“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.
Posts Tagged ‘textile art’
Dreaming seeds return
December 16, 2015Give Art
November 14, 2015Are you near Brattleboro, Vermont?
If so, you have a one time opportunity to see a selection of my smaller mounted pieces. They feature vibrant colors, most with extensive felting and are mounted on silk covered canvas stretchers. Ready to hang.
I am offering these at over 20% off during a 3 day only Brattleboro West Arts group show the first weekend in December. Each would be a lovely gift or addition to your own wall!
Biome IV
Sixteen other fantastic artists will also be displaying their creations! Lots of holiday shopping opportunities! Details:
17 Artists-3 Days
My new fiber love
November 6, 2015Mulberry Bark.
Well new to me anyway. Apparently it has been used for hundreds of years in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. It’s also referred to as kozo and is used extensively in papermaking.
I got some bleached and then dyed it with Setacolor.
dyed mulberry bark
I’m a sucker for the texture which is irregularly grid-like but can be teased into curvier lines that form around serendipitous holes. Very fun to play with. It’s quite stiff and when wet and shaped will dry to that shape. Folks, like this woman, make delicate bowls with it.
Me, I will dye it, pull the fibers into the pattern I want and stitch it down. That’s the plan anyway. I think it has great potential to add interesting organic surface texture.
Have any of you used it?
Glimpses of breath
October 19, 2015During 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.
Roots of Rhythm X-Part 4
July 1, 2015
Roots of Rhythm X
The finished piece.
So I’m pretty happy with it! Especially the way the colors work together and the textures. The blues sing to me.
I still need to get a more professional photo so it’s not even up on my website yet.
Thoughts? Feedback?
Roots of Rhythm X-Part 3
June 28, 2015If 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.
Roots of Rhythm X-Part 2
June 26, 2015If 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…
Roots of Rhythm X- Part 1
June 23, 2015I’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…
Karen Kamenetzky Fiber Art 