Getting Into the Blues

I’ve been working through some things, making decisions while I paint design papers.

I kept these paintings quite monochromatic, deliberately limiting myself to blue (turquoise) paint, gesso, and a hand cut stamp.

Painting: Blue Texture

I’ve noticed on various monitors that the light blue area in Blue Texture does not show up very well. Here is a closeup.

Blue Texture Closeup

Painting: Blue Spiral

Painting: Blue Shells

Painting: Blue Square

Then I played with the images in Photoshop Elements and produced some design papers that I like very much:

Digital: Blue World DP1

Digital: Blue World DP2

Digital: Blue World DP3

Blue World DP4

Blue World DP5

“Designer” Fabric Doesn’t Have To Be Complicated

I have painted my own cloth for years, now. It revolutionized the way I made quilts. I took classes, read books, experimented, watched DVDs and videos. Jane Dunnewold was a huge influence, as I’ve said before. She coined the phrase “complex cloth.” Complex cloth, or art cloth, is created using as many layers as its creator deems necessary, combining colors, images, and a wide range of techniques. Read Dunnewold’s essay called What is art cloth, or get her book Complex Cloth. She actually has quite a number of excellent teaching DVDs and books, as well as fabric and an ezine called HeART Cloth Quarterly at her online store. In her usual lucid and articulate way, she describes how the artist uses a “. . . series of surface design patterning processes, all of which can be combined in endless permutations, to create a cloth surface with richness and visual depth.”

One of the things I appreciate about Jane is that she keeps things fairly straightforward. I go a few steps past that. Perhaps I’ve been teaching kindergarten students for too long, but I like to keep things really simple. I want my art to look good, but I don’t want to go through involved procedures and use toxic substances that require gas masks, and professional ventilation systems. I just want to have fun and express what my artistic nature itches to manifest.

I have discovered that you can get wonderful results from painting with acrylic paint directly on fabric. You don’t really require a special fabric medium–regular liquid medium works just fine, and imparts a little shine (otherwise, it can look dull). I use gessos, molding paste and mediums, because they put lots of texture on my pieces. I collage with tissue paper, rice paper, paper towels. Dimensional paints are a real favorite of mine. I make quick ‘n easy stamps using styrofoam, or fun foam. After a session with shaping small objects out of air dry clay, I include those in some of my pieces as well. Of course, it must be said that I am not going to wear, sleep under, or wash these pieces. That would change everything. But for those of you who, like me, just want art for your wall, the “hand” of the fabric is quite irrelevant. The only consideration you need to pay attention to is what your sewing machine can sew through, and that can be surprisingly thick, especially with a strong titanium needle.

Simple materials and methods do not equal unsophisticated, or puerile art. And I am in no way denigrating the mastery of intricate processes that require great dedication and skill to acquire. Practice is a necessary component of art making, as it is in learning an instrument, or honing athletic skills.

Materials and techniques are obviously necessary in the creation of art, but their complexity does not have a direct correlation with the quality of the statement the art piece can make. Picasso drew on napkins in restaurants, an archivist’s nightmare, probably, but with the mediums we have available to us today, even a napkin can be made impervious to wear.

What is my point in all of this? Just HAVE FUN! Let yourself experience the transformative practice of art making, where spirit, mind and body collaborate to incarnate your feelings, thoughts, wishes, dreams. Don’t worry if you are using the right materials, or you know sophisticated enough processes, or your art is good enough. The process is exhilarating, and if you get a nice piece of art at the end, consider it a bonus!

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.

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!