Untitled fiber art piece for show

This is newly finished, and it's knitting with crochet added to it. The top part is Field of Wheat, very traditional stitch pattern, and I followed it with double crochet, which I hugely increased, then decreased, to create the drapes you see. I falls naturally into a three dimensional shape. No title for this yet, but it reminds me strangely of primitive figures!

Size about 30 x 12 inches. The point of hanging pieces like this for a while before storing them clean for the show is to let them breathe for a while and adopt their preferred dimensions and drape. A dress or not a dress? that too will emerge in a few days. I must get this piece's opinion on that.

Fiber Art 2012 show entry

My work for the solo exhibit I'm putting on at the Libe gallery, by invitation of the curator, to happen next year (!) is moving along a lot faster than I had expected, but that's fine. As usual, the art tells me where it wants to go and what it wants to do, and I'm often just an innocent bystander.

After the Unseen Presence made her presence felt, I realized that there was a dress in most of my woven and knitted wallhangings, which I hadn't realized until that white one turned into a dress before my eyes.

But they remind me of dances, too, so for the moment, the tentative title of this piece, approximately 30 inches by 18, can't measure, it's on another floor, finished this afternoon, is Charleston! complete with the exclamation point.




This contains my handspun yarn, some donated handspun, some unspun wool top (from Cape May, yay), some paper twisted to make yarn, ribbons, cotton thread, sequins, wired ribbon and who knows what else. There are embroidery stitches in here, too, an adaptation of drawn threadwork, with ribbons woven through. Click to enlarge.

As usual, the reds changed in the pic, but there's a wide range of that family of color in this piece. Cameras don't like red!

Many many references in this piece! which blogistas are invited to scope out for themselves. Anyway, you are the first to see this complete work, and I am deep into plans for the next....

The Unseen Presence

Behind every artist there's an Unseen Presence. Mine got very literal, got dressed up in lacy white dress, snappy felt bag and knitted slippers and followed us on vacation. Couldn't shake her.



Her first appearance, down at Cape May Point in a gazebo.




Lounging on the balcony then



On the boardwalk, and showing her hotel room, right above her head there.




Home, resting her feet, before vanishing.



We may see her again, perhaps, her choice.

She's not exactly yarn bombing, since she leaves after the picture, not exactly an installation, since she's in place only minutes, not exactly an exhibit, since she exists only in pictures.

She's just our UP.

Nautilus Field and Fen Journal is home!

Readers who follow both this blog and Field and Fen, I'm posting the wonderful results of the Nautilus round robin journal which we originated in Field and Fen.

It's gone far beyond a simple journal idea, and now belongs in this art blog. This marvelous artwork started with my creating a cover and putting in some blank Arches paper for playtime purposes, then it went to several locations in Canada, including Toronto, Cannington, Calgary, to the midwest, to the Bay Area, to Vancouver, to Alaska, and then to New Zealand, and finally back home with me again in New Jersey.

On its global travels, it picked up drawings, poems, painting, musings, photographs, collages, mementoes, multi colors and ideas, and finally got here, hand delivered at my door by my friendly mailman who didn't want it left in the box in the rain, and it had, ohoh, a bag of pineapple lumps, a wonderful Kiwi candy courtesy of Marrianne. Well, I needed the energy to take the pix, after all.

Incidentally, contributors included a MaryAnn, a Marian and a Marrianne. Just thought you'd like to know. As well as a Hali, a Heather, an Irene, an Eepy and oh I hope I didn't omit anyone. People who enjoyed it, couldn't quite make an entry and passed it on, you are part of this too! they also serve who only stand and read..

Anyway, enough chat. Remember you can click to enlarge. Here's the pix:

Front cover and helpful Kiwi candy



Here's Minimiss' page plus a letter card she wrote to explain the significance of her page





MaryAnn's front page reads in both directions



and the back is a marvel of drawing



Irene (dogonart) made a two sided piece, too:





Heather's part was a freestanding folded written piece, which works like writing and like visual art





Hali gave us a painting and a poem, both wonderful



Eepy's preamble Face and her Letter from the Beach need a few frames:














Notice you get to see both sides of the postcards, too

Annie sent a wonderful photograph



And here's the back cover



Aren't we great? just bask a while. We done good.

Weaving and Knitted WIPS

Among many other artworks, books, purses, felted UFOs, in progress around here, there are a couple of serious pieces going on, one being the saori weaving in many fibers, from paper to roving, about one third complete




the other WIP, or Work in Progress, is a white knitted cotton wallhanging, about halfway there, created spontaneously, saori style, as I go, using a heavy cotton thread




These items will probably find a place in the exhibit I'm working on, for June of 2012, if I live that long. Well, I always seem to, so why not.

The reason to switch back and forth is that my hands do better when I don't wear them out in a single series of movements. Weaving is more demanding, so it's a bit slower. But this is okay, since it does give time to think and study it as it goes and make decisions more deliberately, always a big departure from my usual headlong approach.