Stoking the Embers

I taught experimental textile painting to a full class this week at the Memorial Art Gallery's Creative Workshop. We met for three afternoon sessions in a row, which turned out to be just the right amount of time to explore some new techniques and not tire any of us out too much. David, above, has taken drawing classes in school and came to the class to experiment with color and painting techniques. He was one of three teenagers in the class; they were terrific additions to the group and tried everything.

Terry is newly retired and loves layering colors and patterns on fabric. She took classes from me five years ago when I was teaching at my studio - yikes, what a reminder of how fast the years fly by. She brought in some great small works with multiple layers that were really intriguing. A fellow layerist!

This is the area we set up for wax resist. These quilting hoops that Isabel is using worked great as an aid for stretching fabrics before applying soy wax with brushes and tjanting tools. I already knew Isabel was a talented weaver, but didn't realize until this class what a wonderful eye she has for color.


Debbie experimented with a variety of techniques the first two days and then became totally absorbed in painting a lovely floral arrangement the final day.

Here is Mattie working back into this softly blended, dried surface with small brushes and thicker paints to flesh out the details. These circular shapes are really starting to develop depth and interest.
Charmaine on the left and Barb in the background also created numerous lovely samples with a variety of color combinations and techniques. Charmaine created several pieces like the one on the table by pleating fabric and waxing with a kitchen tool over the folded edges. The pattern fragments when you open the fabric; an idea that has multiple variations. Barb, in the background, uses a stretcher frame that can adjust to different size fabrics. Neat little hooks attach to the frame with rubber bands that grab the fabrics to secure them.

Dawn loves expressionist painting and gestural calligraphy as much as I do. She has a delicate, restrained hand and a very minimalist approach.

Somehow I missed getting Liz, Serena and Elena in camera range -- or else they were just really good at dodging me! One thing I was definitely aware of by the time the class ended is how excited I am now to return to my own studio and start working again. Today I unloaded all the supplies I had taken to class, got everything in my studio pretty well back in order and feel ready to really get back to work tomorrow. Even left myself a list of to-dos so I can dive right in from the moment I walk in the door.

I've also been working with Holly Knott for the past several weeks to redesign my website. My work has evolved over the past three years and I want the new site to reflect that. Hopefully it will only take a week or two longer to complete it and then you'll get a chance to look at it and decide what you think. I'm making a lot of changes to the content as well, since I plan to focus on applying for more solo exhibitions.

In the Works: Small Works

Colleen, the manager of the Memorial Art Gallery gift shop, e-mailed me a week or two ago about selling some of my work there during the upcoming quilt exhibition, Wild by Design, in January and February. I'll meet with Colleen on January 8th. I can take in some work I already have, but I'd rather seize this opportunity to dive into something new-- which is to create a series of 12" x 12" small works mounted on stretched canvas frames. I'm hoping that firing off a number of quick, improvisational works in a tight time frame can help me explore and develop my ideas about language imagery and provide inspiration for larger works in the future. So I started ripping some pale hand-dyed fabric into 14" x14" squares last weekend and got rolling. On this first sample I dug out the 2" and 4" stencils that I bought a while back and stencilled some block letters. They have potential -- seem to provide an interesting contrast to the more calligraphic language marks. I haven't decided whether to keep these looking like stencils or fill in the spaces, but I liked them so well that I purchased some larger ones this morning!I also explored a slightly different approach that would return to the calligraphic letters that I used in the Translations piece. This sample so far has just the first layer of color and pattern. I started by drawing a variety of letter forms from my imagination until I had about 12 that had the most appealing shapes. The little dark brown calligraphic shape on the larger white shape will get the edges burned like the letter forms on the piece below; then I will add some additional silkscreen and paint layers, masking off some areas to resist the additional layers of paint.

The burned calligraphic letter form originated with this small work that I recently completed, which is 13" by 36" inches; I'm envisioning doing a larger piece with many more blocks, each ground fabric a different hue but mid-range in value. Against that will be a dark value letter form framed by a light shape. If I do a larger piece like this one, I might add silk screened text behind or over a portion of the main calligraphic symbol or I may use resists like I did in the newest sample and add layers of varied types and sizes of text.

I burned the edges of these calligraphic shapes to give more of an aged, irregular edge to the forms. Since I am intrigued by ancient texts and the deterioration of objects through time, burning is an effective way to convey these ideas. I want to experiment with adding other burned details to my language pieces and will be working more with this over the next month.

Glorious Textures Pro Chem Class

I taught a five-day class called Glorious Textures on Painted Fabrics at Pro Chemical & Dye Corporation in Fall River, Massachusetts April 25-29th. Seven strong, accomplished, talented women attended my first class there; and in a small class you have the advantage of getting to know each other very well. That's a big plus.
Pro Chem's offices and warehouse are located in an old, converted textile mill. Since I am drawn to aging, time worn structures, the exterior was a treasure trove for me. Look at this wonderful, sculptural piece.












The class dove into experimenting and by the end of the week had painted lots of materials and started layering and hand stitching some great samples. Betsy dove into the experimentation -- she was bold about experimenting and loves texture so she didn't hold back! She also started exploring different combinations of stitching -- combining different stitches adds even more interest to a surface.Those long straight stitches on the green shapes work especially well, don't you think?















Val arrived with a definite focus-- she has learned numerous surface design techniques and she wanted to carry her work to the next step and work on how to combine and use those techniques in compositions. Her thoughtfulness about her work and love of surface design is evident. Her eyes glow with delight as she works. She accomplished a lot as she explored a variety of compositional and layering ideas. Val is starting the master surface design course with Jane Dunnewold --talk about being in good hands -- and brought in some exceptional surface designed cloth she had made in a previous course with Jane.



Karen Q. (way more attractive than this photo, sorry, Karen!) doing some stitching on one piece and another several other incredibly lovely pieces she painted and layered for stitching. I couldn't take my eyes off them on the wall and wanted to start stitching them myself. Karen gave me the push I needed to start blogging, so thank you Karen!

This piece is very Gustav Klimt like, can't wait to see what she does with the stitching. Lots of possibilities.



Cheryl has a strong art background and has returned to textiles after many years working and selling her work as a painter. She has a great love of line and creates wonderful calligraphic lines in many of her paintings.
She's putting us all on her mailing list so we will get updates on where she's showing and selling her work and how she transitions from painting on paper to painting on textiles.




Janet is beginning her artistic explorations. She has great passion and spirit and spent a wonderful week painting components to create a small, very meaningful piece for her personally. Her sharing and wisdom touched and inspired the whole group. She did a small, very powerful piece based on an emotion -- unfortunately my image of it didn't turn out. She is truly a Butterfly Woman, emerging from her chrysalis in beautiful colors.







Karen R came with some ideas and imagery that really resonated with me from photographing Buddhist temples. She keeps excellent sketchbooks and spent the week working through -- and abandoning -- some of the ideas she first thought would best express the temple imagery. By the end of the week she had worked through a number of ideas and samples and hopefully will keep working with this theme. This is a piece in progress where she is exploring adding the temple elements with stitching. Check out the wall behind her picture -- she produced a LOT.


Pam, as this sample illustrates so well, loves color and loves to hand stitch. Since she is also a fabric designer, author and quilting teacher, I took several deep breaths when I found out she was coming to my first class at Pro Chem. She was great -- no surprise, she's a fellow Libra and loves playing with color and textures in the same improvisational way that I do. Look for her new quilting fabric designs for RJR Fabrics this fall!


Finally, here's Vicki Jensen, Pro Chem's amazing technical consultant and workshop director, who joined us for a few demos during the week, showed us some wonderful techniques with wax and then settled in to stitch with us on the weekend. Here she is working on layering and stitching gorgeous felted pieces she made in Chad Hagen's class (and Chad will be teaching at Pro Chem in August, check out http://www.prochemical.com/ for more information).

My experience at Pro Chem was wonderful in every way -- the lunches were EXCELLENT -- and I can wholeheartedly recommend taking classes at their facility. I'll look forward to returning there again to teach in 2008.