i’m at my wits end: one day of stitching puh leeez

From 9:17AM to 9:43PM, the plan for tomorrow, give or take a few minutes–oh there will be breaks in the day: gotta walk the dog, eat and pee, so take an hour and a half off there…..

This is not “the roll” i was on  at the beginning of this week though; as much as i got done, not a lot of it was serious stitching on anything but samples and “have-to’s”. I’m spending too much time at the computer, doing paperwork and rolling and unrolling bundles, and then “Waiting”. I need to rouse myself and get stabbing with  needle and trailing threads again. I’m  curious to to see how much i could actually get done in one dedicated day–i want to do a one month residency in July or August with Contextural at ACAD as i (lousily for 2 months) did in the summer of 2009, and was wondering how much could be accomplished if one got serious. It’s just a matter of Doing it, right? 11tybajillion ideas are wonderful, but not if none of them go anywhere!

Well, of course that depends on the type of embroidery (’cause we are talking hand stitch here)—i know how much machining i can do, because that’s all i used to do and could, and did, spend stretches of 4-7 hours at a time whirring away on the machine. Next week i’m spending a couple of days with Lalage too–need to write up some poetry on her.

All these ideas are trying to jostle each other out of the way, which means nobody’s first–or last——-where do i start??????? Should i pick from column a and match with one from c and one from z and 2 from b??????????????

heelllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllpppppppp

 

date it! and other notes…………and (semi) good news

I have to either keep the piles separate or stick plastic dated bits in with things; i unwrapped the eucalyptus seed pod silk waaaay too soon. Yeah, i got marks, but nothing to write home about, so it’s going back into a bundle. I also realized that perhaps i’m being too stingy with the amount of leaves spread on the fabric; i don’t want to clump things, because definition of a sort is part of the final look, but perhaps the leaves being more dense and touching each other and more cloth make the reaction stronger? There’s another piece now in the bundle pile with a lot more plant matter on it and will have to wait patiently for the results. Patience, patience, patience………..arghhhhhhhhhhhhh

The silk charmeuse takes the walnut differently than the habotai—-a warmer more diffused look which is lovely, but not what *i* need for a certain plan. I’ve got to remember which type to use from now on depending on the effects i want. I did a piece last night just for me, wanting to make something 3d from it. Sketchbook out please. There are areas i can isolate as there are pieces to the puzzle i am putting together for this one.

charmeuse and habotai silks comparison

Of course, first i have to find more white (or cream/ivory) habotai at a reasonable price……

I’m also going to admit that there is no way i’m going to finish the “Bets on Finishing” “project” (see the page up top in the nav bar) by the end of December—-overly ambitious as always, i will be happy if Sea Change gets done, and Sage Woman Diary has a few actual stitches added. It’s not that i HAVE to do these things to start other things–i  feel right now that too many unfinished bits of business are un-necessary. I really want to start the new year with a clean(er) slate, reiterating that just because it’s the new year does not figure in the grand scheme of things or as a magic pill. A flip of the calendar page and a new numeral isn’t a panacea ( used figuratively as something intended to completely solve a large, multi-faceted problem) or mystical start!

I wanted to mention that the illustrious Sandra Meech is now blogging. You can bookmark or subscribe here. Unfortunately she has one of those comment boxes that doesn’t allow me to comment…..I particularly like the entry about planning!

On the job front, the flower mines are up for sale, and i will be kept on at my current 3 days a week, which is pretty much all i asked and hoped for. A steady cheque helps, and i will still have enough time to do my own thing. A new owner would be stoopid to discharge the staff they will “inherit” but we are prepared for that as well. I’ve never had a problem getting work in my “field” so am able to sail through all this with minimal worry. “Mouthy Mary”, as the current owner calls me, can get through the “holidays” with a little less complaining (I have a bracelet the girls made me that has part of my other name as well: “Bossy McCrankypants”–only the Bossy part fit, but it does fit.)

 

hand written, and building from the ground up

Rather than whine and complain, i have decided to just get in the Stoodio and do something. It doesn’t have to be Art or even art, finished or functional, earth shatteringly innovative,  purposefull or a statement. It just needs to be done to keep the flow going. Quite honestly, with the goals i had set myself, i think i forgot about having fun and just creating for the sake of creating.

Cry Havoc and let loose the dogs of warbling!  AOOOOOOOOOOOWOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

Did you know i actually do PLAIN sewing? New pillowcases for Greyman:

And here’s the actual factual entry:

You’ll have to click on the picture, then click to enlarge!

Here are the pictures. I could have slipped them into the writing as i learned how to do that when i designed my exhibit postcards, but you can see the details more clearly if they’re separate:

Above the dye setup.   The yogurt container i did with a rose pink and a bit of orange didn’t have enough dye in it at all, so i dunked the two pieces back into the crystal light and powdered them with black.

Above, still waiting to rinse and dry. I’ll post a pic of the results of this one, in an hour or so.

I like the way the colours separate, reminding me of Deb’s “sugar” (and cream of wheat weevil!) dyes. I used peacock blue, rose pink, orange and black, letting some colours be in the bottom and some on top. The pinky violet and blue one is crystal light on the bottom, with peacock blue on top. Successful enough, not rocket science, and destined for something no doubt down the road. The pink from the crystal light is too sweet for my taste though and will probably be overdyed at a later date. I think though that i just added waaay too much water to the two packs of CL—dye not drink, next time!!! Below, the dry results, delicate and vintagey, except for the vivid blues.

If you try this, just remember that OTC dyes are NOT as lightfast as good professional dyes. They’re fun and cheap to experiment with, can still build your stash and are not as messy or dangerous to handle. That being said, if i could afford to do all these dye tests and thingies with Procion, i would in a heart beat!!!

Since this entry is a jpg, i’ll have to add the links here:  “blog-guy” Cynjon, Jackie, Jude, techniques learned page, Fabric Art Journals (FAJ), procion dye instructions. Oh and i changed the time i let it sit, to two hours just to be on the safe side.

NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I also have a pretty exciting dinner date coming up with uber talented and world famous art quilter —— —– on the 30th! She’s running a workshop at ” Quilts Canada” at the end of this month, here in Calgary, the Canadian Quilters Association’s biggest show of the year.  I’m thrilled and honoured! (And i’m such a tease, ay?)

And Slapshot, the Spastic Elastic could care less:

As far as she’s concerned, as long as i am OUT of the computer chair, things are good. (This is looking down the back of the chair at the snooze position du jour.)

 

yegawds and little fishes

It’s only 2 weeks now until my exhibit in the Calgary Epcor Centre opens! I realized i have about 42 stitches still to put on the skin piece–thought it was done, but forgot about a certain area that will be visible when it’s stretched out in the window. ERK.

Wrote the dreaded “artist statement” yesterday and sent it off to Jill–the Untitled Art Society will have a Facebook “Event” posted for it, and it goes in their newsletter.  Now i have to get some invites printed–rather silly and embarrassing in a way, as i hardly know anyone here really……my “reception” will be a joke–can the artist say “will not be in attendance because of sheer mortification”??? Double ERK. Do you think i can get a run of maybe 11 postcards?

 

holding back, part (arlee too/)two

Mal and i have been having some interesting “chats” by email and comment: she makes me think and analyze, not in a heavy handed pityparty way, but in a truthful sense. Today she asks, “why hold back?” This can be anything from procrastination to thinking/hoping something better will happen/be found/be given, from sharing “secrets”, whether personal or your art methods, to exhibiting your work. (I am not advocating personal deepdowndirty heart secrets being put online, by the way.)I would guess that holding back is a combination of fear and insecurity —-something i’m trying to get over as well—not fear of failure, but fear of success: how would i top myself next time? Sounds so silly, but we often seem to sabotage ourselves this way, as artists. Procrastination becomes part of this as well, but tomorrow may never come , and there is always next week…And then we start competing with ourselves, furthering the sabotage and building more of an obstacle course.

Good advice just given to me recently, in regard to the residency, that applies to every one of us as artists: “Make a plan, cut it half and expect to get no more than half of that done.” More realistic, less threatening and much more satisfyingly attainable—and then the rest *can* be done at a later time.

Another way we hold back and cheat ourselves of the joy of creating is to “save” certain fabrics or beads for “something better” or “for good”–when does good happen? WHEN YOU USE IT! Gonna line your coffin with it, wear it as a shroud, will it to unappreciative friends and relatives? (Well, actually i could will it to an Appreciative Friend, but i figure we’ll blink out shortly after each other, so…) Yeah, we all have some chunk of fabric that is either expensive or one of a kind or both—yeah it’s irreplaceable, but are you the only one who sees it because it’s neatly stashed away in protective gear, an airlock and alarmed system surrounding it? What’s the point of being such a miser? You’re holding back a lot when you do this: your expression, your potential, your joy, not just the object.

I have one piece of the most luscious rayon velvet that i dyed and overdyed and overdyed again about 16 years ago. Once in awhile i take it out and fondle it, drape it over myself then carefully refold it the other way so creases don’t set, wrap it back up in its cotton sheet and stuff it away again.  Doesn’t it sound like it woud make the most gorgeous death dress? Except if i’m dead, who’s gonna make it? Won’t be my Greyman, won’t be a friend; if i’m lucky i’ll get bundled up in it and it and i will be stashed away in a wicker basket and spooned over with dirt. Guess it’s time to USE it, before it’s even too derelict, decrepit and decayed to use.

What if you actually used some of that stash, those ideas, that style and showed the world? Wouldn’t it lead to other things, as much or more than the grudging bites and coy tidbits we sometimes offer up? Pretend it’s the last fabric you will ever touch and make something magical. What did we do before we blogged? We didn’t know there were other “obviously more talented” people out there and we just did what pleased us. Pretend that has never happened too!

Holding back shortchanges ourselves, creatively, physically and emotionally. If i let go and just DO IT, i’ll feel happier, more accomplished and hell, there’s always the second bestest piece that is now the treasure to use :}

 

all adanglish

Beginning and ending a thread, whether embroidering or beading is always a pain. Knots “shouldn’t” be visible, they say. Too often, my needle gets stuck in a hidden one which usually means snarls, in the thread and from me, or  pulling everything through and making a hole, and more snarls, of both variety.

As i stitched Hoodoo Sky to a backing, i was leaving ends loose. A quarter of the way around, i thought what the hell: knot the little buggers where they are visible.

Obviously this would not work for every piece of textile art, but with the raw edges and fuzziness on this one, it suits nicely.

Making the backs neat on artquilts has always been my bugaboo—should it be as tidy as the front? What if it puckers? What if i didn’t add enough ease so that the final quilting/stitching/finishing doesn’t pull it in too much? I decided to RELAX and let it be as it wanted. I was careful with this method of attachment to not have too many long floats on the reverse. I’m not going to add another backing to hide the stitches; if i did that would mean more stitches that would have to be covered, and i am not going to bind the edges to hide anything so am pleased with the way this turned out, almost like cuneiforms:

This opens a whole new plan for other works :}

Ends all adanglish and stitches all present and accounted for.

 

Oh Sister Catherine of the Immaculate Intellect Covered In Tufts of Wool!

That’s a swear by the way, not the subject  :}

Greer’s “article” has stirred up a lot of people, with viewpoints ranging from “ignore her” to villifications to very personal responses. What bothered me most about her words is that she obviously did NO research on the subject, and with the current explosion of art magazines, books and shows devoted solely to the textile arts, what writer worth her salt would expound upon a subject with no delving? No reputable publication on earth would print such a “review” even, because taking out her personal feelings about the subject, that’s what the article is, as weak and patronising as it is. If her name were Flossie Heehawnty would it have been published?

However, i suppose that is slagging on my part also. If anything, this has made people sit up and think about what they are doing in the arts, whether it is “patchwork”, “artquilts”, “paper arts” or “tole painting rusty bits and assembling them into fabricjournals as political statements”. A stretch I know BUT. I also realize what we do and why is not always as important as we want it to be, so don’t think i’m getting all self righteous and crusade-y. Whether it’s personal satisfaction, a compulsion or a need to share a viewpoint, to donate to a worthy cause or to raise awareness of a personal issue, we still do it. I don’t believe that because someone has a “history” in “history” that they are the final word on the subject. Ms Greer is an “expert” on one subject and it isn’t textile arts.

Introspection is good. Examining our own methods is good. Learning new techniques and old theories is good. Going your own way with no profound pontification is good too. We don’t have to make everything Art; sometimes art or sometimes Craft, or sometimes craft works, fits the bill, fulfills the need.

I just want “experts” to be Experts that’s all!!! At the same time, i can take what i like and leave the rest—my world is not made better or worse by writers like this,  even when the words come from a personal Icon (which Greer is not and never has been). I DO want to be “educated” though.

So why did i “choose” to be a “textile artist”? I didn’t. It just happened. Way back when rocks were soft, my mother  taught me to hand sew when i was five and to use a machine when I was seven. I sewed clothes on my dolls (literally: all the seams were on the outside because I sewed them ON to the bodies) ,  progressed to making my own clothes,  found out about quilting while a young mother (i still have some of the very first and while my interpretations were not great, they were mine :}),  tripped over artier examples of quilts as a single mother,  then suddenly decided i didn’t like any of the rules and went my own way,  wrong or right,  poorly designed and constructed or properly done. At the time on a VERY limited income, i realized that 13 dollars of fabric and thread and stuff from the “free box” would take me a lot further than 15 dollars of paint and paper and an outdated book from the library.

Along the way, i supported myself and my son with wearable art and went to school to learn more about textile arts. Ironically the two year program, while rich in stimulation and history,  only made me better at what i already did,  which at the time was a deep love of machine applique of my own designs. I “showed”,  i taught,  i sold a line of what i fondly now call  Bimbo wear,  i joined local guilds.

And then i discovered the online world/community. WOW. There were other people out there who had the same twisted ideas i did! And there were magazines and books and projects and Projects that were so Different! People explored ALL the options in their subject/technique. They exploded with expertise and innovation—AND SHARED. They’re Experts! And i listen and learn from them. If my personal textile lexicon doesn’t require something,  i don’t have to accept it, except as another lesson to be filed in my vasty headspace.

So. Choose your Experts as you need them.

Let each man exercise the art he knows. Aristophanes (450 BC – 388 BC)

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do. Elizabeth Bowen (1899 – 1973)

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration. Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954)

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. Henry Ward Beecher (1813 – 1887)

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.  Isak Dineson,  ‘Babette’s Feast’

You’re confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they’re talking about product. That’s not art, that’s the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I’m not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands. Jeff Melvoin, Northern Exposure, Fish Story, 1994

I shut my eyes in order to see. Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903)

And that’s all i have to say on the subject!

 

Germaine Greer needs an education

I have NEVER read such a condescending, back handed, narrow-minded, uninformed article as this one!!!!

Making pictures from strips of cloth isn’t art at all – but it mocks
art’s pretentions to the core.

*Germaine Greer
Monday August 13, 2007
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>*

On August 4, an exhibition of patchwork by Edrica Huws opened in the
primary school at Llangefni, on Anglesey, possibly the most inaccessible
art-venue in the British Isles. I had meant to make the 12-hour journey
from east to west and back again in honour of Edrica, who was once very
kind to me, and gave me an unfinished watercolour flower piece by her
aunt, Ursula Tyrwhitt, who was at the Slade School of Fine Art with Gwen
John, Gwen Salmond, Edna Clarke Hall and co. The flower piece, which
Tyrwhitt abandoned when the composition went wonky, now straightened up
as well as may be in the framing, hangs in my breakfast room to this
day. Perhaps, if I went to Anglesey, I would find the answer to the
perennial question why any woman would set about to make a portable
artwork, a picture, out of bits of old fabric?

-
What could be the point of such an exercise in futility? The work of art
is supposed to defy time but fabric is bound to fade and rot, even when
it is kept in between layers of tissue paper and shut away from sight.
There’s nothing new in this kind of heroic pointlessness; women have
frittered their lives away stitching things for which there is no demand
ever since vicarious leisure was invented. Mrs Delaney was spending
hours of concentration making effigies of flowers out of bits of
coloured paper mounted on black card as long ago as 1771. Why didn’t she
just paint them? You can see her paper mosaics in the Enlightenment
gallery of the British Museum, if you insist, but be warned. You could
end up profoundly depressed by yet more evidence that, for centuries,
women have been kept busy wasting their time.

It is really difficult to make a picture out of scraps of printed cloth.
It is not in the least difficult to buy a kit with pre-cut
colour-coordinated scraps and toil away at ironing the pieces round the
paper cut-outs, pressing their faces together, stitching them from
behind and ironing them flat, until you’ve recreated the quilt in the
illustration, but even then you can’t read or watch telly or even think
while you’re doing it. There was a time when women made patchworks
together, in quilting bees, and chatted as they worked. The materials
were worn-out clothing and aprons; the pattern was a variant on a stock
pattern, learned from the older women and modified to fit the
circumstances. Such quilts are dignified, dense and often very beautiful
objects. They have no pretensions to being works of art, or had none
until some impious philistine decided to stretch them flat and hang them
on walls. The same thing happened to the Navajo blanket. Taut against
the walls of the Whitney museum, the lightning blankets that used to
flash and flicker on the plains are dead as shot crows on a fence.

Edrica Huws, born in 1907, spent two years at the Chelsea School of Art,
gained a diploma from the Royal College of Art, and worked as an artist
until she married the Welsh sculptor Richard Huws in 1931. Five children
later, and living in rural Anglesey with neither electricity nor running
water, she turned her hand to poetry and began collecting fabrics for
her patchwork. She was 51 when she began her first patchwork picture of
a greenhouse. It took her a year. The challenge was in getting the
assemblage of differently figured pieces to look like a representation
of her subject, but not too like it. The scraps had to be treated like
scraps, not like paint, or mosaic. Edrica said herself in a lecture in
1982 that to her “the essence of an aesthetic experience” was “the
control just winning”.

What this suggests is that for Edrica, as for many other women artists,
the art activity was haptic, like dancing, say, which may leave a
pattern in the sand but the pattern is not the point. She chose to
interpret visual subjects in fabric because she liked doing it. As she
said of her setting out: “I decided that if I were to finish [the work],
it must be representational; anything else would either be beyond my
powers or would bore me.” As soon as the riddle was solved, and the
fabric assembly had come together, looking as like the subject as she
wished but no more, she was uninterested in it. She enjoyed this
laborious and tricky process as she did not enjoy painting.

Other patchworkers have said that paint is too cold and wet; fabric is
warm, tactile and surprising. Patchworkers do not work at the vertical,
but engage with their pieces from outside in or inside out. Edrica said
that she was never sure, working from back to front and back again,
which way she was going. By making her cloth pictures Edrica was,
consciously or unconsciously, subverting art, mocking its pretensions.
Hers are pictures that refuse to be seen, that cannot be hung. Edrica
Huws might be surprised to find herself shoulder to shoulder with Tracey
Emin, whose untidily sewn tent, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95,
sadly destroyed in the Momart fire, is in the same self-mocking tradition.

This article makes my blood boil—and makes me laugh as well—-how the mighty have fallen, in my books when they write such “reviews” without actually researching the subject.  MS Greer has obviously never been exposed to the intricacies of textile art, yes ART i say, and has ignored the fact that quilts and quilting were not always done for utility purposes but for beauty and the love of beauty.
“Frittering away”????? Is an artist more of an artist because he/she “fritters” time with paint, stone, wood, metal or words?
“…women have been kept busy wasting their time”—-same response, darling Germaine—and why is it a waste to create? Is it more important that we raise children, wash laundry, wipe noses and the asses of children and husbands and infirm parents, or rather as the “liberated” Ms Greer would have us, spend our time in courtrooms, operating rooms, science labs, spaceships or battlefields? Is that why we were “liberated”, why we are the “new women”, the post Baby Boomers, Gen X’s etc? To use our brains without using our hearts, without adding our souls to the mix?

Pah, Ms Greer. Pah. All you have to do is go to an exhibit at an “accredited” museum/art gallery/textile symposium/ biennale–and you probably won’t be inconvenienced by a 12 hour trip either because they are all over the world—-to see Real Art. Made from scraps of fabric, of old rags, new fabrics, hand woven fabrics, antiques and heritage pieces, reeds and barks, synthetic space age materials… oh you get it, you readers, you artists, you open minded sweethearts. We address all issues, feelings, moods, politics, religious beliefs, hopeful aspirations and hopeless assasinations ofd spirit, we share, we teach, we explore, we dream, we learn, we cure even.

With “strips of cloth”.