Resetting My Compass

What happens to you once you complete a very intense, creative project? For me, there's a period when that creative place inside feels almost too eerily quiet. Almost want to call "Code Blue, Code Blue" and get the cardiac arrest team here. After a period of such focused work, NOT being engaged to that degree feels almost like flatlining.

SOME people relax willingly. Me, I do it because my entire self goes on strike until I listen to it. So I spent the entire weekend -- amazingly -- away from both my sewing and surface design studios. Read the entire Sunday New York Times AND most of Art in America. Enjoyed a family picnic and played with my grandchildren.

When I walked back into my studio yesterday, I still wasn't ready to enter into that intensity of composing a new surface. Since "show up and do something, anything" is my motto, I played!


There are always painted samples lying about, so I grabbed a few small ones and treated them like sketchbook pages. I painted and silkscreened some details over whatever was already on the surfaces. When that dried, I added some foiling and then fused a sheer synthetic fabric to both pieces, leaving folds and ripples. A heat gun disintegrated the black sheer synthetic in interesting patterns.

To play without direction helps rekindle my passion for creating without worrying about success or failure. These are small, lively and fun. The top one will travel to the other side of the country as a "trade" with a fellow artist and the other one will go into my sketchbook for reference.

After I played, I could deal with cleaning up from the past few weeks. I washed all the containers and brushes and silkscreens and assorted squeeze bottles that had piled up. I'm turning to a fresh page, will mix new dyes for the next project and not try to recycle any of these.

But I have to confess I don't feel ready yet to really immerse in painting and printing another large surface. My inner compass is still resetting, searching once again for true north. It seems that I need to turn around and around, like a silly old dog, before I finally plop myself down in one spot. So while I'm heading back up to my studio today, I can't say for sure what I'll do once I get there.

Even just puttering in my studio makes me happy, though. And that's what living a creative life is truly all about, don't you think?

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round, Round and Round

In all directions (and on every surface around me), new ideas and new work are moving forward. Hard to believe that just a short time ago I felt my wheels were spinning. There's a rhythm building again and more than any outward progress, it's that feeling that signals to me I'm back in my flow again.

Waiting to reengage with that energy is where trust enters in -- not a blind, unreasoning trust, but one based on experience with creative cycles. You remind yourself that not knowing where the work is going is perfectly fine, that the willingness to release a grip on outcomes makes the process so much more exciting -- and even though doubts and fears may creep in about whether new ideas will ever flow out in the studio again, you just patiently show up and do the work as the best you can, holding the intention in your mind and heart to create and trusting that eventually a new cycle of creative activity will begin again.

And then almost without realizing it you seem to find your stride. You totally forget that you ever felt anything but happily engaged and start setting out rain barrels to capture the downpour of ideas. Or at least this is how it works for me.



During the quiet part of my creative cycle, I quietly stitched and completed this 18" x 18" sample piece, learning a lot from the process about what this type of flowing, repetitive stitching can add to the surface. I decided to crop the work so that the gestural writing flows off the plane. Now that it's complete I can consider what I would change and what variations I would explore on the next one and appreciate how it provided activity for me during an otherwise quiet time.



At the studio I've been silkscreening with mid and light value grays and discharging a new silk ground that is a first layer. The next steps will develop the surface with more language imagery. I'll keep creating these and working on the types of marks I make on the surfaces. These marks will influence what the additional layers will be. If it sounds mysterious, it is. The work isn't preplanned, the ideas and meanings evolve around the concept or theme.


Here's what the piece looks like after painting and printing the first layer and then discharging back into it to age and soften the marks a bit. So far so good. It has potential. Over the next few studio days I'll revisit this and contemplate what to add next.


After a physical day at the studio, by evening I'm ready to sit, but I always combine that time with reading or some sort of prep or finishing work. A new Pages piece idea is beginning and in order to create it, I need to cut hundreds of these letterforms in a variety of values and scales.

There's always a pad of paper near me in the evenings to jot down to-dos for the next day and a pile of books and magazines nearby that I'm reading or intend to read. Creativity and imagination need infusions and so I am always mining my environment for stimulation.

And it all makes me happy. That's my basic barometer for success. If you're happy, if you feel passionate about what you are creating, you must be doing something right. If you put your love and passion into what you make, others will be drawn to the work as well. It will sing a siren's song.

Soon January Endeth

One of the new monoprinted silk pieces that dyed black instead of soft gray.

I took a running leap into January 2009 armed with strong theme words to set my intentions -- "confidence" and "flourish." So of course immediately I plunged into a week or two of total lack of confidence and self-doubt. As Christine Kane says, when you're planting seeds of intention, the first thing you do is dig up some dirt!

Happily, my energetic, inspired self has returned, stronger for the bit of cultivating. If there are more big clumps and stones under the surface as the sowing and planting continue, I can deal with them confidently!

Right now I'm diving into new work in the studio that builds on the previous Parables pieces. The first variable for investigation is refining the ground fabrics on each piece to increase the sense of depth.

I monoprinted two new lengths of natural silk broadcloth this week. On the first I mixed a medium dye concentration to print light and medium grays and used resist to preserve large areas of white space. Alas, the dyes penetrated all the resist work and came out dark, almost black. Totally my fault for not testing the dye concentration or making sure the resist penetrated the fabric well enough. So, what to do?



I'm discharging the surfaces; this is the first one in progress and the ground fabric is beginning to have the softer, smoke-drawing feel to it that I'm envisioning as a first layer. Hints of color will come next.

While I'd rather not admit I ever make mistakes -- so you'll think beautiful art flows from me like water from a faucet whenever I turn the handle -- I made a commitment long ago to be honest about my artistic process. Some ideas don't work out the first time. Or ever.

Other times they work out almost effortlessly -- and beautifully -- but to me those pieces are gifts that result from working through challenges on the others.

Taking risks and pushing past comfort zones put excitement in the creative process. You'll be amazed at how the slightest variation in your routine can immediately put you on the "edge." A new tool, a new material or technique can throw you into that unsettling territory where mistakes happen.

But it's those very mistakes that can generate amazing new directions and insights.

So back to my vision for muted gray and cream surfaces that look like smoke drawings. There are options, like removing color, that can alter these current surfaces in interesting ways. Maybe removing the color from these pieces will work out better than the original idea. Maybe they both will end up relegated to sample status eventually as stronger ones emerge.

Tomorrow after I finish discharging these I'll start hand painting shades of grays and hints of color on two new pieces with acrylic paints rather than dyes. It's another idea I want to test to create the muted first layer that I'm envisioning for new work in this series.

Uncertain results, new risks and possible pitfalls lie ahead. Makes me feel like an Indiana Jones of artistic practice; but it's the exploration and adventure that ARE the treasure!

Fabrications Retreat and Studio Progress

I ended up NOT making any changes to "Seeds of Compassion," other than altering the shapes of a few of the colored slivers within the cocoon shapes. It is totally and completely DONE, which gives me closure. Now I can switch my focus to teaching.

Since my last studio day on Thursday, I've been preparing for my drive to Michigan to teach a class called "It's All About the Stitch" at the Fabrications Retreat: http://www.fabricationsretreat.com/

Here's a class sample showing a few of the stitch and thread combinations that can be combined to build textural surfaces. The variables in freemotion embroidery techniques are the types and weights of the threads used and adjustments to the top and bottom sewing machine tensions.

Some stitches are worked on the back of the fabric using heavier threads in the bobbin, which builds up texture and pattern on the front. Varying the speed of stitching, types and colors of threads and machine tensions all provide different effects that can be combined to create fascinating surfaces that invite the eye to linger and explore.

Rich texture can also be created just by using straight stitch variations, shown in the detail of another class sample, above. Combining colors and building the surface with layered stitches is a fascinating process that lends itself well to small works, where the smaller scale creates a more intimate interaction. It is fascinating to learn and I enjoy helping other artists to expand their textile "vocabularies"-- back to that language theme again.

There's a pleasant undertone to teaching and traveling knowing that three new works in progress are waiting for me when I return. For these large scale pieces I'll be revisiting the palette that was in my piece "Translations", with a few new additions. I need to include some touches like the marvelous saffron gold in these Sri Lankan monks' robes to this neutral, earth-tone palette.

Here's a detail of the original Translations piece, so you can see how this new work is beginning to expand the palette. This piece started with a rusted fabric ground, so I also rusted new fabrics in my studio on Thursday for when I return.

Can you see the subtle Phoenician alphabet letters applied with wax resist before rusting on this piece? The results are very promising and I am envisioning doing more for future works. This will be a wonderful ground fabric to work with as a starting point for another new piece.

For one of the new pieces I've cut out numerous letter forms in a variety of scales -- some will be resists to create negative space letter images and others will be patterns to cut out other fabrics as positive shapes to layer onto the surface. I haven't decided how to place them. I did move the pattern shapes around and considered the areas of positive and negative space. Lots more work ahead on that but this is a good starting point.

I'm trusting that I'll have wireless Internet at the resort where the retreat will be held and will send images of the class and the beautiful Northern Michigan landscape. Two years ago it snowed while we were there -- I'm hoping that's not the case this year!