Posts Tagged ‘silk’
October 15, 2016
I’m digging through my stash, rediscovering some buried pieces of lovely silk I dyed and putting together a group of little creations. These 10″ x 10″ pieces will be mounted onto 12″ square black gallery wrapped canvas. I’m hoping to create at least eight and they all will be available at the upcoming Brattleboro West Arts annual first weekend of December show.More on that later!
Working at such a small scale gives me space to play with new ideas. Like did you know that embroidery thread can be curled on the edge of a scissor blade -like ribbon on a present??
Tags:biomorphic, cellular, fiber art, mulberry bark, silk
Posted in Artwork, Exhibits, Process, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
September 1, 2016
…Main St. Bratttleboro, VT.
I’ll be there at least most of the time! Stop by Mitchell Giddings Fine Art gallery Friday between 5-7ish if you can. This exhibit will be up until September 18th.
Alsa, I’ll be giving an artist talk at the gallery with Jackie Abrams:
Saturday, September 17th at 5!
Tags:biomorphic, exhibits, fiber art, microscopic, silk, textile art
Posted in Artwork, Exhibits, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
July 4, 2016
The opening of my solo show at Mitchell Giddings Fine Art gallery is 6 weeks away. Despite trying to balance my day job and my elderly Mom here for the summer, I find I’m being much more productive during the precious minutes of studio time I can carve out.
detail-in progress
No dilly-dallying! No endless indecisiveness and tortured second guessing! It all feels a bit scary but so satisfying!
The first two large convex seeds are mounted (with rigid rug padding inside) and the third one is mostly finished. I’ve also simultaneously begun working on several smaller pieces for the show. This is all such a revolution in my usual only-work-on-one-piece-at-a-time style.
Once the show is hung and my mom has left, I wonder if I can somehow keep myself creating in this way…
Tags:biomorphic, fiber art, silk, textile art
Posted in Artwork, Exhibits, Motivation, Process, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
May 13, 2016
I’ve decided that these new seed creations would each have a gentle convex shape that would emphasis it’s design and structure.
I toyed with the idea of using wire mesh underneath to create the form but I felt I wanted to keep things soft. So using wool batt, a form was made. Then came the (for me) tough problem of how to insure this form would push out the front and not the back! I mickey moused a solution. I’m sure there’s some professional way to do this (if you know please clue me in!).
I’m in the process of dyeing a piece of background charmeuse silk for each seed. A color is auditioning to the left. I’m planning on heavily stitching each background piece and then hand sewing the seed on.
And I have sketches for the third seed shape.
On a roll!
Tags:art quilt, biomorphic, cellular, fiber art, Process, silk
Posted in Artwork, Process | 1 Comment »
December 16, 2015
“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.
Tags:art quilt, biomorphic, fiber art, inspiration, silk, textile art
Posted in Artwork, felting, Inspiration, Motivation, Process | Leave a Comment »
October 19, 2015
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.
Tags:art quilt, cellular, felted wool, fiber art, inspiration, Process, silk, textile art
Posted in Artwork, Inspiration, Motivation, Process | 4 Comments »
June 28, 2015
If you’re late to this party, here’s Part 1 and Part 2.
Now that the lower left and upper right cellular sections were mostly complete, I needed make some choices about how to use the large space between them where I wanted to somehow show a flow happening. This took time-with lots of ideas tried and rejected. This is the stage in the process where a lot of self doubt creeps in. I had a pile of felted “elements” which I had separately stitched to add shape and sculptural lines . I knew I wanted to incorporate them but there were endless possibilities as to how. I considered color, balance and line as well as the abstract “story” in my head of what moment of change/transformation was happening. After weeks (really!), I found a direction, I was happy with.
Roots of Rhythm X-step 6
some of the felt elements looking for a home
Lines were couched to carve the space into flowing sections. I had known all along that including the blue felt was critical, but wasn’t happy till I stumbled on the “ladder” possibility.
This now defined the basic structure of the space so I was more sure of myself and confident I was moving in the right direction. It was then much clearer to see how to show movement and flow with stitching,the felt pieces and some lovingly placed french knots.
detail
Next time: the whole enchilada done.
Tags:cellular, felted wool, fiber art, Process, silk, textile art
Posted in Artwork, felting, Process | 6 Comments »
June 26, 2015
If you missed it, here’s the previous post about this process.
Once the underlying structure was complete, things got much more interesting for me. I selected a piece of silk I had dyed over a year ago that had a beautifully complex and intricate texture. This was cut and fused to each cellular section.
Roots of Rhythm X: step 4
…until all were filled.
Roots of Rhythm X: step 5
…and I happily free motion stitched each one. I love this part-podcasts and stitching!
Here’s a close up:
Roots of Rhythm X: step 5 detail
More to come…
Tags:art quilt, cellular, fiber art, Process, silk, textile art
Posted in Artwork, Process | 1 Comment »
June 23, 2015
I’m often asked questions about my process so whenever I start a new piece, I try to make a commitment to document it along the way…and usually fail.
BUT the piece I just finished, Roots of Rhythm X was happily an exception. So, if you’re interested, here are a series of posts looking at the steps to its creation. This piece was under construction for the better part of two months.
Part 1
After sketching out some rough ideas and making some critical color decisions (documenting that step would involve many pictures of me pawing through piles of dyed silk and looking discouraged and lost), I chose the violet background silk, fused it onto a piece of Warm and Natural batting cut a few inches smaller. I then couched varigated yarn to build the cellular grid.
Roots of Rhythm X: step 1
When the grid was done, inner shapes were added. This red/rust silk is all one color. The variation comes from light catching the nap of the charmeuse at different angles.
Roots of Rhythm X: step 2
…till all spaces were filled. I then stitched around each red/rust shape.
Roots of Rhythm X: step 2
Please let me know if you have more specific questions about these steps.
Stay tuned for more…
Tags:cellular, fiber art, Process, silk, textile art
Posted in Artwork, Process | 6 Comments »
