Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Old & the New


For the past two years I have been working in two mediums--fiber and clay monoprints. I worked in two little boxes, keeping the work separate. But all the time I worked, the boundaries between the boxes tended to perforate, to become fuzzy. I kept thinking feeling that there was a place where the two could merge, and so I have thought and worked on where those overlappings might occur.


I had plenty of ugly clay monoprints with which to experiment! In the serendipitous creation of the prints, some are wonderful and some are boring. In the first experiments I simply glued/sewed things onto the ugly monoprints to try to add interest or focal points.
OK so these aren't much better.


Finally, two years later I had a ""AHA!"
My week at Hemlocks Studio did not teach me to paint, but I did learn to let go of some of those boxes that I work in. Monita asked why I didn't sew the ugly prints into an art quilt using the monoprint as just another piece of fabric.
So here is my attempt. I am using the original boring clay print that I first altered with recycled sari silk yarn and glass beads.
This week I have sewn cloth borders around the print added batting, stitched-in-the-ditch to hold the layers together and am just now finishing, via hand sewing, the binding around the edges.
The dark framing fabric and the blue backing/binding are rather Asian with small circular designs that repeat the swirls of sari silk yarn and the glass balls.
Much improved, I think. I am making a matching piece with the first photo, the collage above with the red ribbon. The items on the collage include antique ribbon, mother-of pearl buttons and buckles, etc. from my mother's and grandmother's sewing notion baskets. I will use the same fabrics to frame this piece which I used in the swirly piece.
I'm looking for titles. Any thoughts?

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PURLS OF WISDOM

"Color is the real substance for me, the real underlying thing which drawing and line are not."
--Sam Francis

"The great man is one who never loses his child's heart."
-- Philosopher Mencius

"We wear our attitudes in our bodies."
-- Patti Davis

Colour embodies an enormous though unexplored power which can effect the entire human body as physical organism.

Colour is a means of exercising direct influence upon the soul.
--V. Kandinsky
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way.. things I had no words for.
--
Georgia O'Keeffe

Nothing is really work unless you'd rather be doing something else.
--
J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Faith is like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
--
E. L. Doctorow

Somebody once said that people become artists
because they have a certain kind of energy to release, and that rings true to me.
--Dale Chihuly