Cracked Paper Quilts 2: Stitching the Paper Sandwich

My second video about making Cracked Paper Quilts is now ready to view.

This time, the paper top that was created in the first video becomes the top layer of my quilt sandwich. Then I begin to sew the dickens out of it.

You can also view it by going to Cracked Paper Quilts 2: Stitching the Paper Sandwich on Vimeo.

Lilies, Nests, Floating Homes and Longboarders (with bananas)

I visited Granville Island this week and was literally stopped in my tracks when I came upon a painting by artist Janie Lockwood.

I saw Connecting and quickly motioned my sister to gaze upon its loveliness as well. The online pic of this painting does not do it justice, of course. The detail and texture are subtle, and must be seen “live” to be fully appreciated. As Janie articulates in her artist statement:

My focus has been to emphasize on the beauty of nature. I do this by abstracting my composition somewhat, zooming in on the subject or painting it slightly out of context. In doing this I hope to entice the viewer to feel involved with the piece.

Both my sister and I were thoroughly enticed. Visit her online gallery to discover whether her aesthetic resonate with yours, as well. But if you can, visit The Federation of Canadian Artists Summer Gallery to meet the work “in person.”

Tranquility ~ by Janie Lockwood

At the Peter Kiss Gallery, I laughed out loud viewing the artistic antics of Peter Kiss. His human figure sculptures display a wry humour that offers insights into human nature~with a twist.

I was most taken, however, with the Nest series of works, where Kiss collaborated with Tania Gleave (whom, he informed me, worked out so well as a collaborator that he married her). The combination of painting and wood sculpture was visually exciting to me, and each painted nest had an energy and depth that was an absolute focal point.

Tania’s art is quite alluring on its own:

My work combines an interest in the challenges of the human experience with deep satisfaction that comes from exploring new combinations of materials and techniques in making art.  The constant challenge is getting my observations/message across in a visually successful composition.  That challenge is the opiate.

Sheltered ~ by Peter Kiss and Tania Gleave

After visiting the galleries, we made our way to a floating house village. This “block” of homes was charming to behold, with its potted gardens and roof top patios, and the Vancouver skyline behind it. Apparently,

[w]hat you see from the dock is intentionally less interesting than what a passing boater would see from the water. There is minimal glazing on the public south side, the only clear window being a narrow sidelight at the front entrance, offering a mere hint of the jewel-box interior. (see an example here)

An interesting array of floating home designs is offered by Chernoff Thompson Architects, if you are interested in this way of living. You might also wish to peruse FloatingHomes.com. For boaters and canoeists who wish to extend their aquatic adventures, there are floating B & Bs, or cottages that boast “fully furnished suites, each with queen-sized beds and full ensuite facilities. Each suite is situated to enhance your stay with outstanding views of the river.”

Another highlight of the day was observing a large group of longboarders stream down the bike path that follows Vancouver’s Seawall. Their grace and athleticism was a joy to behold. I can’t imagine, unfortunately, being so comfortable and balanced on a small, fast-moving projectile. Many sported bananas, which lent a comic touch, despite the fact that I realized it was a perfect food to consume while ” on board.”

All in all, my Vancouver visit completely satiated my senses. Family, food, and fun ~ enjoyed within a beautiful city ~ are a winning combination.

Learning is Finding Out What You Already Know

I JUST received a new Robert Genn Twice Weekly Letter. He has provided constant artistic encouragement since I subscribed to The Painter’s Keys a number of years ago. His letters are also rife with excellent tips, techniques, history and quotes. Today’s is entitled Just a Reminder, and here is a slice:

I’ve always had the same idea as the motivational writer Richard Bach: “Learning is finding out what you already know.” Time and again people write, “I knew that–thanks for reminding me.”

Indeed, recent studies show that regular reminders, particularly by email, can change lives. According to a study published in the June issue of American Journal of Preventive Medicine, simple reminders to eat more healthfully or increase physical activity had a significant effect on recipients’ behavior.

For those of us sitting at our computers and blogging away, that is a significant incentive: we can change lives! Providing examples of creative individuals, sharing my own art journey, discussing and (hopefully) dialoguing with readers about ways to spark new ideas and overcome obstacles~have certainly changed at least one life significantly. My own!

This next piece had the effect of showing me something I already knew. The pieces that speak to me most deeply always do that. A strong emotion accompanies both the creating and later viewings of such pieces. I have to sit with them for some time  and wait for the emotion to subside in order to begin to decipher what they are telling me.

I also appreciate the insights or even just impressions that others share with me about my art:  it is another enlightening factor in the translation process.

Pod~by Carol Wiebe

The sacred trinity is so rich: (1) body, mind, spirit (2) past, present, future (3) thought, word, deed (4) maiden, mother, crone (5) me, myself, I (6) father, son, holy ghost (7) mother, daughter, holy spirit.

A pod is a vessel, a receptacle of precious seed. Seeds signify possibilities. Every time we dare to hope or dream, another seed is planted. Note that the pod is broken open. How else can we plant seeds, other than by having the courage to reveal our inner selves ~ the rich, dark ground from which those seeds may sprout and blossom?

Collage Painting (acrylic paint, collage, and stamping, scratching, flinging, finger brushing, rubbing, layering, laughing)
16″x 20″ wrapped canvas

Plaster Possibilities

Plaster is not simply for fixing or applying a faux finish to walls. It can be used, to wonderful effect, in your art. The history of plaster is quite fascinating, and lest you think that using plaster is not really fine art, the likes of Verrocchio (Italian, 1435-1488), Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917), and George Segal (American, 1924-2000) are “especially known for their use of plaster.”

I love crows, and Leighanna Light really caught my attention with these plaster crow pieces. Leighanna calls herself a Thingmaker, a title that it is so simple and totally inclusive. With it, she gives herself permission to make a thing out of anything and in any way she pleases.

Then I popped over to contemplating the moon, where Bridgette Guerzon Mills displays a sweet spot for crows as well. The plaster comes into play, along with encaustic,  in her book of trees. More of her work, including handmade journals, satisfies the eye at amanobooks.

Donna J Hall includes plaster in many of her paintings. She describes her art process as follows:

I’ll often start my paintings with a complex surface of marks and collaged materials. Then layering with paint, underlying colour and patterns are buried. Scraping away the surface re-exposes them. The painting becomes a history of confused and compressed time written in space. I continue, trying to balance randomness and chance against the compelling need to organize and resolve. Works evolve that are both elusive, yet suggestive, of the connection between our environment and our human nature.

Gallery I and II include such visually compelling works as Quiet Spring, Supporting Evidence, The Near Far Far, and Intermission. All of these pieces are “acrylic plaster collages.”

Lori Austill discovered that:

painting on plaster was a marvelous medium to combine my excitement for color and texture, with similar qualities to clay. These plaster works are made of poured plaster that is reinforced with burlap and backed with foam core. I create the texture as the plaster dries. The plaster is dried completely before they are painted with acrylic paint. Painting on plaster has given me limitless opportunities for the last twenty-two years.

Judy Wise says she has been “experimenting with plaster for some time now and every time I meet another artist who is also interested in this versatile material my eyes light up.” She is teaching a mixed-media painting on plaster workshop in July of 2009.

I am becoming excited about plaster possibilities, and it crossed my mind that Golden, being the paint company it is, must have an acrylic product related to plaster. Sure enough! Golden carries an acrylic modifier for plaster:

Acrylic Modifier for Plaster is a 100% acrylic polymer emulsion designed to be added to gypsum (plaster) in the mixing stage to increase the chip-resistance of the casting. This increase in chip-resistance does not affect the high tensile strength of the gypsum.

Acrylic Modifier also increases scratch resistance, and provides an overall toughening of the cast gypsum product. Acrylic Modifier does not shorten setting time, and should not have any detrimental effects on the working time or workability of the plaster slurry.

One more plaster note, and this is quite remarkable if it is actually true. CafeTerra informs us that Chinese scientists have developed a “supramolecular” plaster which has a “very broad” antibacterial spectrum, killing five types of disease-causing bacteria. The self-sanitizing plaster, boasting “more powerful antibacterial effects than penicillin, could be used in wall coatings, paints, art works and other products.”

That would be a great selling feature: works of art that cleaned themselves. I think I just noticed the eyes of Judy Wise lighting up again!

Double X

Extreme Art Experimentation

I recently visited my friend Jane, who has fallen in love with creating her own design papers. Her inspiration came from a DVD she watched with me, and several fellow artists, called Mixed Media Collage, by Carrie Burns Brown. Both a preview of this DVD, and a gallery of Carrie Burns Brown’s work, can be perused at Creative Catalyst Productions. Carrie Burns Brown’s work

is nature based, rich in texture and displays luscious color harmonies. Carrie brings collage to the level of fine art. Carrie delights in discovering new combinations of materials. If she cannot find what she is looking for, she makes it herself.

The mainstay of Brown’s collage work are her painted tissue papers, and these are what Jane has been producing in an amazing array of colors and textures.

As I was looking for the Carrie Burns Brown link, I ran across a Flickr site by Mary Buek. You will wish you could touch her Exurban Abstracts and American Gothic collections. Responding to a compliment  about one of her pieces, Mary said:

This is just a bunch of stuff I had around the studio . . . it’s a movable feast. . . I add stuff periodically and switch things around. Nothing is glued down and it’s changed since I took the picture. Experimental in the extreme.

Move over Extreme Sports! Mary is upping the ante with her Extreme Art Experimentation! There is a BIG grin on my face as I imagine a million elements all over Mary’s studio which she is forever repositioning, and snapping photographs of, for her next Flickr post. I would love to be a fly on the wall as she frantically attempts to reconstruct an art piece, made months back, because a buyer has requested it.

Then again, maybe an Extreme Art Experimenter doesn’t get frantic, doesn’t panic. Like any experienced athlete, Mary calmly and deliberately practices her moves of repositioning the myriad of art elements, using all her physical, mental and spiritual muscles as she revels in the challenge of re-creation. It’s just another kind of rush. And I, Mary, am one of your cheerleaders. But forget the pom poms and tiny pleated skirt~that would be a little too extreme!

Kilim, a desig paper by Carol Wiebe

Paper Applique for Paper Quilts

I was sitting on my couch, stitching away, and decided to post my little piece in progress.  As I’ve described before, I add pieces here and there to my paper quilts with stitched paper appliques (This method has all kinds of possibilities that I explore in Workshop 3). I simply use medium to attach a printed piece of tissue to a paper towel, let that dry, then hand stitch. When I’m all done, I trim the edge and glue it onto my larger work with more medium. Simple and effective. Actually, it works on fabric quilts as well.

Paper applique

A Tribute to Intuition

I’ve been working on this piece for quite some time: I had hoped to finish it for show at Greenwood Quiltery. However, it was one of those pieces that offers an array of challenges. I totally ruined the bottom section, and had to cut it off and begin again. I’m actually glad I did, because I like this one better than the original! You may recognize the new bottom, except for the heart that appeared on it (a Beryl Taylor influence, no doubt). If you read the words that accompany the piece, you will see why the heart is important (read right across the spaces). This piece has handmade tassels as well: it just seemed the proper thing to do for the subject matter.

Intuition

Chaska Peacock has a very perceptive discussion of “human” angels, at Art Alchemy Studio, called Beings of Light.

Let the Show Begin!

I just visited Greenwood Quiltery this morning, and am very pleased with the configuration of my pieces on the walls. Christine is a master of arrangement! If you read this post, and are planning to come to the opening tomorrow, between 2 and 4 pm, there is parking available in the two lots around Greenwood: I was told both attached businesses are not open on Saturday.

I would be thrilled to talk to you tomorrow!

By the way, here are a few pieces that somehow never made it into my blog, but will be in the show:

Ancient Rhythms

Small Winged God

Blue Moon

As Promised, New Paper Quilts 2

I have to bring all my quilts to the Greenwood Quiltery tomorrow, and I am  still working on one. But here are two more that are ready to go:

Night Garden

Doppelganger

Doppelganger features my daughter-in-law, Katherine, who has been kind enough to pose for pictures, and given me carte blanche for using them in my artwork. She’s another of the lovely and generous women I am fortunate to have in my life! She is the one on top, closest to the two flowers. Her doppelgangers, behind her and below, look similar, but not exact, as most doppelgangers are eerily like us, but have some differences. If we were to find an exact match, it would be very disturbing to our poor ego!

I am in the process of updating my gallery, with the write-up and dimensions of each piece. Please check back to see this information.

Another Revelation . . .

Just the other day I posted a new piece of work. I commented that I wasn’t sure if it was finished. Today, I went to the edge of the abyss, as Carla O’Connor would say: I completely covered one side of my paper quilt with white, so I would have to repaint it. This is the kind of risk that, O’Connor teaches, actually encourages us to grow as artists. It’s when we “let go” of the product, of being afraid to ruin the piece as it is so far, and just get lost in the process. It’s very freeing.

We push ourselves to learn by capitalizing on our “mistakes.” We might even make them on purpose! We might cover up a problem area, or an area that just doesn’t sing. We might get really brave and paint out a great area, or add a color somewhere that we are sure will not work with the surrounding colors. Adding or subtracting such elements with a flourish can add to the drama, and make it exhilarating, as opposed to terrifying. Then we have to solve the conundrums we have created. We have challenged ourselves, dared ourselves by throwing down our own gauntlet. Next, we have to pick it up. ACCEPT that challenge! Accept it from the inside out, letting our intuition inform our hands, feeling the energy flow. When the flow lessens or subsides, we summon our analytical mind, study what we have done according to the elements and principles of design.

It’s a great strategy. Our mistakes are not cause for despair about our artistic ability. They are our impetus for improvement, our opportunities for invoking creativity and originality!

Let me show you the before and after of Revelation (click on after when you reach the old post).

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Revelation: after the "abyss"