This morning was the first plein air meeting of the art group, at the Preserve, weather very friendly, cool but bright sunshine, and a nice turnout, who pretty much scattered all over the Preserve in search of subjects before I got them in the frame.
Left is Art Lee, very established found object sculptor, and all around good guy, right is Donna S. the endlessly working and arranging gallery curator and director of All Things Art at the Libe. And a watercolor painter in her own right.
Been waiting all winter to see these trees again.
I spent a good morning trying to recover my drawing skills, long in abeyance, and do a bit of line and wash. I used pen, conte crayon, watercolor pencil, and caran d'ache watercolor crayons. Only moderately happy with results.
Some of the group working by the lake
Largely I spent the time remembering how to slow down and look!
Interested walkers peered over to see what was up
here's a little girl being hauled away after watching for a while, and the birds were in evidence: the swallows have returned, diving and zooming.
A handy bench provided an outdoor studio space.
Note the denim bag, made from upcycled jeans, the pockets very useful for small items.
So I need to draw more, but this return was fun.
The last week I've been laid low by yet another coughing sneezing shivering no good very bad cold, so, along with a marathon viewing of the original Forsyte Saga series, the old black and white one with Eric Porter, I got most of a kleenex box holder thing created.
This was strictly taken from the recipe in the needlepoint book I posted about, and was about right for my need to use my hands without involving too much brain power, since I only needed to follow instructions, not create the design, not always easy for me to follow orders, but anyway. Brain only partly operating, but I worked on it.
So here it is, the four sides joined and flat and the top, before I get around to attaching sides to top.
And here's the top balanced on the four sides. Not yet attached, just showing you the goal. I still have to finish all the outside edges, great practice in that cross stitch that travels back and forth weaving style, and attach the top to the sides before it goes into use. As you see, it's fairly transparent in the sunlight, because I used the clear plastic sheet, so that it would be less visible in the finished product.
Very appropriate considering the kleenex use I've had this week..that's probably why I chose this one. Seriously, this is a lot of fun, and you learn a ton of new stitches, at least I did, so there was learning to be done.
I don't like working in yarn, and might make other items using silk or embroidery floss, just to see how it goes. But for them as does like yarn, this really is a nice fast and portable project idea for future beach sitting, or patio sitting in a shady hat with a tall glass at the side.
And thanks go to Liz M. a fellow guild stitcher who brought in her book and samples of her work to show us last week and set me off on this path.
Coughing endlessly and really not able to do anything fine in the stitching line, sneezing, all that, so I started on a little thing I just fancied, having seen a fellow stitcher at stitch in with this book
and some samples of her own work. I promptly sent away for the book and some plastic canvas. It's dead simple, great fun, 7 mesh plastic canvas, and I'm just blindly following the stitches on the diagram, most unusual for me, very restful in fact. Big needle, big yarn, big meshes, quite a change. I have to force myself to stop, though, before I'm completely spent. But it does involve counting, which is a good brain exercise for me, since hardly anything I make involves counting anything literally. So this is good, using parts of the brain that have been lying idle, while the rest of it has been galloping all over on hobbyhorses.
And it's also using up some yarns that have been lying around waiting for a job to do. Last time I used plastic canvas was waaaaay back, when I used it to teach little kids to make miniature furniture.
Of course, once done, this tissue box will probably acquire beads and other items...
The yellow embroidery is continuing nicely, big change from the other much more demanding work I'm doing on Big Doorway, and it feels pretty good.
I'm working with a single strand of floss, using whatever
needle it fits through. The silk fabric is pretty forgiving so I don't
have to worry about making holes in it with the needle. I had planned on doing this work in spring and summer, because of the light levels being friendly, and because I might be able to work outside on it.
At our recent kumihimo, Japanese braiding, workshop, for the embroiderers' guild, our instructor Charlene Marietti mentioned that braiding was used among many other things, for securing netsukes to the owner's belt.
Netsukes were originally ivory, now not so much, ivory being outlawed for sale, often bone now I believe, small beautifully carved animal forms, little works of sculpture only a couple of inches across. A rich man's toy, in a way.
Since I have a collection (!) of three of these, I thought it would be interesting to show you what these are, some of our members not being familiar with this artform.
So here they are, showing you the upside and the underside so you can see the holes through which the braid passed, and the completion of the work on all sides of the netsukes. They're lovely to handle and play with, like worry beads, and beautiful to see all the time.
I'm taking this group in to our stitch in this evening, so people can play with them!
Transformed. that is, from a printmaking and painting area into a textile arts place, where all the surfaces are clean and you can safely put stitching down and I can now see from the middle of the room where everything is, a huge new deal.
It finally happened when I was working downstairs this morning and realized that I needed stuff from the third floor yet again, this was ridiculous, so it only took two trips to get both current works up there complete with threads and beads.
So now I have an actual worktop for stitching at, where I can spread out, and have two works going at once, with room for both, under the window, good light. I have a high sort of barstool type chair, and the edge of the worktop supports the frame nicely.
I decided to take pix before the disorganization gets under way again. This feels very strange to me, a neat and clean studio, a contradiction in terms from my previous art lives.
It's good, though, to have a work area that is a workplace, that I can leave as is and go off and do other things, without having it in sight when I'm not working on it. That gets you mentally tired more than actually doing it.
This post is in the nature of a thank you to Florence K., who in the course of the workshop we were both in yesterday, gave me a present of a bracelet made from paper and glass beads, by women in Uganda, who make them and all kinds of jewelry and decorative items as an earning stream.
She'd found it at a craft show where women who go to Uganda to buy the pieces in order to resell them to US customers, were presenting a display. Florence was impressed with the idea of both doing a good thing by contributing, and giving me a paper bead bracelet, since I'll be teaching paper jewelry to our embroidery guild next month. Just so's you know, it was Florence who introduced me to beading...I think she has something to answer for there! just sayin' She's a wonderful stitcher and beader and has been working on it since she was a little girl, which is, oh well, quite a few decades ago..
The bracelet's threaded on memory wire, which wraps comfortably around your wrist, making it one size fits practically everyone, even me, with my big hands! Florence, I love it, and I'm not taking it off. I'm out playing music this afternoon, so I will get it admired there, too! being paper, it's light in weight, doesn't drag your wrist down though it's big enough for drama.
If you're interested in knowing more about this worthy cause, and browsing in their shop area, where there are a lot of other wonderful pieces, take a look here
Just a bit of fun at the expense of cookbook authors and famous artists, and people who heart setting up still lifes with reflections and cleverly draped backcloths, and geometric references...go here
The art life has been interrupted by the work in the studio and the furniture moving and organization and the painting of the walls and the reorganization, and now finally I get to work on art.
Here's Big Doorway, now with added dark blue serpentine threads, straight from India, curling around like vines. There will be more of these, and beads in the openings. And I'm introducing a thread of iridescence to the archway itself. There will be a lot more to this archway, not solid, but some kind of tracery, not sure yet. It's good to be back.
And, since I like to exercise other brain functions, too, I've been studying yet another book on math!
this one claims to teach the reader how to study math, but in fact, though she sprinkles math terms through the text, it's really about how to think constructively and lay down memory stores for future use, all very good stuff. It's a great antidote to the intuitive leaping I do a lot of, provides a grounding that itself suggests other ideas.
Of course, she casually talks about the quadratic formula, as if we all knew what that was, I googled on it, and next found quadratic equations, which were quite a revelation. Math was not a strong subject in my schooling, so I do like to find out stuff like this. Most of what I know I learned as an adult just because I was interested.
However, plunging into math on the internet led me very soon to my favorite of all, Leonardo of Pisa, aka The Other Leonardo, aka Fibonacci, whose sequence is not only easy to grasp, but is huge in its implications. You start, some people with zero, some with one, and go one, two, add two to one, three, add three to two, five, add five to three, eight, and so on ad infinitum or until you are tired.
This wonderful concept can be shown as a series of ever increasing boxes, and if you scribe an arc joining the corners of the boxes, you find you have a spiral. Same spiral as the growth pattern of pinecones, sunflowers, the Milky Way, in fact the universe itself. Tell me that doesn't excite you! and go here to see what I mean.
And the reason it's important in an art blog is that Fibonacci was also really examining the ancient concept of the golden section, known by several other names. If he had been able to stretch out his calculations -- he lived in the 12th century, limited computation then -- he would have arrived at the magical golden ratio: one to one point six. This is the proportion of many natural phenomena. The human body incorporates a lot of it. Early architecture did, too. And it's somehow pleasing to us even if we don't know why.
When I teach drawing I always like to give out 3x5 and 5x8 index cards for people to practice setting up drawings, using the whole surface, treating the edge of the card as the edge of the drawing. Then I point out the ratio. Yes, it's from the Fibonacci sequence, see back there a bit at the numbers. The cards are in the one to one point six ratio. Divide 5 by 3 and divide 8 by 5 and you'll see. Doesn't matter what orientation the piece is in, the ratio still works.
Whenever I make a piece of art, I check afterwards to see how close it is to the golden ratio, because I can be pretty sure that it will be harmonic and pleasing the nearer it is.
Just sayin! blogistas who love zentangles might enjoy trying this out on index cards, too.
In Field and Fen, my other blog, I wrote yesterday about cooking plain and fancy. Today we're two floors up, and it's painting plain and fancy.
The work in the studio now finished by handyman and genius Mike, it's ready to paint, particularly the doors, which are raw wood and need to be protected. He also replaced the broad sill with MDF, which he rounded at the front end, very posh, and which I painted today, couldn't wait to do that, such an improvement.
So, since I found a gallon of paint at the dumpster, which turns out to be a warm sort of beigy color, inoffensive anyway, I started by painting the doors today, and finished up what was in the tray doing most of an end wall.
The plan was to set up a tray of paint and go till it's finished. Longer than that and I'm inclined to get a bit sloppy, from boredom. I could paint much longer but oh well, always onto something else.
The purplish thing you see behind the door below is a brilliant invention by Mike, namely rigid foam insulation, cut to fit, with handles he installed, to pull into the cavity behind each door and seal off the open roof, as much better insulation than I had before. Then the door shuts over it, and you have a double seal.
If I have any paint left I'll paint the panels to match, but for the moment I want to see how far it will go on the walls. They're very thirsty, never painted since the builders skimmed them with builders' white, 22 years ago. And he trimmed up the bits of insulation left over, and presented them to me for art purposes, yay. They're standing to the left of the open door.
Then, fancy painting comes in, since it's time for the Easter Eggs. Which are actually Spring Eggs, and have been received happily by people for whom the Christian observance is not relevant. Here's this year's clutch:
Since they're blown, and washed, and the paint is acrylic, they're pretty much indestructible at this point, and I usually make one for my collection, others to give away. Handsome Son always gets one, and whoever I really want to give to this year gets the others.
I make them different every year, painted or dabbed, or covered in handmade paper, or scrunched to give a frosted appearance. This year it's copper with gold drawing, and blue and red dots here and there.
A whole range of people have received them, ranging from HPs helpers in his later years, to neighbors, to friends, to library folk, to stitching buds, anyone who seems particularly significant right now. So we'll see who gets the other two.
And they've joined the collection that stays with me, which is now officially out for the season, along with Bon Hiver, or Bon Printemps I guess he is now the season's changed, and various other spring celebrants. The Bonnes Paques crowd. Or Paschal Rascals. Sounds like a seminary rock band.
At the top right, about two o'clock, is a tiny Wedgwood cup and saucer, with eggs from my dear late cockatiel Emily, painted and kept forever. No need to blow them, though, since they're so tiny the contents desiccate very fast.
If you've been idly wondering how those floating motifs work with the doorway theme, since you can't read my mind which is where all the art planning takes place, I thought I'd post this.
This is the first outline of the first part of the doorway. The motifs will float across it as they're developed -- one already does, as you see -- and there will be more lines to reinforce the shape visually as I go. You see pins holding the couching thread in place here, so as not to lose the shape as I go, since markings wear off the fabric very fast.
The usual problem with scribing an arch is to get the curve working, and rather than resort to endless math computation ending in a wobbly result, I look around for an object already the size and curve I want. This can be a lengthy search, but this time it wasn't.
The round metal dish I've been keeping my supplies for the project in, is just the ticket. So I drew around it without emptying it, living dangerously with all those little containers of beads, and you see a nice result. I reset the pins a couple of times to get the straight part straight and the curved part reasonably symmetrical.
Unusual for me to be particular about a shape to the point of not freehanding it, but for this piece, the archway needs to be a firm readable contour, against which the freeform shapes can play and work better. Just sayin'.
There's another work going on, too, but the progress is so slow that there's not much to show you yet. It's the portable piece, the stitching on white silk with stumpwork one, a flower with leaves, maybe a waterlily, maybe a chrysanthemum, jury still out, not my design, or I'd know! I can take it in to stitch-in evenings, unlike the Big Doorway, which is definitely not portable, what with the size and the different threads and the beads and different needles and all that.
I found today that I need to stand to work on this, just like old times, never sat in the studio. I have it on a wooden cabinet with the edge sticking out far enough for me to work from underneath, and a good height for me to work at. One big reason never to sit to make art is that you have to see it straight in order to understand it. No use sitting and looking across the work as you go, since though we hardly notice it, that gives us a warped image.
The experiment with the goldwork initials is about done, and I think ready to frame.
It's a combo of hand dyeing, goldwork, beads and painted dots. I have a nice Japanese frame ready for it when I get to it.
And here's the Big Doorway Piece, more work done on it. The trailing couched gold thread, of which there will be much more, around the other two motifs, will enclose drifts of beads and stitching.
I can only do this for a short time, because the size is very tiring for my ribcage, oddly enough. Reaching forward and back and guiding the thread front and back is more strenuous than you might think. So a short period at a time works.
This is the interior petals of the flower, which will be done partly in stumpwork like this, partly with surface embroidery.
In the interests of transparency, very appropriate since I'm working on organza, the two open areas are you might say abandoned. I tried them but the thread didn't work out, tried another thread, still wasn't right, so I switched to a floss which is working much better.
I've also moved on from drawing the petals and keeping the wire in the boundary, the usual stumpwork technique, to doing it more freehand, shaping the wire as I go, and it's better for my style than doggedly following a pattern. Why are you not surprised at this.
And this morning I found a gallon of white semi gloss enamel at the dumpster, so it's now up in the studio, and I think my paint requirements for the room have been met. I need a bit of spackle and after that I can get under way.
My studio is at the top of the house, with access on each side to the rafters, where some neighbors store items, and I don't. Most of the neighbors who use the eaves for storage,
which I think is not a good idea, being of the school of thought that
says if you need more and more storage you probably have too much
stuff...anyway, they've got doors put in.
The original access panels were ugly and awkward -- you had to raise your knee to your chin at the same time as stepping up and into a little opening -- then try to reverse the position once in, all without a solid floor. And you had to unscrew and rescrew them every time anyone needed to be in.
See the size of this access door, resting against a table? My friend and handywoman par excellence once got stuck in there, couldn't get out again, slim, but too tall to fold down far enough!
So I decided finally to get the accesses replaced by doors you can just open and walk in. I rarely need to get in there, but when I do I'm not in a mood to be doing contortions, since I'm usually tracking down a leak or some weirdness. And when the roof people need to get in, it seems friendly not to make it as hard as possible for them to do it.
So finally, the weather moderated enough that it wasn't cruel and inhuman to ask Michael the Contractor to step into the unprotected eaves, and today he shows up ready to measure and go. Like this:
And here's the first door, built, set in, hinged, awaiting trim and finishing. The studio is swathed in sheets to protect from dust, though the way he works, there's very little of it. He's good.
Just one more day's work and it's done.He's a gem in that once he starts, he finishes. None of that oh, now I have to work somewhere else for three weeks..
The work I'm on had to be evacuated from there and I
worked downstairs, a bit awkward, light not very good, and the portable
lamp was all swathed and inaccessible upstairs.
But I did stitch and bead. And here's where I am on one piece.
I think this is another doorway concept, but much bigger than the earlier series. And here are details of those bigger motifs
I'm realizing that doorways seem to be a dominant motif in my life at the moment, too. And that there's a LOT more work to be done on this piece.
Here's the first sighting this year, late but undaunted, of the patio snowdrops.
In the words of the Zen master whose name totally escapes me, one flower blooms, spring everywhere!
It looks as if DoorwayThree might be done, not sure yet. But I do know that this is one of those fragile, delicate artworks that can hardly be handled. It will be a bit of a challenge to exhibit this one, I think.
It's not that the materials are fragile, just the construction is. Between slippery copper knitted ribbon weaving, and silk floss weaving, and the nylon doorway icon woven in sort of secured, and the net overlay, it looks nice, but I have to think how to stabilize the whole thing, perhaps. Iron on stabilizer fabric might do a job on the weaving, though. And possibly some weight at the bottom will help. Anyway, we'll see.
On the offchance that this completes the Doorway series, I'm looking at other design ideas for later on, after the several stitching works I have under way are all done. Here's a longterm idea, and you'll see all the contrasts in direction and subtleties of color and shape and negative space, and well, I like it.
The other stitching works going are looking like this:
Japanese fabric, which I'm continuing from the original designer with goldwork, dyed, and beading. It's about 16 x 20 inches. Much more to happen here. The goldwork icons were my self teaching tries way back, and I wanted to see if they would work in a context.
Almost invisible, a transfer image of a waterlily, on silk, to be worked with gold threads and silk, and I'm going to add in some stumpwork petals as I go. This is probably one to work on in warmer weather, on the patio, in the aforementioned Adirondack chair. A gift from our goldwork teacher.
And here's an initial set, created as an exercise in our goldwork class last year. I dyed the thing with silk dye, after the stitching, and got quite a surprise at how the stitching all shriveled up and crinkled, but I managed to restore it with pressing and resting a printmaking press on it.
I'm think that this, beaded and with more stitching, not yet decided if it will be a Japanese stitching deal, or what, but it will be a signature piece, once framed, to show up at the next exhibit just as my signature to the show.
The original thought was to create a weaving as a backdrop to Doorway Two, so I started on a weaving, using copper ribbon and silk floss, and a newly cut cardboard loom, and then realized I had started on Doorway Three...
there will be more parts to this in terms of manipulating the weaving, still to be decided. But it does seem as if Doorway Two is done. And this is the last of the series.
It's a side effect of a lot of art material organization and moving yesterday, where all my little weaving bits and spinning bits were moved upstairs along with the embroidery materials and beads, finally all in one home in the studio. And a couple of attendant catastrophes, which I will whine about in Field and Fen.
This including the catastrophes, the shakuhachi effect at work again, triggered all kinds of new ideas, including this one. Just a helpless prawn, I tell you.
As you see, a lot has happened to Doorway Two since all your helpful ideas on orientation. The original silk is now covered in a fine netting, and there's a roofline stitched in. So it's become a kind of paradox, a childlike house containing a doorway, looking out at a house and doorways, and you don't know if you're inside looking out, or outside seeing it from the street, or not. I like this.
Anyway, this is the current state of Doorway Two, and since it's very fragile looking in person, it might also be backed with a piece of handweaving. Not sure yet. I have to see it on the wall a couple of days before I know. And the fringes will need a day or two to calm down and lie flatter.
The dowel type thing you see is a pickup stick, from a set I'll be using at my paper jewelry workshop to teach people beadmaking! this one had just the right color for the piece.
But as always, open to suggestions. I'm thinking of a much finer weave than on Doorway One, using one of my cardboard looms and finer yarn, just so it's not overwhelmed. If I decide on weaving, that is.
The glistening fringes look nice now, all knotted and frayed at the ends to make them airy and light, but they were definitely one of those why did I start this processes. I was making lark's head knots through netting with the finest crochet hook, like working in mid air on nothing, and it was good when it was done. But I do like how it worked. This reminded me of working with that gold rayon thread, lovely when done, very trying to work with.
At this point, I think the stitching on Doorway Two is done. There may or may not be beads, not sure yet. But what I notice is that the artist is not always the best judge of which way is up.
So I took pix of all four aspects of the piece, and if you would be so kind as to look and study and think and let me know which way you think is the right orientation for this piece, that would be great. It will probably be appliqued to a bigger background, to work as a wallhanging.
One:
Two:
Three:
Four:
Thank you, art collaborators!
While I was looking for something else, I found a sleeve of netting, the kind you get fruit in, and cut parts to use here as a freeform trellis around the doorway.
Not sure what total shape the doorway will be this time, curved, pointed, square, that will emerge. Here's a general picture, then a tighter shot to show a bit better detail. The curving shapes at the top might end in a kind of point.
Meanwhile I stitched down the net at the junctions, pulling to make these more interesting shapes, then I'm couching a silver trail around and across it. In rl the background has a lot more light green in it than you see here. Disregard the trailing white thread, it's just the couching thread trailing from the needle. I think this piece will probably be appliqued to some close woven fabric, yet to be found.
It's starting to look as if I'm doing time of day. Doorway One is a night scene, Doorway Two looks like early morning, and perhaps Doorway Three, yet to be figured out, might be afternoon/evening.
I'm finding that the LED lamp is a very handy little
tasklight for brightening up the general ambiance around the piece for
taking pix. At this time of year when I can't take the camera outdoors, this is useful. My little point and shoot needs all the help it can get.
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