New work! I guess, in my mind, the possibilities of expressing that possibilities are endless…are endless! I particularly loved doing all the hand stitching on this one.

New work! I guess, in my mind, the possibilities of expressing that possibilities are endless…are endless! I particularly loved doing all the hand stitching on this one.
Finally finished! It’s a larger piece than usual for me but I really loved the process of working on this (not always the case!). The creating flowed and the niggling voice of self doubt stayed quiet.
…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!
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…
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!
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.
Hmmm…hard to believe these are all coexisting in the same piece! Hopefully I’ll finish it and post a photo soon.