Butterfly, nearly there now, and looking for her home

So here's the almost completed butterfly, the big one, that is, wired and when finished, to be cut out and posed, using the wiring to create a realistic effect.  

The hindwings are still to be done, and I'm resisting going on and on with more goldwork, this being a favorite thing to do, and there will be beads and other things, I think.  Thinking about using purl, too, meaning that fine spiral thread that you cut and use like beads, but make small hoop shapes as you go.  I have some of that in a wonderful color.

And I'm still foofling with the background, possibly using the llama yarn knit/crochet piece, but not as a solid background, more of a curtain drawn aside as the butterflies emerge -- Escaping the Net, is the idea here.  I have another big embroidered piece which I think I'll press into service as the solid background.  It has been exhibited as is, but now I think would benefit from more happening around it.

Sudden expedition yesterday to Princeton Art Museum, in search of these items, which they officially assured me were in the lower gallery.  Son came along, giving himself a couple of hours off from the job hunt, and had a great time playing hooky at the museum. We looked over the whole place, it being a while since he was there, and despite all our efforts, failed to find the items I originally went in search of.

But he loved the Book of Kings, and the von Rydingsvard sculpture, as well as the great African piece, the metal fabric, and looked over the Impressionist collection.  We both got a lot out of the Caves of the Silk Road exhibit, more here, which I hadn't seen before. This is a constantly changing place, worth repeated visits.

The weather was torrentially wet, so I didn't take any camera or tablet with me, not wanting to risk getting them wet, so you need to take my word on all this! and the Any Body Oddly Propped giant installation outside the front door looked very sad and forlorn and unimpressive in the rain.  It's very dependent on a high light, just goes dormant in wet weather.

The Dollivers are agitating for attention to their festive gear and decorating and so on, so that's the next item on the agenda chez Liz.

Look out, it's a stampede!

Recently, my art progress has been slowed up a bit by the arm trouble. It's doing better, thank you, more range of movement, less pain as I go along, but I still have to proceed with caution. Including bagging an event today that would have involved being in an unheated barn at a farm festival, demonstrating stamp carving.  

Neither my arm nor my supplies would have worked out well in cold temps, which we have today.  Not safe to cut cold-hardened surfaces with sharp blades and cold hands. But it was pretty informal, no registration or anything like that, not letting anyone down, so I'm staying home in the warm, and doing what I would have  anyway!

And stamping precedes stitching in this studio.  I'm planning on the bigger fabric piece on which the butterflies will eventually land, and have come up with a sort of banner idea, with stamped trees and flowers, from blocks I've carved.  Probably using my hand dyed fabric, too, once the idea gets a bit more thought out.  And maybe some minor stitching to create harmony between butterflies and background.

So here's the worktable of the stitcher at the moment:

All the stamps I carved either from soft cut rubber or from big plastic erasers -- these are a great way to get into it and find out if you like it, cheap, easy to find, pretty easy to cut, you see one drawing and awaiting cutting --and from wine corks.  Sorry I couldn't get to the farm festival event, since a wine tasting is part of the doings, and I thought that would be fun, to show how to make stamps from both ends of a plastic wine cork.

I use archival ink pads, to avoid smearing and fading, in sepia and in black.  You can get them in colors, but I like the color to come from the stitching part of the artwork, with the other images supporting them but not competing.  

And you see the tools -- a nice little set of Japanese carvers, plus my trusty xacto blade, which I use more than any of the others, and a lino knife.  I draw directly onto the block freehand, with sharpie or pilot pen, depending on what's to hand, and go from there.

Sometimes I carve in without a drawing, freehand, or freeblade, I guess you could call it, and that is great fun. Several of the blocks you see were done that way.  You just act as if the blade were a pencil.

It just shows how demanding fine stitching is, physically, when you know that I can carve for about twice as long as stitch, without having to stop for arm seizing up!

In other art news, a couple of days ago, I revisited the Book of Kings exhibit at Princeton Art Museum in the company of friends, one my longtime art partner Stefi, and there was a new exhibit downstairs, too, wonderful massive cedar sculptures, so glad I went back for the B of K, which I also spent time with.  

The sculptor's work is seen here: Ursula von Rydingsvard, amazing vision.  Huge contrast with the Book of Kings, too.  There are other exhibits, too, including a Silk Road one, but I have to go back again for that. I can only take in so much on one trip.

The Healing Power of Walking and Art

After a series of contretemps too boring to go into, what with HOAs and encroaching neighbors and Amazon billing foulups, I was very happy to seize the day and go out this afternoon to Princeton University Art Museum to see the new installation, and the big exhibit of the Book of Kings, the Persian manuscript.

Here are the flyers about them

And a few views of the installation, the piece being designed and created specifically for this location, and to my mind somewhat poorly installed. The reason I'm complaining is that a sculptural installation is usually meant to be seen from all sides, being designed as a 360 experience.  This one can only be seen from three sides, impossible to walk around it and experience it.  However, since the artists, the brothers Starn, no doubt took this into consideration, I suppose they didn't attach as much importance to it as I do.

So I muttered and took a few pix. 

 The bicycles are not part of the installation, but I left them in so as to give you a measure of the size of this piece.  And the landscaper blowing leaves and grass away from the base similarly.  Also I liked the concept of life going on around the artwork anyway. The parts which look like trees propping up the structure are in fact cast metal, brilliantly created to resemble wood, until you realize they have seams where the casting was joined.

I found the whole thing awkward, because too close to the building, difficult to see, because so big, at close quarters, almost impossible to get back far enough to see better because of construction going on a few yards away and fences blocked with temporary coverings.  Let's hope this situation improves before much longer.  I did like the light shining through the glass, though, and the incidental art that happened when the sun made a shadow on the museum wall.

If you want to see a bit more info about the artists and this installation, go here


Then the other item I wanted to see, can't see too much in one visit, need to digest, was the really spectacular Book of Kings exhibit, with original four centuries old manuscripts to peer at, over several galleries,  individual pages, newly restored, framed and being exhibited before they are put back into appropriate bindings by the restorers.  There are many copies of this classic Persian work, but this is the best conserved and restored one in the US.


This was a great idea, a chance to see many pages close up, using magnifying glasses provided, because of the fineness and detail in the manuscript pages, before it vanishes into its permanent rebinding and is accessible mainly to scholars.  

The light was kept a bit dimmed, because the pages are fragile, and no photography was permitted, as usual with collections on loan. But the experience of being up close to see this amazing work, with the beautiful old script, and even additional ancient notes in the margins, was very healing after a few bumps in my own little life!

If you want to know more (and this exhibit is there till January, should you be local enough to visit), go here

And, since it was a weekday, parking at a premium, I had to park way far away, which built in a walk, always a Good Thing!  So I got home in a much better mood, especially since I'd had sunshine all afternoon,  and, shortly after I arrived home, the skies went black and dumped a lot of rain.  I was home by then, and dry.  And smug!

Art the Beautiful Goes on a Museum Trip

Very close to home, in fact, the Princeton University Art Museum, where it was almost the last day of a watercolor exhibit of holdings from the collection.

With the exception of a lovely Arthur Dove, a couple of Milton Avery pieces (vertiginous as expected with AD! though not the best I've seen of him) and a lovely John Marin, it was a pretty timid show.  Of historical rather than art value, I'd say.  Worth taking a look, mainly for the names I quoted, but not the sort of excitement I was hoping for. I made a side trip to the gallery where they have a Dove and an Avery on permanent display, just to pay my respects.

However, in the lobby of the museum there's a perfectly wonderful artwork, of a Nigerian based Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who uses tossed away items such as bottlecaps, flattened and attached, and with cloth passing behind here and there, to make a huge, draped and amazing work. It's like a giant golden fleece, or a extra terrestrial animal hide, just a great experience, and hung right where you see it as you come in.

It's a marvellous artwork and a social statement at the same time, but not like propaganda.  Go here for more information but alas a terrible picture, why oh why with their endowment not get a better image on their website, sigh.  Photos not allowed, so I can't give you a better shot at any of the exhibit items I liked.

This big piece may be responsible for my feeble reactions to the watercolors, too, since its energy took out all the oxygen! and it reminded me vividly of the months I spent on the Great Tin Quilt, and what an experience that was, too.  Editorial update: if you want to know more about this, go here

Outside there's an interesting foretaste of things to come

and a bronze sculpture, in the trees near Prospect Gardens about which I have mixed feelings, but I thought you should see it for yourselves.

And, dwarfing all the work of people, the sequoia outside Prospect Gardens, can't get it all in one shot, but I wanted to be sure you could see the trunk.  

This one's for you, Quinn!