Attempting a Reclamation

Is there a single one of us who hasn't made a piece that just never worked out well? What do you do with yours? While I read often of painters burning failed works, I'm more frugal -- also more optimistic about recycling my materials.

An old, failed project revisited the design wall this week. The original idea, attempted last October and November was to build a surface where letter forms appear to be falling down like rain. One of the other reasons it failed, I decided, was that I just didn't like the letter shapes themselves. I twisted and turned and painted and overworked the surface to death. I completed it and then realized that I basically could never show it in public.

But this week it occurred to me that I could re-vision this "finished" piece strictly as an under-painting, pushing back the original composition to a mere suggestion by layering painted, manipulated cheesecloth over it.


I planned to develop cracks and fissures with elongated Etruscan letters applied along with hand stitching onto the cheesecloth layer -- again referencing age and accumulated layers over time.

But then I went to the hairdressers and saw a picture in a decorating magazine of a painting with an abstracted bowl shape in it. I have been drawing bowl shapes and musing on how to integrate them into my language pieces for two years. When I came home, I drew some variations inspired by the shape I saw and decided to consider the idea of adding abstracted bowl shapes to the surface rather than more letter shapes.


Here's the first effort. I question whether the bowl shapes really integrate with the language forms still faintly visible through the manipulated cheesecloth.

My dear friend and fellow artist Rebecca Howdeshell saw this and suggested the shapes might integrate better if I age their surfaces, which is an excellent idea to try next. What if they have cracks and fissures and maybe even fragments of letters on them?!

So that will be tomorrow's studio agenda, creating ancient, cracked fabrics to cut into bowl shapes and try in place of the ones shown above. If either of the new ideas work, then I will add hand-stitched cracks as line work for definition and emphasis and reclaim this. If they don't, the piece goes deeper back into the storage closet or off to the local Goodwill thrift shop!

Australia Update for "Art Cloth: Engaging New Visions"

It's exciting to finally see the full list of invited artists in the upcoming Australian exhibition! My piece, "Etruscan Relic" will get shipped off to Australia after it gets professionally photographed on Friday.


Here are the first ads that just appeared in the May 2009 issue (# 94) of Australia Fibre Forum, an Australian textile magazine, for the upcoming Art Cloth: Engaging New Visions exhibition that will open in Australia August 29 - October 11, 2009 at the Fairfield City Museum and Gallery, in Smithfield, NSW, AU. An exhibition preview article will appear in the same publication in the August issue.

Curated by Marie-Therese Wisniowski, a full time studio artist, researcher, author and casual lecturer at the University of Newcastle, the exhibition draws together an amazing selection of artists from all over the globe:

Laura Beehler, USA
Claire Benn, England
Regina Benson, USA
Jane Dunnewold, USA
Susan Fell-McLean, Australia
Claudia Hellmer, Germany
Cas Holmes, England
Ken Kagajo, Japan
Helen Lancaster, Australia
Jurate Petruskericiene, Lithuania
Jeanne Raffer Beck, USA
Julie Ryder, Australia
Joan Schulze, USA
Norma Starszalkowna, England
Annie Trevillian, Australia
Joan Truckenbrod, USA
Jurate Urbiene, Lithuania
Els van Baarle, The Netherlands
Marie-Therese Wisniowski, Australia
Ernabella Arts Australia will be represented by Tjariya (Nungalka) Stanley and Tjumkaya Tapaya


Marie-Therese says excitement is building about the exhibition. I am certainly starting to feel it! She has promised to send all of us images of the installation, which I'll share with you.

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?

Live from the Front Lines

I honestly wish those of you who are reading this could have a studio right next door to mine. Then I could call you up and say, "Hey, come on over and talk with me about this." In lieu of that, I'd love for you to share your thoughts and comments as you watch the progression of this piece. I even promise to answer all comments if you do. If some of you disagree with me or each other, even better -- it could make for a good discussion!

First things first. I am wildly in love with the top third of this. I'm envisioning adding an accent or two of a rust/red tone along an edge, but that is all here. If you strongly disagree, here is your opportunity to tell me so.


So now we move down to the bottom. This is the newly steamed, washed and ironed fabric with the additions of rusty orange and a brownish green. I'm liking the colors. They can grow softer and lighter as they move up the surface of this piece. But now I have to decide how much and where to add the additional color and whether or not the letterforms add anything to the composition. Part of me likes the textures, lines and colors on the piece so much that the letters seem overkill.

The other part of me (I'm a Libra, these internal debates go on continually, what can I say) says that the whole IDEA of this piece is ancient letterforms, so I can't very well throw them overboard. Maybe the answer is to add them selectively and very sparingly to the surface rather than use as many as there are here in this sample area.

Since the test area for the orange and dark green is at the very bottom edge of this super long piece of cloth, I folded and pinned the bottom part up closer to the top on my design wall and took this picture. This gives me an idea of what these colors and textures will look like more towards the middle of the composition.

I'll sit here munching my apple, staring at the images on my computer screen and holding this debate in my head for a bit. Maybe I'll have an insight into what I want to do next.

I really am thinking I want to decrease both the amount and shape of the lightest areas in the lower half of the piece. I might sponge some resist on the surface and screen over those areas to soften the value shift and reduce the amount of that very lightest color. That could create a softer transition from the darkest areas at the bottom to the lightest areas on top. Or I can have hard edges in some places and softer transitions in others.

Or maybe a whole new idea will emerge. The day is young! If you have any thoughts about these options, yes I know it's the weekend and you're busy, but please know you are invited to comment!

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!

Informing the Work

Linen wrapping with Etruscan writing from the Mummy of Zagreb

When you read about an artist's work that "X's work is informed by thus-and-such" or "references such-and-such", have you ever wondered WHY artists do research and how it contributes to the development of their work?

When I took a master class with Michael James in 2007 and told him I wanted to begin to explore language imagery, he advised strongly that I research and study more about art and language to "inform" my work. I took his words to heart and have been researching and learning ever since.

What do research and exploring references do for our art work?

When I selected one language, Etruscan, two weeks ago, to explore for six months, I was a bit worried. There are few surviving samples of this written language other than funerary inscriptions of names. Because of this, experts can decipher individual names and words and phrases but don't completely understand the meanings.

One of the largest surviving Etruscan texts I've discovered is a great stimulation to my imagination. Five linen wrappings on the mummified remains of what scientists have identified as an approximately 30 year old woman from between 150 and 100 BC are covered with 1200 legible words written in ink that appear to be a sacred, religious text. They call her the Mummy of Zagreb.

The images of these mummified remains and the fragments of sacred texts and names of gods and goddesses written on the wrappings are new images in my thoughts as I practice writing Etruscan language fragments daily with a variety of tools, paints and inks. While there is no full translation of the writing on these burial cloths, my imagination creates its own stories and explanations.



Each day as my writing practice with the Etruscan alphabet evolves through the assignments in my correspondence class with Laurie Doctor, I feel the act of writing more. I am becoming more attentive to the movement of my whole body in the act of writing, how similar it is to drawing and how the marks I make reveal much about my state of mind each day, whether I am present and relaxed, tense or distracted.

Slowing down and feeling the instrument in my hand, relaxing the grip and giving my full attention to the process are helping me connect more deeply with the gestural act of writing. Even while I don't know what impact this practice will have on my new work, I can sense a shift in my approach to working.

Finding Calm

Pages 3, 20" x 21", silkscreened, dyed silks. Reverse applique, raw edge applique, stitching.

Armed with focus, determination and an impressive plan for my artwork this year, I envisioned producing the next group of pieces in the Parables series in high gear.

Normally, when I start creating a new piece,I go to sleep with a question and wake up with an inner image in my mind of where to begin. That idea either works or leads me to one that does.

This time, however, the Mt. Everest of ideas surrounding language imagery felt like a tangled mess. My mind kept racing, ideas kept piling up and competing -- no clarity, no focus, no "seeing" a clear idea to begin the new work. Just more and more ideas competing for attention.

Clearly,a curious and troubling situation, but only in that one direction.

Work with the Seeds pieces bubbles with excitement, focus and productivity. The small work above, completed this weekend, investigated a number of new options.

Here were the "what ifs" it explored: What would colored threadwork look like on the black and white printed surface? What if I layered two fabrics on top of one another and cut through some of the seed shapes to reveal the fabric underneath? What will a strong golden yellow look like as a contrasting color? How would it work to add a single french knot at the center of each seed shape?

This small work excites me with even more new options. So it isn't my creativity that's suffering, it's something else that's going on with the language imagery.

Eventually I recognized yesterday I needed to take all that unpleasant and distracting burble of ideas in my head and spill it out on paper.

As I wrote, my inner churning and chattering began to quiet.I began returning to that inner balance point that is so crucial for me. I need calm.

I think I revved up my inner engines to take on 2009 and create new language pieces like a racer in the Indy 500. But all I started doing was spinning my wheels and overheating in the pit.

I'm throwing out the whole idea of speed and action. Instead, I'll visualize a quietly flowing stream and me moving along with it. If new Parables pieces aren't ready to emerge, I'll give them the time they need.

We all talk about trusting our process. Right now I have to live it.

Group Show or Solo Installation? Your Choice!

RAFA, Rochester Area Fiber Artist's opening reception this past Friday evening set a new record for the the Arts and Cultural Council Gallery. Over 211 guests attended despite chilling single digit temperatures from the Arctic cold front that gripped the Northeast. The standard bearers for classical fine art may still debate whether fibers are art or craft but the public finds the work fascinating and is eager to learn more about "how it's done".

This attraction to fiber art, the general public's sincere interest and desire to understand the processes all reinforce my sense that widespread appreciation of textiles as an art form is growing. Collectors are taking note of the sophisticated bodies of work of many practicing artists in the field; the tide seems to be rising for the respect of textiles as an artistic medium. That does coincide, I admit, with the growing professionalism of the practitioners and the increasing maturity of the work that textile artists are producing. It's quality that is driving this increased attention and recognition.

Another delight of the opening was the centerpiece on the reception table that added a whimsical touch to the occasion. RAFA member Janet Root displayed her wonderful collection of vintage toy sewing machines, a feast for the imagination in their own right.

After the lively evening, I returned the next day as a volunteer to help man special Saturday hours. Once my shift ended and I was leaving, I happened to catch this "solo installation" of street art on the building next to the parking lot.
The contrasts between the two struck me and I had to grab my camera and record one budding artist's contribution to art on this planet.

I sometimes wonder what it feels like to spray graffiti on a building and not "get caught"- is it just the excitement of defying authority and conventional society that spurs the act? Does the maker hope we will see his or her work as a form of art -- or is it just one of those daring "nothing better to do on a boring Friday night" teenage impulses?

It occurs to me that if I ever get frustrated and feel that I'm not getting enough opportunities to exhibit my language pieces, all I need are some spray cans and a dark outfit and I can start creating one-woman installations all over the city!

Simmer and Stir Often

January's creative soup is simmering nicely on the front burner, a tasty blend of exhibiting, creating new work and chopping up MARKETING into small, bite-sized pieces.

Pat Pauly, a gifted artist whose work has been juried into the prestigious Quilt National exhibition, led the installation of RAFA's (Rochester Area Fiber Artists) newest exhibit at the Arts and Cultural Council on Monday. Forty-three artists' works are on display from January 6-30, 2009 in "New Year, New Directions," at the Council Gallery.


The space is wonderful. If you live in the area, please come to the opening reception on Friday, January 16, 5 - 8 PM. The gallery will also be open all day on Saturday, January 17, 10-4.


On the creating front, I'm completing the second "Seeds" piece, now titled "Seeds of Change." As this detail shot of it in process shows,I'm adding more color as well as choosing more saturated colors to accent the grayscale ground. Most of these seed shapes are just pinned on; next I will stitch them down and complete the piece.

I'm also beginning a concentrated expansion of language imagery and techniques for incorporating letterforms in my work; more to come about that soon.

Another ingredient that I'm stirring into the soup pot is marketing. Webmaster Holly Knott just completed adding current and upcoming exhibitions and several new pieces to my website. Next task will be creating a database for mailing lists to mail out postcards for future exhibitions.

The soup pot is also getting lots of spice from the inspiring coaches and motivational books that I've been gathering. Numerous coaches and websites offer newsletters and tidbits of valuable information; all of them help me stay positive, focused and action-oriented. Step by step, action by action, I am actively engaged in moving my artistic life forward.

Yesterday's mail brought three books to read: Ellen Langer's On Becoming An Artist, Visioning by Lucia Capacchione, Ph.D and Coaching the Artist Within by Eric Maisel. I'll let you know how they stack up once I read them. For some years I was very critical of self-help books, but now I see them as tools to help me stay upbeat and charged with positivity. That positivity imbues the seeds of confidence that are growing inside me; I now truly appreciate those individuals who choose to dedicate their lives and their energy to helping others actualize their dreams and desires.

All these various activities and actions all go into the pot -- the ideas, the e-mailed tips and newsletter updates, the affirmations, the appreciation lists, the visualizations -- and the day to day showing up in the studio to do the work. What an aroma to inhale, and what pleasure to be cooking up something wonderful through these wintry January days.

Exciting Gallery Opening

Last night I attended the opening of the Member Exhibition at Rochester Contemporary Art Center - http:www.rochestercontemporary.org -- called RoCo for short. Two hundred artists submitted work to the show, a record breaking number. The gallery is one of the most exciting venues for contemporary art in this area.

I had submitted my Seeds of Compassion piece and held my breath. Would they relegate the work to a dark corner because it was a textile wallhanging? Or would they appreciate a fiber arts piece on its conceptual and technical merit just as any other work of fine art? Would they be inclusive about textiles as a contemporary art medium and hang the work with respect?





They did! It hangs in the center of the second gallery space and looks spectacular there! The salon style hanging of the works created great contrasts and interplay among all of them; the staff and volunteers did a great job curating the hanging of such a diverse group of works.



I met my good friend and fellow artist Paloma there who also submitted a piece.It's the digitally manipulated red and golden yellow and black image that is one of her "she wolf" series. Visit Paloma's website -- http://palomaayala.info -- to see more.

The painting next to her piece, based on bone imagery, is wonderful as well. There were a number of pieces there I would love to own -- not surprisingly, among my top favorites were several subtle monoprints.

All in all, it was a good, validating evening for me as an artist. I hope the exhibition -- and my piece -- will attract lots of positive attention and recognition.