Fiber Art Play Date

We members of the CT Fiber Arts Collective love to play with our art.

Today one of our members,  Carol Eaton, threw open her home, outside and in, for a fiber art play date. And she opened her stash to us, making materials available for ice dyeing, confetti dyeing, shibori dyeing, stenciling, sun-printing, fabric painting, and stamping.  These are fiber artists' playthings, and this is what we do for fun.

Carol's quite the expert on fabric dyeing.  Take a look at her work:
http://carolreatondesigns.blogspot.com/.  Here she's demonstrating something to Karen and Christina.

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Our member Roz had been experimenting with rust dyeing. Carol is helping her take it one step further.



 I'm daunted by procedures that ask people to wear masks, but I did it today to do confetti dyeing.   Carol uses a deluxe model:

Karen made this knockout piece by tying balls into a piece of fabric with elastics, then dyeing.  Isn't it cool?

And Christina used a combination of folding and confetti dyeing to create this image like birch trees.  I told her it reminded me of the cover of an LL Bean catalog.

Here's Linda with her creation:

We had a grand and wonderful time, and a lunch that included gazpacho, green salad, pasta salad, no fewer than than two kinds of deviled eggs, and biscotti for dessert.  Sweet.

The shot above doesn't show every one of us, but I can tell you that of the ten members of the CT Fiber Arts Collective, nine of us played today.  Our tenth member, Carol, was on vacation in Ireland.  She would have loved this!

That's Mary Lachman on the left, with the white shirt.  She's just put out a book of poetry  by her grandfather, a country dentist in Indiana in the '30s and 40s.  http://www.marylachman.com/

I worked on several projects today.  I made these shibori pieces:

Shibori is a Japanese dyeing technique traditionally done with indigo dyes, which is what I used today.

Above is a closeup of the piece whose pattern I like the best.

This one is pretty cool too.

And how do you like this?  I have the indigo skin to show I've been playing with my art!

 I managed to get it on my lower leg and ankle.  Both of them, actually.  Any guesses as to how that happened?

I also did some sun prints.

The one on the left is an attempt to get an image something like that in the photo on the lower left.

 I created this sunprint with Pimatex cotton, gauze, two colors of Pebeo Setacolor paint, and some round sequins, all of it left out in the air to dry.  The inspiration photo is an aerial view of a wildfire in Colorado, with its wild colors  I used orange paint for mine and don't know why it ended up yellow.

The one below is the latest iteration of my occasional celestial theme:

I made this one with black Pebeo Setacolor paint on Pimatex cotton, with starry doodads strewn all over it.

I also made a spooky night sky using the confetti dyeing technique, which basically involves sprinkling powdered dye over wet fabric.

What a time we had!  So many thanks to Carol Eaton for sharing her dyes and her expertise!  Not to mention her home and driveway.

And thanks to all the rest of the ladies of the CT Fiber Arts Collective!  Do we know how to have fun or WHAT!?

Summertime, and the Art Moves Outside

 I'm not usually a garden blogger: for most of the year, I put my passion, my energies, and my blogging attention, into art quilting.

 But in the summertime, I take my art outside.

 
This year is going to be especially good for gardening:  because Joe and I are not taking a midsummer vacation, I get to stay home and savor the plantings I've created, and continue to create, with such intentional artistic and horticultural zeal.  So of course an activity I undertake so avidly should, like art quilting, be a strong presence in my blog. 

In that spirit, I'll add that gardening has a spiritual dimension for me:  sitting close to the ground, in a green space, bending my head over the plants, my strong intention is to create beauty where before there was none. 

Even if it takes scut work to get there. Because like art quilting, gardening comes with its share of daunting but necessary chores.

There's art even with scut work, though, and that art is in knowing what to do when.

Today, for example, I could tell it was time to do some maintenance:  cutting back a baptisia that had been overshadowing another plant behind it, pulling out an aggressively lush patch of knotweed, and of course, trying to train the Grandpa Ott morning glories to keep their vines to themselves.

Guiding grandpa.  Given half a chance, this demented old man will lean over toward his erect and light-seeking neighbors, twine himself around their sturdier stems, and cheerfully take over their sunlight and space, advancing his own growth at their expense.  This behavior must be discouraged.  Grandpa Ott must be kept away, and trained away, from his neighbors:

Cutting back baptisia.  In other scut work, I cut back my baptisia, which has already bloomed, created many heavy seedheads, and started to flop over.  This is what it looked like when it bloomed, back at the beginning of June:

This is what it looked like  today, heavy with seedheads, totally obscuring a lovely kiringeshoma koreana behind it. 

 You can't even see the kiringeshoma in this photo.  Here's what a kiringeshoma would look like in the best of all possible worlds:

I wanted to give my kiringeshoma a chance.  So I took an electric hedge trimmer to the baptisia in front of it, a practice which will make the baptisia look shorn and needy right now, but more compact and manageable soon, according to a garden authority Tracy DeSabato-Aust, whose book, The Well-Tended Perennial Garden, I take seriously/  http://www.timberpress.com/books/well_tended_perennial_garden/disabato-aust/9780881928037,.

Pulling up persicaria.  See the weeds in the image below--the ones with the spiky pink flowers?  That's persicaria, or Japanese knotweed, a vigorous garden pest.  We had luscious cool rains and a long spring this year, and I went away for two weeks at the end of the spring, and while I was gone, this lush stand of knotweed took root behind one of my beds:

Knotweed is a member of the genus persicaria. You can distinguish knotweed by the dark spots in the center of each leaf.  Can you see them? My finger is next to one of them:

 Of course, Duncan, a five month old standard poodle, was happy to help me with the weeding.

Besides being an obnoxious weed, though, the genus persicaria also produces at least one garden plant which I will permit to grow in my garden:  persicaria Red Dragon:

I allow Red Dragon to grow because it offers bright and interesting foliage in a shady spot.  I see a familial similarity between Red Dragon and knotweed in their pointed leaves with central contrasting coloring. Like its cousin the ubiquitous and invasive knotweed, the persicaria has a take-over, weedlike growth habit.  In fact, I call this plant The Bad Boy for its tendency to sprawl imperialistically over its neighbors.

The existence of persicaria Red Dragon does not changes my opinion of its obnoxious relative, knotweed.   The only good think about knotweed is that it's easy to pull up.

There's a lot of potential for artistry in gardening.  There's the obvious one of creating visuals, contrasts in color, shape and texture...

but also the subtle art, shaped by experience, trial, and error, of knowing what to do and when.

Work in Progress: Low Tide, Foggy Coast

It's the Fourth of July, and I'm celebrating by making art. 

Right now I'm working on two pieces, with an eye toward an upcoming show at the River Street Gallery at New Haven's Fair Haven Furniture.

http://www.fairhaven-furniture.com/?gclid=CjkKEQjwodmdBRDm_ZLhorWm68UBEiQAKhO3_UewhZd9OKED8IHtCLpIDE3_5H0MHNHIz0Pgj2LvNxrw_wcB

Here's what I'm working on.

Foggy Maine Coast, West Tremont, Maine

Here's a photo image of the scene:

And here's my image:

I'm creating it with Pebeo Setacolor paints, Inktense pencils, and Shade-Tex rubbing plates.  I like the Shade-Tex for creating nubbly, watery, and grassy natural surfaces:  http://www.dickblick.com/products/shade-tex-rubbing-plates/

I've done hand embroidery for the tree on the right and plan to use french knots and other nubbly surfaces for the lines of seaweed on the pebbly beach.

First Encounter Beach, Eastham, MA, at low tide. 

 Here's a photo image of the scene:

And here's my view of it, created with Pebeo Setacolor paints and Inktense pencils and ink blocks:

My experiment with working on more than one project at a time has so far been a fruitful one.  When I get tired of, or disillusioned with, one piece, I set it aside and work on the other.  It's not that the projects feed one another.  Rather, they keep me from getting bogged down.

Tales of Trial and Terror from the Garden

Good thing I'm an animal lover, or else I wouldn't put up with my puppy Duncan's energetic...uh, rearrangements of the plants growing in planters on the deck at the back of my house in West Hartford, Connecticut. 

Look what I'm forced to do to keep Duncan away from my Grandpa Ott morning glories:

The first several times he pulled the morning glories out of the pot, I tented it with these nice cotton towels from Portugal.

  But Duncan easily got his furry snout past those towels and continued to pull out the plants.  Next, I tried this arrangement:

The darn pot looks like it's getting married. 

I had a bolt of tulle in my stash, and once I planted a second batch of Grandpa Otts, I used some of that tulle to create this tent around the pot.   I inherited the bolt from the stash of Carolyn Soutter, a former member of my religious congregation, the Unitarian Society of Hartford http://ushartford.com/, who passed tragically and too early.

Carolyn was a fabulous quilter who masterminded and carried out the creation of this artful quilt celebrating the congregation's 150th anniversary in 1994:

Her daughters had first dibs at her stash, and once they'd had their picks, the rest was made available to the sewers in the congregation.  By "sewers," I mean not underground pipes that carry rain and pee, but rather persons who sit at sewing machines and sew.  We sewers were happy to have Carolyn's leftovers.  Her husband and daughters would probably be happy to know that I think of Carolyn whenever I use that bolt of tulle.  Probably none of them would have envisioned it in this setting:

I fastened the tulle down with a piece of elastic, also from my stash.  I knew it would come in handy one day. 

Fortunately, Grandpa Ott seedlings are not hard to come by.  Here, for example, is one saucily putting out its heart-shaped leaves in my silver garden, where it most definitely had not been planted:

Before he pulled up the Grandpa Otts out of the pot, forcing me to plant another batch today, Duncan chose to pull up and chew a lovely and pricey Centaurea Colchester White, which I'd ordered from White Flower Farm.  http://www.whiteflowerfarm.com/71210-product.html

Here's a look at that silvery plant as it would appear in the best of all possible worlds:

But back in MY world, where this plant was one of several in a pot on my deck, Duncan pulled it up and took it down into the yard and gnawed on it.  I took it away and splinted it, using a popsicle stick and cloth sticky tape, and replanted it.  He pulled it up again and turned it into such a stump that it might no longer hold any interest...except that it did.  So he pulled it up again, stump though it was.  And again.  And again.

Maybe it has an interesting smell.  Or maybe, because he once chewed on it, he could identify that fact by smell and knew it was "his" to dig up again.

The little brat.  I mean the... adorable little puppy.  Good thing he's so cute.

Here's why I drove to Hartford from Cape Cod--and back--in one afternoon

"You're not going back tonight, are you?"  That's what I heard from everybody at the June 26 reception for Jazz Tones, the exciting art quilt show currently hanging at the  100 Pearl St. Gallery in downtown Hartford.  They had a point:  I'd just driven 188 miles from Cape Cod, where the rest of my family was on vacation, to Hartford for the reception.  Shouldn't I give myself a break and sleep in my own home before driving 188 miles back?

Uh,  no, as it turned out. 

I was between a rock and a hard place.  Jazz Tones is the most high-profile endeavor to date for the CT Fiber Arts Collective, of which I'm a founding member.  So of course, as the creator of three pieces in the show, I wanted  to be there for the reception.  Even if it occurred during my family's Cape Cod vacation.

At the same time, I wanted, even needed, to get right back to that vacation, because my daughter Julia, with whom I spend precious little enough time as it is, and her partner Elana and Elana's baby Maya, had just arrived.

So I had it both ways by making it to the reception but also pushing right back to the Cape afterwards, arriving around 11 pm and unfolding myself like a long-creased accordion from my husband's, uh, cozy, Geo Prizm.

What a reception, though.  The drive was totally worth it.  There must have been 100 people in and out of the Pearl St. Gallery during that time.  Here's a look:

That's Roz Spann of CT FAC talking to the husband of another member, Linda Woods.

That's CTFAC's Christina Blais in the lovely peach-colored dress.  Christina created the stunning image, Jazz Man, which forms the focus of this postcard:

 

Here are a few members of CT FAC with Jose Feliciano of the Greater Hartford Arts Council, who helped make the show happen.  L-R Antonia Torres, Karen Loprete, me, Rosalind Spann.

Rosalind Spann and Antonia Torres with Antonia's quilt

Roz with her piece, Stella's Violin

Honored Guest Ed Johnetta Miller with "And I Embrace All Cultures"

Wanda Seldon with her piece honoring 

Here I am with A Love Supreme I, one of my three pieces in the show

And here's why I drove back to the Cape right away without stopping overnight:

The majestic North Atlantic, Pamet Trails, Cape Cod National Seashore, Truro, MA

Julia's buddy Elana, Elana's baby Maya, and our daughter Julia, who had just arrived at the Cape as it was time for me to leave for Hartford.  Who could blame me for hopping in the car and driving right back the same night?

Cabbage Update

Folks, how many people do you know who can, with straight face and ingenuous intention, caption a blog post "Cabbage Update"?

But enough about me.  How about those cabbages?

There's a lot of cabbage news to report: artistic, horticultural, and philosophical.

I'll start with the artistic news:   I successfully met a deadline of June 1, 2014 for the creation of my latest cabbage image.

Here it is: 

Perfect Green Cabbage, 2014

This image will appear in publicity for an upcoming fiber art show in which I'm participating at the River Street Gallery in Fair Haven Furniture in New Haven.  http://www.fairhaven-furniture.com/.

The second piece of artistic cabbage news is that, today, I just finished another cabbage image, Weeping Cabbage:

Weeping cabbage is so named for the fat raindrops in the original image on which the piece is based:

I made the two images with the intention that one of them would be used for the publicity for the River Street Gallery show.  I couldn't decide which one to use for River Street so I went right ahead working on two at once.  Perfect Green Cabbage got done first, so it will go in the River Street publicity, but meanwhile, here's weeping cabbage, just completed, and potentially to be hung at the same gallery.

The second piece of cabbage news is horticultural:  I recently planted six Red Acre cabbages in various places in my garden.

Here's one of them, little more than a seedling, but already showing the simultaneous green and purple coloration that gives red cabbages their iridescence.  There are five others, and I'm looking forward to the unique ability of their frosty, glaucous looks, to cool me down on the hottest days.

Every cabbage image I've ever created has been inspired by a cabbage in my own yard, so I want to keep those cabbages coming.  They do make magnificent specimens in the garden:

Can you believe I even have philosophical cabbage news?  As follows:

My artistic career has been visited by a version of Cabbage Night.  Cabbage Night is a pre-Halloween evening of mayhem, so-called in some places in the northeastern United States (but known elsewhere as Mischief Night, ).

According to Wikipedia, Cabbage Night got its name from a local custom in rural Niagara Falls, Ontario, during the 50s and 60s, of "raiding local gardens for leftover rotting cabbages and hurling them about to create mischief in the neighborhood."

Today, Wikipedia says, "the night is commonly known as "Cabbage Night" in parts of Vermont; Connecticut; Bergen County, New Jersey; Upstate New York; Northern Kentucky; Newport, Rhode Island; and Boston, Massachusetts.^[3]

My own personal Cabbage Night came in the form of three rejections:  most recently from How does your Garden Grow at the Whistler Museum and Gallery in Lowell, MA; before that, from CT + 6, a show sponsored by the West Hartford Art League; and before that, from the CT Academy of Fine Arts 2014 annual show.

For at least two of those shows, I entered Homage to Cabbage III:

My lovely cabbage was hurled into a slough of dishonor and negation.  And I was disappointed.

But on the other hand, how about the following couple of developments:

One, I've just received a commission to create a quilt commemorating a couple's renewal of their marriage vows, a creative project I'm happy to receive;

And two, I've just been asked to have a solo show at Hartford's Clare Gallery, where the themes are spirituality and social justice.  http://spsact.org/clare/ClareGallery.html.

I'm happy to be so honored, and am already thinking about the spiritual theme I'll be expressing at that gallery, which part of St. Patrick and St. Anthony Church in Hartford.

So now--after Cabbage Night, the treats.

And that's the way it is in cabbage news.