosaics series (1: still in progress; 2: Garden Path; 3: In The Garden; 4: Broken Promises - below; 5: Slippery Slope). I love how each turned out, but especially "In The Garden" and "Broken Promises". It was intuitive work which doesn't always end well for me, but with each one, I felt like I knew where I was going and when I'd arrived. I'd love to capture that again, maybe in my long dreamed of water series, and avoid making just wallpaper!

Broken Promises - Sheila Mahanke Barnes 2009