This new piece evolved from a large charcoal sketch drawn during a life drawing class to this layered exploration of our interconnectedness with the world. My fascination with our relationship with billions of microbial fellow travelers was a huge influence! Again, I highly recommend the book, I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong.
Doing a more figurative piece is a new stretch for me. I’d welcome some feedback!
For more details on this piece, look here.
In conjunction with my solo show last fall at Mitchell-Giddings FIne Art gallery, I gave an artist talk jointly with fellow fiber artist, Jackie Abrams. If you’re interested, here’s a link to the full talk. I cover a lot of ground! Including my inspiration, materials and techniques.
Boy, is it weird to watch myself!
This fall in order to try to stretch my creative chops, I took a semester long Life Drawing class. The last time I did this was a hundred years ago in college and it took some time to get used to the messiness and loveliness of working with charcoal again. Each week we had a different model, all shapes and sizes and drew for over 2 hours.
I loved it. I’d leave each class covered in charcoal dust. I do think it was helpful for me to do something away from fabric and get back to looking and drawing again.
I have some ideas brewing on how to integrate elements of these drawings into my next fiber piece…we’ll see.
It seems I often grumble about how difficult it is for me to gather enough clarity and confidence to actually jump in and start a new piece. So for a change, I thought I’d focus on the sweet place of being in the middle.
seed construction zone
Lots of ideas a poppin’. Every time I walk past my design wall (which is in my bedroom!), I want to try a new placement or color or fabric or juxtaposition. Nothing linear here… Just lovely chaos!
And though I will still have moments of doubt, the general feeling is one of excited possibility.
This is why I keep at this art thing.
“The plant is the dream of the seed.” Australian Aboriginal saying.
This quote has inspired me in the past…
Seed Dreaming I
…and is inspiring me again. Large seed shapes are taking root in my studio!
New Seed
Stay tuned.
During this past summer, due to other obligations, my artmaking was fairly fallow. Periods of time like that leave me uneasy and both eager to get back to it and anxious that it won’t come easily. Though I wasn’t dyeing and stitching much, my mind was playing with an unformed, vague idea that I wanted to do something about Breath. This connects to my (mostly) daily meditation practice and the role breath plays. It also fired up my curiousity to understand more about respiration both in us and in plants and how the miraculously efficient and rapid exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide takes place. And this (of course, to me!) lead to thoughts about the interconnectedness of our world.
I get excited about making art when the seeds of an idea are connected on multiple levels like this! I felt a series coming on…and about a month ago, I got to work!
There are several new-to-me materials I knew I wanted to include one being silk organza (lovely but tricky) as well as attempting to sew bombyx silk directly onto fabric and felt. Many mistakes were made! A lot to learn! Here are a few glimpses-close up detail shots-of the workpiece in process on my design wall right now.
glimpse 1
glimpse 2
glimpse 3
Hmmm…hard to believe these are all coexisting in the same piece! Hopefully I’ll finish it and post a photo soon.
My newest piece continues my exploration of combining various raised felted textures with richly shimmery silk charmeuse. The original seeds for this composition were images of purkinje cells-some of the largest neurons in our brains. They have fantastic branching dendrites.
Maybe my fascination with how these tiny connections in our brains basically enable us to do or think anything has to do with my growing awareness that my own aging brain’s connections aren’t always so reliable!
Cultivating Connections II
31″ x 44″ (approx.)
Zooming in:
Cultivating Connections II detail 1
Cultivating Connections II detail 2
I’ve been pretty quiet on this blog recently because I’m creating the work on my design wall ” under wraps”. My wonderful daughter, Caitlin is marrying wonderful Alex this July here in Vermont and I am making them a wall piece that will double as the chuppah (at a Jewish wedding, it’s a canopy the couple gets married under). They’ve decided they don’t want to see it till their wedding day…thus this hush hush business.
But here’s a peek at a small detail:
chuppah peek 1
They made some genersl choices about colors and looked through my portfolio to let me know which pieces of mine appealed most to them and left the rest up to me!
I’ve been surprised at how much it means to me to be working on a piece that I know will live in my family for a long time. I feel a much deeper connection to the work.
My ongoing fascination with teeny tiny changes that happen on a microscopic level increases my own awareness of how much of our world is beyond our perception yet of course equally exists every moment. That world is invisible to us due to size but there are also wonderful things invisible to our limited human senses due to time.
This video by Daniel Stoupin uses time lapse photography to capture the very slow but deeply beautiful movement of coral. It is stunning.
I promise i will post about my own current work in the next few days BUT I had to share this first. It’s rare that I get so blown away and excited to see how a person can develop such an original and brilliant artform. This should be inspiring to any creative folks out there!
jerry’s world-very small detail
Jerry Gretzinger has been creating a stunning sprawling map of a detailed imaginary world panel by panel for 50 years. This visually sumptious creation- made of paint, ink and collage-now spans over 2000 sheets of paper that fit together to create this world. And his process…how he decides each day what part of the world to change and develop…well you just have to watch this 9 minute video:
AND a portion of this artwork will be installed at my own local Brattleboro Museum this week. I can’t wait to see it in person.
Karen Kamenetzky Fiber Art 