Give it all

I have a new friend who feels like an old friend, a forever friend, and in correpondence with her I felt moved to share the following quote from Annie Dillard.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, everytime. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is a signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly is lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. –Annie Dillard in The Writing Life

This quote is just as relevant for a way to approach a relationship as it is for writing, or anything else you hold dear. I have been consciously attempting to apply this principle to the way I live. As a child, and young adult, I was a chronic withholder, protective of who I was and what I considered mine. The reasons for this withholding are no longer important. What does matter, now, is to practice savoring each moment, and giving all I have to it.

In that spirit, I brought an art piece to another dear friend, who is typically a creative force, but presently needs a “sabbatical” from doing. I have no doubt in her recuperative abilities. This piece celebrates “hope,” a word as long suffering in its abuse as “love,” but which still endures because it has a power no semantics can touch. Anyone who has suffered a great loss and survived can attest to this.

About HOPE: I appliquéd, pieced and stitched the flowers and words, by hand and machine, onto a felt backing. The “frame” is gessoed felt. After the gesso dried I collaged music and words onto it. I used white dimensional paint as highlights around the words and music, and copper dimensional paint on the edges. The “medallion” was made of paperclay, and sewn on, with a bead. Everything was covered with acrylic medium, after which I added a few painted details to the fabric component.

Time Warps

A little over a year ago, Mary Emma Allen wrote a blog entry called Combining Fabric & Paper where she says: “Quilting art has evolved into fabric art which sometimes is combined with paper art as well. The lines between the three types of art, quilting, fabric art, and paper art, have become blurred to offer us many ways to use our imaginations and talents.”

So here I am, today, googling “mixed media” and quilts, and I find her words. To her, they may be old news. To me, the words are relevant to what I’m thinking about today, and I would like to have a conversation with her about them, because they certainly ring true for my experience.

I also had an e-conversation with the talented writer of Arte Es Vida about, among other things, a collaborative book project she began some time ago with a group of caring and compassionate people to support an ailing friend.

I feel a bit like a character in a sci-fi novel, picking up and continuing conversations that took place at other times in different parts of the globe. Will some of these words I write today be read and replies sent, say, five years from now? Fifty? Of course, entries are dated. This will stop some from replying—they are still caught in a completely linear mode. And, I can’t search in the future, at least not yet! But the Net is an exciting vehicle for us to practice a new way of being, thinking, and communicating that did not exist until fairly recently. Perhaps its very existence is an encouragement for us to be more elastic in all those modes, less stuck in deciding exactly how reality is constructed.

OK, enough. Beam me up, Scotty.

More “Avant-Garde” Quilters

Deidre Adams, as we are told at art Strings, “likes to experiment with new ways of combining process and techniques, from the traditional to the avant-garde.” I saw her work in Quilting Arts Magazine Issue 24 (Winter 2006) and was immediately impressed by her designs, but captivated by her process. As she explains on her own site,

“I start each piece by making a heavily-stitched canvas from fabric and batting to provide surface texture for the painting. Sometimes I add extra dimension by including cast-off trimmings from previous works. Then, with paint, I begin a process of creation and destruction, of an evolving image that may change several times before I consider it finished. Colors are built up in many layers, and a complex surface texture is the result. “

Sandra Meech’s quilts are really large transfers. “Transferring photographs onto cotton using an acrylic medium, has been my favoured technique over the years,” she informs us. This imparts a “hard” surface to the quilts that is still amenable to machine stitching.

Like Adams, I have found I love to paint on quilts, to add both color and texture. I have tried gesso, an array of acrylic mediums, fluid acrylics, and watercolors. As far as other materials go (materials that are not paint), markers, pencil crayons, pastels, ink, and foil come to mind. I also collage paper, interfacing, and various papier mache objects I have designed and made to the surface. Like Meech, I employ transfers with acrylic medium when I feel it is suitable for a piece. I also cover the entire surface of my quilt with acrylic medium when I have deemed it “finished.” Later I gesso and/or add medium to the back, and even papier mache it. Somehow, it excites me to ultimately harden what starts out as a soft textile, especially because the process enables me to make any shape of quilt I like, without supports. My quilts can also be wiped off. They are rendered impermeable, strong–they will not deteriorate like the quilts of old.

Beryl Taylor is not a quilter, but her mixed-media work really inspired me to go way beyond the quilted fabric tradition. See entries from other fans, at “And Sew On,” “Altered Antiquity,” “Arte Es Vida,” “Quilting and Patchwork,” “A Little Imagination,” and “Layers upon Layers,” just to name a few! Obviously, Taylor has struck a chord with creative people who want to try different ways of putting artwork together. I think her modular approach, as previously exemplified for me by Maggie Grey, of “Workshop on the Web” fame, has great appeal. I love the open-endedness of it, and the serendipity! You make all these wonderful little jewels, and then have the fun of seeing what goes together!