La Conner Art Walk, Dec 2012

Piece I purchased by artist Gwen Lowery

Last Friday, a new favorite of mine, fiber artist Gwen Lowery, had a special showing of her work at Gail Harker Center for Creative Arts in La Conner, WA.  I became aware of Gwen’s work lately, when I purchased a piece she had made from an auction to support the new gallery being built at Gail’s center.  To find out more about this auction see my post “52 Weeks of Art- a Personal Challenge.”

Gwen’s work is incredible dense machine stitching. She was in one of the first diploma classes given by Gail here in the United States, and holds a City & Guilds Diploma in Design and Embroidery from the Gail Harker Center for Creative Arts.  Her pieces she has been working on currently are quite large.  One of the pieces she shared with us was approximately 12 x 15 feet ( 4 x 5 meters).  Gwen’s work is being shown internationally.  Unfortunately, since the pieces she shared with us are committed to shows, so I can’t share photos of them.  However, you can see some of her work on Gwen’s website and also on a page as an award winner from the Artist Trust Edge program for 2011.  Gwen was also a guest writer on Gail Harker’s blog with her post “Going Big“.  I look forward to keeping an eye on her progress as an artist and as an inspiration to my work, personally!

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The Fiber Funster’s 10 x 16 Group Challenge

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Last night I worked on finishing up the machine embroidered piece I started for my small art-quilt group, the Fiber Funsters.  This is the first piece in a series of challenges our group is doing, based on the book Twelve by Twelve: The International Art Quilt Challenge.  Each of us in the group will have a turn choosing a word to base the challenge on.  Then, the group members will make a small art quilt, sized 10″ x 16″, which somehow reflects that word, which we then present to the group in 2 months.  Why did we pick 10 x 16, rather than following the example of the 12 x 12 group?  We wanted to base our compositions on the Golden Mean or Golden Ratio.  This is where you use the ratio of 1 : 1.618 for your composition, making it more appealing to the eye.  If you’re interested in finding out more about about the Golden Ration, check out this YouTube video.

We were first challenged with “Opening”.   Any time I’m designing for a theme, I start with my sketchbook and brainstorm ideas for the concept or topic.  Opening invoked the following ideas for me:

  • Doors
  • Imagination
  • Portals
  • Beginnings
  • Writer’s Block
  • Purse/Luggage/Briefcase
  • Court (opening arguments)
  • Flower
  • Presents
  • Hands
  • Mail
  • Body language (open arms vs open legs)
  • Containers (boxes, food storage, etc.)
  • Windows

Since I love plants and flowers, I decided to go with an opening Stargazer Lily, my favorite flower, and fairly accessible to get at the grocery floral department. After taking photos and thinking through what sort of composition I wanted, I made some sketches. Since I have done a lot of machine stitch, I thought it would be fun to make this completely through thread painting. I broke out all the colors Of pinks that I had for the flower, and chose some spring greens as a complement to the pinks. The background I decided on is blue, to complement the dark rust/orange of the flower’s stamens. Here is a close-up of my stitch work:
Although the threadwork is time-intensive, I do love the result.  I will be practicing this more with my personal 5 x 7 challenge this year!

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Viking Apron Dress

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I promised I’d post pictures of my Viking Apron dress when finished, so here’s the whole costume, as well as my elder son Ryan and younger, Coleman, in their gear. The golden apron dress is made of linen, which I hand-dyed. I purchased the two Turtle brooches from Raymond’s Quiet Press, who makes historical recreations (from jewelry to helms.) I already had the strings of beads, which I hand-stitched onto the apron dress, in the Viking fashion. We had a fine time at the “Good Yule” feast, with a fantastic smorgasbord of both old Norse and Byzantine food.

Now that the Good Yule celebration is out of the way, I can get back to my regular creative life, at least until Ursalmas, the next big area event from the Society of Creative Anachronism, which my sons want to attend in the end of January. At least I already have a costume made now, so I won’t have to do that, although it looks like Coleman may now also be interested, so he may want to have me make a more authentic outfit.

More to come later tonight. Now that I have this out of the way, I can focus on more of the creative efforts closer to my heart!

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Questions to Ponder for Writing Your Goals

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OK, I’m going to be sitting down on Sunday with my Eastside SDA (Surface Design Associates) group, which was formed out of our Washington State SDA symposium which I helped plan last year.  This month, our topic is “The Business of Doing Art” and will include goal setting. 

So, I’ve prepared some questions for us to think about, as we write out our 2013 goals and objectives:

  • What skills do you already possess?  What do you do well?
  • What could you improve on?  What do you need to learn?
  • What sources do you have to learn what I need (books, online, classes, magazine articles, friends, a mentor etc.)
  • What are you passionate about? How can you bring some of that passion into your work?
  • Are there specific projects that you want to complete?
  • Is there a theme or series that you want to investigate in your artwork?
  • What professional organizations do you belong to?  What do they do for you and your artistic career?  How can your participation enhance or further your career?  If you don’t have any professional organizations that support you as an artist, how could you go about finding one (or more)?
  • Do you want to show my work?  What sort of shows or venues?  Are there specific shows or venues you’d like to target?
  • Are you organized to show?  What do you need to do to be prepared?  (Examples- how do you track your art, how do find opportunities, what do you need to ship and deliver pieces, do you have specific instructions for hanging and displaying your work?)
  • Do you want to sell your work?  What is your plan for getting sales (how would get a gallery to represent you; what sort of person or institution would be interested in the kind of art you make?)
  • What is the realistic projection of the number of pieces you will complete this year?
  • What additional organization of your studio or workspace do you need to be more productive?
  • Do you need additional tools or supplies to create what you want?  What are they?  do you have the funds to purchase them and if not, how will you raise the money?
  • What will you do when it gets hard?  How will you regain inspiration or motivation to work in the face of rejection, disinterest, or conflicting priorities?

Tomorrow I’ll be at the Viking Good Yule celebration from about noon until 10 pm.  For those who haven’t read this before, my 17 year old son is fascinated with Viking culture and at this point is planning to study anthropology and archeology.  So we’re going to a big Viking re-enactment celebration and feast.  I finished my “Viking Apron Dress” last night,  from a 10th century design.  It’s amazing to me how different Viking culture was from what the stereotypical idea of Vikings is in our society (for instance, they didn’t have horned helmets, although they do look pretty fun and impressive!)  I’m sure I’ll have some interesting photos to post from that and I’ll make sure to get one of my dress as well.  I’ll make sure to also have my sketchbook in hand and work on my Salsa! designs for the Mighty Tieton show.  Make it a great day!

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Viking Tunic Completed!

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Last night I helped my son Ryan finish up his wool Viking tunic.  This has been a terrific learning experience.  We went together to pick out the fabric (had to be wool for authenticity.)  He made the pattern from historic sources and his measurements.  I taught him how to pre-wash the fabric and straighten the grain, layout and cut the pieces.  I then taught him the basics of using my Bernina sewing machine (winding the bobbin, threading the machine, stitch length, type of stitch, etc.) and then let him go about constructing the garment.  We did one fitting prior to doing the final seaming, where I suggested we insert some gussets under the arms, to give him a more natural range of motion.  When it was constructed but not hemmed, he asked if I could dye it… the color didn’t go as well with his under-tunic as he had thought.  We did several samples to get the color where he wanted it (and because I don’t have a lot of experience with wool) and then I dyed the whole tunic. 

We were down to the final steps, hemming and adding some authentic hand-woven trim which he had purchased.  I think he really wanted me to do the hemming… but I got out a needle and thread, showed him how to do it, watched for a few stitches, and then let him finish it up.  I did go ahead and topstitch the trim on for him.

What a wonderful way to be able to contribute to him.  First, teaching him the basics of sewing and that he is capable of doing it.  Next, letting him pursue his passion-not just allowing him, but supporting and encouraging him.  Finally, being able to share this time with him… going to his event with him (yes, I’ll be in costume too) and letting myself be enlightened about how much this young man of mine really knows about the era and culture with which he is so entranced.

I still need to finish my Viking apron dress tonight, as the “Good Yule” celebration is happening on Saturday.  I’m excited to be doing a Viking embroidery class at the event, particularly after getting to see the Bayeux Tapistry last June.  More on that in the future!

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The Art of Organization

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It’s funny, how you can be really organized in one area, yet swimming (or sinking) in disorganization in another.  Like many creative types, I struggle with organization.  At our local Surface Design Association meeting a few months ago, we had the topic of Time and Studio Management.  We all brought photos of our studio in its current condition.  We even had a $20 prize for the local Quiltworks store where we meet for the artist with the messiest studio, to encourage people to really not clean up before our session.  Well, since I offered the prize, I didn’t have to shell out any money when it was unanimously decided that my studio was the worst!  No, I’m not going to share those photos online at this time… maybe when I get to know you better.

On the other hand, I’m extremely organized in some areas… in setting and attaining goals; in developing organizational systems; in project management.  For instance, today I put together 3 different proposals for exhibition venues for the Contemporary QuiltArt Association (CQA.)  Two were for well-known musuems and the third for a city hall gallery.  Putting together proposals such as these requires a lot of organizational skill.  You need to find their requirements and do your best to follow them explicitly.  You need a personalized cover letter, artist statement, biography, artist resume, and images of your work.  The images needed to be picked and formatted to each venue’s specifications. I’ve been very successful with my exhibition proposals in the past and hope that I will be here again in the near future. (I’ll let you know where the museums/galleries are if we secure them.)

This year I’ve made slow incremental progress in gaining control over some areas of my life.  First and foremost, I lost 30 lbs that had been slowly creeping on over the last few years.  Next, I’ve been keeping up with putting all my clothes away (anyone else have oodles of laundry?) and making sure to keep my closet cleaned up.  Then, I moved towards keeping the corner of my bedroom clean, where my books, quilt magazines, art projects and miscellaneous junk pile up from whatever I’m working on or reading before bedtime.  And now, I’m working on the studio. 

Part of my problem is that I’m blessed with a large home.  So, whenever I run out of space, I just move on and work in another area. I also love to work in the evening in front of the t.v.  However, theis requires bringing a bunch of things from my studio into our “adventure” room (family/tv room.) I also am one of those people who just love to learn new things.  So I have supplies for all of them.  I’m working now at developing a place for each type of supply… a drawer of thermofaxes, a bin for stabilizers, all my scissors put away in the same place, so I always know where to find things. 

The outside of the old fruit processing plant

But, again, you can only do so much cleaning and organizing until you are cutting into your art time.  Today, I did some dyeing-the wool Viking tunic my son made.  Too much time has been spent in front of a computer screen.  I never did claim that I was great on the time management side, now did I?

I promised a few days ago that I’d post some photos from the Mighty Tieton gallery.  Enjoy!


You walk through part of the old warehouse…
… and open the huge Cold Storage door

To a beautiful gallery space

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Scope Creep

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Large Unfinished Feltwork at Tieton

Have you ever heard of scope creep?  Sounds like some kind of peeping tom that uses a periscope, doesn’t it?  Well, it’s actually where the intent and expectations of a project keeps increasing.  Perhaps I just have big ideas… but I’m finding myself being really excited about the prospects of the Tieton exhibition.  For instance, the large felted piece that I mentioned yesterday?  I started thinking about a documentary on Mongolia I’d seen and how they would felt large pieces by pulling the roll behind horses.  Here’s a link that has some info on the Mongolian felting tradition, as well as a YouTube video of the steps of the process.  Well, I’m a horsewoman… I recently sold my horse but still ride and know lots of people in the equestrian community.  One of my contacts has a Friesian farm in the Yakima area, not terribly far from Tieton, where they have big beautiful black horses that draw carriages.  Shouldn’t be too hard to drag a roll of felt, then, should it?


Will and Teresa Bron with two of their lovely Friesians

I also got to thinking about a fiber group whom I read about in Quilting Arts Magazine (June/July 2012).  They are from the Netherlands and create all sorts of outdoor installations.  You can see some of their work on their Windkracht 10 Blog.  We also have had a wonderfully colorful addition to many of our outdoor spaces here in the Seattle area… yarn bombing.  Just google yarn bomb Seattle images.  Here again, Tieton would be a perfect place to do all sorts of wonderful outdoor fiber art displays.  So, the scope of this exhibition may just be creeping up a bit more.

I’m thinking that it might be too much to ask of our CQA artists to also do the outdoors pieces, so perhaps I’ll just write an open call for artists in Washington… that shouldn’t be too much extra work, right? 

Tieton would also like to have lecturers and classes available from fiber artists during the show run.  So, I’ve opened this up to CQA artists as an opportunity, but I may need to open it further, if I don’t get enough response.  Well, I suppose I could pull a class together before next May….

Oh, and I’m thrilled that Mighty Tieton, having their own print studio, has offered to make a catalog of the exhibit!  All I need to do is provide high resolution images of all the artwork, artist statements, information on each piece, and write a curators statement.  No problem!

As you can see, it’s easy to commit and commit, and then not take time to do your art.  I’m committed to make a piece (or more) for this show.  But as artists we need to weigh out our commitments and look at our overall goals.  I do believe that putting this show on in style will be a positive experience for my artistic career.  But the major sticking point that I struggle with is in making enough art.  Making enough to be good.  Making enough to develop my artistic voice.  Making enough to feel fulfilled.  As I work through my goals for the coming year, I’m looking at committing to making a small art piece (5×7?) each week.  However, I struggle with whether that will stop me from making my larger pieces.  I have a partially-completed quilt (OK, who doesn’t) on my design wall that is about double-bed sized… I don’t want to stop making something just for the sake of some promise to do a small piece every week.  And I’m not sure I have time for both.  Well, I guess I will think it through some more before I write out my goals and plans for 2013!

Eastern Washington Seed Pods

Here’s my favorite inspiration from my day!  The sunshine and shadows on these seedpods was lovely with crisp air filled with the smells of all the dried grasses and grains. 

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Planning an Exhibition

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Entry to the old cold storage room now refurbished as a gallery

Mighty Tieton is an unique artist community 15 miles outside the city of Yakima, Washington. As the co-chair of Exhibitions for the Contemporary QuiltArt Association, I’ve scheduled an exhibition in their unique gallery space. Today I visited the space-a remarkable gallery created out of an old fruit processing warehouse. The space where our exhibit will hang was a large cold storage locker complete with huge refrigerator-like doors through which they probably drove forklifts filled with pallets of fresh Yakima valley produce.  Once you get through the door, however, the space is transformed into a wonderful gallery space with soaring ceilings, high-tech lighting and a wire hanging system which will allow us to hang quilts or art-cloth throughout the interior of the gallery, rather than just from the walls.

Currently, in a second “cold storage” space, they have set up an exhibit of Trimpin’s sound studio art. Originally from Bavaria, Trimpin’s now lives in Seattle. His artwork combines music and sculpture, often using computers to play the instruments. He has exhibited in numerous prestigious galleries and museums, including Seattle Art Museum, the Experience Music Project, Frye Art Museum and many more.

In yet another space in the warehouse, there was the start of a large (approximately 20′ x30′) felted piece, started when Janice Arnold had one of her incredible felted tents on display (still up in yet another gallery space!). We may even get the opportunity to work on felting this unfinished piece.

I took high-res photos of the space which I’ll post after I return home and am able to process them.

As one of my artist goals, I want to get to the place where I can have a solo exhibition of my art. I’m not there yet… but as one step towards this goal, I decided that volunteering as Exhibitions co-chair would help me gain valuable experience which I can use in my future solo shows. Since the time I started working on CQA’s exhibitions, I’ve learned a great deal. How to find potential venues; what to include in an information packet to the prospective gallery; talking with gallery representatives; working out exhibition details; how to publicize the show; hanging an exhibit; putting on an opening event; working with the gallery on sales; and finally, taking the show down.

More to come on the process of putting on exhibitions. Any secrets you have to share would be greatly appreciated!

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Finding Inspiration Every Day

One area in which I never have any difficulty is finding inspiration.  If anything, I’m too willing and see beauty and interest in too many things.  Right now, my husband, Randy, is watching some of the post-Thanksgiving college football games and I can glance up at the commercials and see the artistic talent and incredible genius in the commercials.  The marketing wizards of television advertising create such compelling imagery, as well as often having incredible auditory stimulus.

Today we drove across the Cascade mountain range from Western Washington to Eastern, where my husband loves to hunt.  It is with a bit of trepidation that I mention this activity. I grew up in the suburbs of Seattle, and with the exception of a short couple months living in San Francisco and many years of living in the Seattle city limits, I have found myself living back in Bellevue, a short distance across Lake Washington from Seattle.  I bring this up in contrast to how my husband was raised, in the rural countryside of Minnesota.  Having been brought up in suburbia, I don’t remember anyone that I know of having guns or being a hunter.  My impression of hunters was probably pretty biased… radical right-wingers… card-carrying NRA members… although I didn’t have any real ethical problem with hunting, so long as they would eat the meat, rather than just killing for sport.  Even after several years of having been a vegan in my past (a vegetarian who eats no animal products at all, including meat, poultry, fish or dairy) and having studied the issues of being a carnivore, I feel like that hunting or fishing at least gives the animal/bird/fish some change at survival and a better quality of their life than most creatures that are farm-raised.  In contrast, Randy grew up with pheasant hunting every year with his father.  It’s a very nostalgic activity for him.  Regardless, I know that there are plenty of people who are anti-hunting.  So I tend not to mention this aspect of our life to many people, for fear of their reaction or rejection. 

mini crab-apples

As a lover of animals, I’m relieved that my husband only hunts upland birds (pheasant, quail, and chucker.)  I’m pretty good with training, both dogs and as a horsewoman.  So my participation in the past years has been to train and maintain control of our hunting dog.  Yet for the first time this year, my two teen boys passed their hunter education and I took the class with them, so I’m actually participating in the hunting.  I guess I should say for those who’ve never gone hunting, that it’s a lot like fishing… it’s a good day when you see a bird- but many times you don’t.  If you really want to bring home dinner, you pay to go to a bird farm/hunting club, where they place farm-raised birds which you buy (regardless of whether you actually get the bird or not) in a field for you to hunt.  The real joy is in being out in the field watching your dog do what he/she is raised to do and love.



upholstery fabric from restaurant

OK, how does this relate to finding inspiration?  As I said, I find inspiration everywhere.  The sky and clouds, the few lone crab-apple trees in the orchard which are inexplicably filled with fruit while most are bare, pieces of wood, fields of grain… these are a few of the things which I viewed today.  I also saw some wonderful textiles, again in everyday places- the upholstery at the restaurant we ate at, and a cute applique pillow in our hotel room. 

machine appliqued pillow at hotel

 

So where am I going with this?  I suppose that the real trick is not to just find inspiration, it’s then to act on it.  One of my next steps is to figure out how to be making art every day.  How to use all the remarkable inspiration I find (or even a portion of it) rather than taking it in and then it being forgotten.  How do translate inspiration into your artwork?  One of the many questions I struggle with at times. 
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Thankful for project time

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Happy Thanksgiving!  I am so thankful today to have had a relaxed joyous day with my family, as well as being able to do many of my projects.  My sweet husband did much of the cooking, to help keep me out of the kitchen, as I’ve worked very hard this year to get down to my goal weight by losing 30 lbs (and keeping it off.)  I do love to cook, but I knew I’d be tempted to taste all day long!  He did ask my support in one thing, however… clearing some space in the freezer for the leftovers.

Well, that meant that it was time to get into my dye studio- I had to use up the snow I’ve had in the freezer since last winter- time for snow-dyeing!  It’s also a great way to use up some left-over old dyes.  While the colors may not come out quite as rich or vibrant, I’ll always be able to over-dye or do additional surface design on the fabrics.  So I prepared 4 separate yards of cotton, put each in it’s own container, packed the snow on top, and poured 3 colors of dye onto each one.  It looks like giant snow cones! 

Ryan, my Viking warrior

Since I was already dyeing, I also mixed up a fresh batch and dyed a couple yards of linen.  I’ve never tried dyeing linen before, nor is it a material I use in my artwork.  The things we will do for our children!  My son, now 17, is fascinated with Viking culture and hopes to go into anthropology and/or archeology.  He’s found that there are Viking re-enactment groups, similar to the ones that put on Renaissance fairs, and has talked me into going to a holiday “Good Yule” celebration in full Viking dress.   Of course, it has to be authentic!  Last week I taught him basics of sewing on my Bernina (ok, not so authentic that we’re going to sew it by hand!) and he made his own Viking tunic out of wool.  He’s still deciding if he wants me to dye it or not (it’s currently a beige-brown.)  The linen I’m dyeing will be for a Viking apron, the style which they wore around the tenth century.  I’ll make sure to post the pictures when we have our outfits complete!

I’ve been working on encouraging my Mom to start back to sewing again, so she brought over her machine and a Christmas table-runner project which she had started.  She was having some problems with mitering the binding.  It’s easy to get confused with a mitered binding if you are used to making a mitered border on a quilt.  The process is a bit different, since you’re turning the finding to the back side.  She also some a 60 degree angles, which I admit I had to look up how to bind.  Thank goodness for Google!

Once I had my Mom going, I started working on some freemotion quilting samples from the wonderful collection by Leah Day on her FreeMotion Quilting Blog.  If you are interested in improving your quilting stitches, I can’t recommend Leah’s blog highly enough.  Here is the “Calm Sea” design which I stitched this afternoon.  I have several notebooks of practice samples such as this, which I  keep adding to on a regular basis.  Then, when I am ready to stitch a project, I can look through my samples and think about what would work best for the piece. 

Tomorrow I’m taking off with my husband for a few days, so I’ve packed my sketchbooks and look forward to looking for new design inspiration, as well as working on thinking through some of what I’d like to accomplish in the year ahead. 

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