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.

Cabbage: Cure for Anxiety.

I hate working under a tight deadline.  Tight deadlines don't get my  adrenaline going, as they do for some people.  For me, they get my dread going.  Under a tight deadline, I worry, I fumble, I make mistakes.

So when I found out last weekend that an impending deadline for an Important Show was less than a month away, I felt the anxiety coming on. 

This deadline is for publicity for an art quilt show in which I'm participating with an ad-hoc group of other art quilters, ladies who are among the most talented I know:  Kate Themel, Mickey Lawler, Trish Hodge and Diane Wright.  Together, calling ourselves Five Fiber Friends, we've been able to interest Fair Haven Furniture, a New Haven furniture store with an art gallery in its midst,  http://www.fairhaven-furniture.com/?gclid=CKqNkaiEp74CFcIDOgodazMAhw,
to hang an art quilt show.  This will take place in August and September, 2014.

But oops, now we find the publicity deadline is June 1.  By that date, Fair Haven Furniture needs images of our work for its advertising.  So I've got to do something quickly, and it's got to be good.

Did I mention that I was nervous about this?

Originally, my plan had been to try a new technique.  In fact, I was going to spend the spring and much of the summer trying new materials for this show.

But now I find I don't have the luxury of time for experimentation with anything new.  I decided that I'd be better off going with something that I already know I can do.

That would be cabbage.

Here are a couple of the cabbage images I've created over the past few years:

Glowing Cabbage III, 2011, private collection

Glowing Cabbage II, 2011, private collection

Homage to Cabbage II
2010

Homage to Cabbage III
2014

I decided I'd made enough cabbages to take the stress out of creating another. 

Cabbage.  The cure for anxiety.

I culled through my photo bank of images of cabbages I've grown in my yard, and I chose these three:

I'm calling this one Weeping Cabbage.  Look at the big teardrops on the bottom leaf.

I'm calling this one Perfect Green Cabbage

I'm calling this one Brooding Cabbage for the dark rumpledness of its leaves.

Unable to choose between the pearly silvers and lilacs of Weeping Cabbage and the pearly green of Perfect Green cabbage, I chose to proceed with both of them.

I printed out the images of each one on business size paper, then traced the images onto tracing paper.  I brought the traced versions to Staples and asked them to blow them up to 20 x 20--the size needed for the publicity shots.

 To choose the colors for the leaves of the two cabbages, I experimented with Jacquard and Pebeo Setacolor paints.  My painting is inspired by Mickey Lawler's Skydyes, an all-purpose handbook about applying paint to fabric.

On the top row, from among the greens, I chose the rightmost two.  On the bottom row, from the pinks, I also chose the rightmost two.  Each is a blend.

I think I got pretty close to the colors of the leaves in the photo images.

Before applying paint to fabric for the leaves, I  traced the outlines of each image onto a piece of fabric that would become the background for the cabbages.  On another piece of fabric, I traced the outline of each individual leaf, which would be embellished and layered before being cut out.

This traced background shows me where to sew the leaves, once I'm ready to sew them on.

For the leaves of Weeping Cabbage, first I put down  a mix of Pebeo setacolor paints in shimmer pearl mixed with silver and a blend I call vibrant reddish purple  (vermilion and ultramarine).  I then followed those colors with a second sponging, this one with a mix of Jacquard colorless medium blended with Pearl-Ex powder in silver-gray lavender. The result was pretty close to the duskily glowing purples of the weeping cabbage.

The color for the leaves of Perfect Green Cabbage was similarly a layering of different blends.  First, I put down a mix of Pebeo shimmer pearl, silver, and one drop of a color I call dark spruce green (emerald with a drop of black).   I then followed that with a second sponging, this one a mix of shimmer pearl, a color I call dark tropical green (yellow, cobalt, few drops of black ), a color I call dark teal (a blend of emerald and cobalt), and a Pebeo color called light green.

I think I came pretty close to the color for Perfect Green Cabbage.

You can just see the outlines of my chalk marks in the photo above.  The chalk marks went down first, traced before the fabric was painted.

By now, I've embellished the leaf shapes--which I similarly traced onto a different piece of fabric--with Shiva paintsticks to give them highlights and shadows.  Once the paintstick parts have cured (you're supposed to give them three days) I'll use satin stitch to make the veins.

This is a leaf for Weeping Cabbage.  You can see the chalk veins which I laid down before I painted the fabric.  Those veins will soon be traced by satin stitch.  You can also see the shadows and highlights I laid down with Shiva paintsticks, in iridescent white and iridescent purple, on top of the painted fabric.  I'm waiting for the Shiva colors to cure.

For the bottoms of each leaf, I've traced the veins from my pattern onto fusible interfacing.  Then I sewed pipe cleaners onto the interfacing to show the prominent veins of each leaf.  This layered item was bonded to coordinated fabric which forms the back, or lining, of each leaf.

This is the bottom, or backside, of a leaf

With this technique, each leaf is wired, but the wiring is on the inside, sandwiched between fusible interfacing bonded to coordinating fabric on one side, and the embellished, decorated leaf top on the other.  Get it?

While I'm waiting for the paintstick colors to cure, I'm thinking about the colors of the background on which I will lay these individually-prepared leaves.

For Perfect Green Cabbage, I chose tropical green, left.  For Weeping Cabbage, a blend of shimmer pearl and drop tropical green (right). 

Now my iron has just died.  I checked Consumer Reports and there were 260 reviews of irons.  Why is everything always so complicated?

And why am I sitting here blogging about this process if I'm so worried about finishing it?

Rolling out the Fiber Art: Conventions, Receptions, and Inspirations

The past few days have rolled out a lot of fiber art. From May 1 to 4, my buddy Carol and I participated in the annual convention of the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) http://www.saqa.com/, a 3300-member international organization for serious art quilters,  in Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington, DC.  A mere two hours after arriving back in Hartford, Carol and I got in our cars and drove an hour to Norfolk, CT, in Connecticut's northwest hills, for a reception for the Connecticut Fiber Arts Collective's group show, Northwest Corner, in the town's public library. http://norfolklibrary.org/
 http://ctfac.blogspot.com/2014/05/ctfac-reception-at-norfolk-public.html

 The SAQA convention was exhilarating and exhausting, inspiring and intimidating.  Seriously.  As exhilarated as I was by meeting so many other quilters and looking at some exquisite fiber art, I was also exhausted by almost nonstop socializing.  As inspired as I was by looking at the work of some of the best fiber artists in the country and world, work unique in its vision and stunning in its use of color, I was also intimidated by the high standard of artistry and workmanship...and by conference speakers' advice that we art quilters start thinking like the CEOs of our own businesses.

On the inspiration scorecard:  here are a couple of socks-knocking pieces, which I offer as examples of the dozens of art quilts at the convention, in galleries and on slides. 

Take a look at Mary Pal's work.  She works in--can you believe this?  stiffened and hand-sculpted cheesecloth.  http://marypaldesigns.com/new-index/

Avo by Mary Pal

And look at this waving fabric sea grass, or kelp, by a fiber artist named Natalie Shudt, http://www.theartleague.org/content/shudt_2014, whose three-dimensional fiber creations we saw at the Torpedo Factory, an art center combining artists' studios, classroom space, and a gallery.   http://www.torpedofactory.org/

So you can get the gist of the double-edged inspiration and intimidation emanating from this work.  Some of the conference message was intimidating, too, in its focus on the business side of art.  True,  that kind of talk was appropriate to the theme of the conference, Capitolizing on Fiber.  It's a pun: the conference program offerings focused on the business side of fiber arts--or capitalizing one's art--and the meeting took place in the nation's capitol.  Right?

One of the speakers told us to put on our CEO hats as soon as we got up in the morning.

I'm not there yet.

Still, there was fun in socializing with established friends and meeting new ones.

Here I am with the gang from Connecticut.  That's me, second from right--you can see my waving hand and a slice of my head.

I went to the conference for the networking and the schmoozing and the learning, but also for the opportunity to meet with some folks with, and for whom, I've worked, remotely, for years, in my capacity as a free-lance writer for the Society for Human Resource Management, (SHRM) http://www.shrm.org/Pages/default.aspx.  SHRM is headquartered there in Alexandria, and so, once I sent in my conference registration, I made arrangements to meet face to face with Margaret Clark, a SHRM employee who, like me, is a lawyer, a product of a Catholic upbringing, married to a Jew, and a resident or former resident of West Hartford, Connecticut. Margaret and bonded around these things, and around parental late-life care issues, over dinmer at Alexandria's Taverna Cretekou http://www.tavernacretekou.com/

After my dinner with Margaret and exhilarating but exhausting experience at the SAQA conference, my travel buddy Carol and I flew back to Hartford on Sunday May 4, arriving around noon.  After a two-hour pitstop, we drove northwest into the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains to Norfolk. CT, where, as part of our membership in the CT Fiber Arts Collective, http://www.ctfac.blogspot.com/ Carol and I were participating in a fiber art show, Northwest Corner, at the Norfolk Public Library.  http://norfolklibrary.org/

It's a real privilege for our art to hang in this lovely old building. 

Take a look at this barrel-vaulted ceiling, this custom woodwork  When's the last time any of us saw a public library built of such materials and with such an expansive use of space?

One of my favorite features of the library: the Latin inscription on the mantel,

Inter Folia Fructus.  Among the leaves, fruit.  Another pun:  the leaves are leaves of books, and the fruit is the product that the reader gleans from them.  Also, in nature, fruit does grow among leaves.  Right?

Sometimes I'm glad I studied Latin.

Here are six of the ten members of the CT Fiber Arts Collective, those of us who were able to get ourselves to Norfolk for the reception.  Front row, left to right, Karen Loprete and Antonia Torres.  Back row:  Rosalind Spann, Christina Blais, Diane Cadrain, Carol Vinick.

Here are the library volunteers who made the reception a reality.  Thanks, ladies!

L to R, Leslie Battis, Mary Ford-Bey, Angie Engle, and Sally Briggs.

The reception was gratifyingly well-attended

...and our art was universally well-received.

A woman whose daughter is about to be married at Norfolk's Infinity Hall bought Christina Blais' finely-tuned rendering of its funky old building. Congratulations, Christina!

In addition, Mary Lachman sold her small quilt Sea Grass  & Waves, Karen Loprete sold a table runner, and I sold a string of felted beads.

I also had two art quilts in the show: 

 This one is a view of a folk-art roadside signpost in the center of Norfolk.

This is a view of a rustic Norfolk fence that wends its crooked way past a grassy field called, I believe, the Town Meadow.

And what a lot of skilled artistry from my sister CFAC members.

Here's Rosalind Spann with Stella's Violin:

Here's Antonia Torres with Winter Red:

Here's Carol Vinick, wearing one of her own hand-dyed scarves, posing with her image of the Norfolk Library under a load of snow:

And here's Karen Loprete with My Secret Garden:

After the reception, Carol and I drove back to West Hartford for our real lives: hers as an APRN, mine as a lawyer turned journalist writing for the Society for Human Resource Management.

And we're getting ready for our upcoming shows, of which there are many, starting with Jazz Tones at Hartford's 100 Pearl Street Gallery from June 15 to August 23 https://letsgoarts.org/Gallery.

At the moment, though, I better unpack that suitcase.