U.R. Residency Chronicles

Although it snowed steadily all day Tuesday and through the night, by the time I left for the University of Rochester late Wednesday morning the roads were clear and the drive went smoothly. Whew, great relief.

For the first day agenda, Stephanie, the wonderful studio coordinator, helped hang some of my work in the open gallery space at the entry to the Sage Art Center. Then I spent the afternoon working with sheers and incense sticks right inside the main entrance to the building so students could observe a bit of my process. Janet Berlo, the art history professor who arranged this wonderful opportunity, kept me company. She has developed a new interest in experimental embroidery and practiced making French knots.


Although I look a bit dazed in this picture, I had a great time. I came into the experience with the mindset that I would use this time to do some experimentation that would further my own work. I had been wanting to explore burning different language marks on a variety of fabric surfaces. I knew I had only a small table to work on and that burning surfaces was intriguing enough to make people passing by curious.


So I stretched various fabrics over an embroidery hoop and used a lit incense stick to burn different marks and patterns in each one. If you know good sources for incense sticks in varying widths, please let me know -- variety would have been useful for comparisons in using them as "writing" tools. Then I cut those surfaces into organic shapes and burned the edges with a lit candle while students and faculty members stopped by on their way to and from classes and studios. Loved talking to both students and faculty --the environment is so dynamic that I felt totally at ease and at home.

At 4:30 I gave a presentation to students and faculty, answered some questions and then enjoyed a wine and cheese reception in my honor afterwards. Today and tomorrow I'll teach -- students will paint and layer fabrics today, compose small samples tomorrow morning and then hand stitch into the surfaces tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait to see what they create with these materials and processes. They are wonderfully open to exploring new materials, so there will be lots more images to show you by tomorrow.

Ma Vie En Gris

The Academy Awards ceremonies last night inspired this title, although I was too absorbed in reading "Three Cups of Tea" (moving story of Greg Mortenson's work assisting communities in remote villages of northern Pakistan--do read it, it is inspirational) and unwinding from four intense studio days to pay much attention. I was determined to get new Pages and Parables pieces well fleshed out before I switched gears to do my residency and teach at U of R this week and I am proud to say I pulled it off. But I was so tired by last evening that I went to bed at 9PM!

The first ground I dyed and silk screened at my studio on Thursday for new Parables pieces is still in process, but I started a second one on Friday that I'm delighted with and is ready to continue layering. I am moving the series forward from Parables 2 by varying the scale of the letter forms and utilizing the value range of bright and dark reds that I experimented with on my previous piece for the magazine before it became "Letters to Broadway." The other ground will get finished next weekend and this one will hang on my design wall all this week, so once I can get back to my own work I'll have two new Parables pieces well underway.

So then I moved back to working on the third Pages piece that has been in progress. Friday night and Saturday I completed stitching all the rows on the water soluble fabric. I had already decided to try applying sheer letter forms to this new piece. I did a sample, washed it out and the letter forms held their shape, so the idea appears to work. On Sunday I drew some new shapes, refined some of the older ones I still like, pinned and cut them all out and started composing. Once I determine that I have placed the individual elements all exactly as I want them, I will stitch these down to the existing surface, add a hanging sleeve at the top and then wash away the water soluble so they will all "float" on the pages beneath. The idea behind the choices for "Page 3" is for the black letter forms to appear to be flying off the white "pages" into the grey areas surrounding them. I edited out the idea of putting some letter forms behind the pages -- maybe on a future piece, but not on this one.

There's a storm heading our way and so I'm driving up to my studio today to pack all the supplies in my car I need to take to U of R before tomorrow's predicted six inches of blowing, drifting snow. Better to do the drive and packing today when it's clear and sunny and mild! Given the accuracy of weather forecasting, the heavy snow may miss us (hope hope), but I'll feel more relaxed having it done today, just in case we get more rather than less messy weather tomorrow.

I'm spending my first day at U of R working on my own work and I have an idea for another piece that features burned edges. I'll gather the materials and try out a sample tomorrow. The space at U of R is limited so I want to work with processes that don't require a lot of space or equipment. Burning and stitching are the perfect solutions. This falls into the category of another one of those creative challenges that always spark new insights-- the original ideas don't always work out as I hope, but they almost always lead me to a new idea that does.

My "True North"

The minute I walk into my studio I always feel energized. I love this space; it never fails to cheer me and support my wildest ideas. I need this space outside my home. This dance back and forth between painting/printing and composing/stitching keeps each process fresh and inviting. The last day I was here, I had mixed and stored dyes and print paste, pinned a piece of prepared cloth to the print table and silkscreened on a layer of resist, so I was able to jump right into trying new variations of ideas for paper and other resists for the next Parables pieces.


The key for jumpstarting my creative process is to make a first choice and act on it, so I mixed some light gray dye paste and randomly screened on some subtle marks. A more deliberate application of some red accents followed. Then I drew and cut out some paper resist letter forms, reducing some and composing them on the surface. Playing with variety in scale and in orientation makes a layered surface more interesting, particularly since I restricted the actual shapes themselves to two letter forms.

Once I felt satisfied with the placement of these elements, I pinned the pieces down and silkscreened over them with prepared screens that had been drying most of the day. I use the monoprinting screen printing method pioneered by Joy Stocksdale and Kerr Grabrowski.

After I applied the dyes, I unpinned and removed the paper resists so I could get a feel for whether I like the effect. So far, the piece feels promising.

I woke up at 5:30 all excited and expectant this morning, feeling like a kid on Christmas day. Today I wash this out, see how the first layer of resist impacts the overall composition and then decide what layers and techniques will complete the surface. I may print with dye, textile paint or just layer over the existing surface with sheers. I may remove some color. Not sure yet. I definitely have to see the work in progress to respond to and develop it further, so I am eager to get back to my studio today to evalute the results. While I do that, I'll also pin a new piece on the print table. I already have variations for the next piece planned now that I've worked on this one. After another day in the studio today, I'll switch back to stitching the Pages piece tomorrow and hopefully will complete it this weekend -- and that it will be successful once I do!

Hats Off to Spiders Everywhere

Did you ever watch a spider build a web? I am in the stitching phase of this new piece and I've completed the first set of anchoring lines across the 118" or so length of it, so the straight pins are history, thank goodness, and I'm now cruising through the second set of horizontal lines, this time between the little rectangles of fabric, just through the water soluble film. I keep getting these metaphors in my mind as I work -- a spider building a web, repeating similar motions over and over again almost hypnotically,or a fat caterpillar spinning thin threads around and around itself into a cocoon. Periodically I yearn for the appearance of the round, cheery fairy godmother in Cinderella and a wave of her magic wand. Just one bibbity, bobbity, boo and this pumpkin would be a coach!

But alas, it's the spider way for me, one thread at a time. I had to add two more layers of soluble fabric to this piece because the wonderfully wide topping I bought is just what it says it is -- topping. Non-negotiable. It's too thin to use as any kind of a base layer because it stretches and distorts on the bottom, although it's perfect as a top layer. I had to rip out my first 10 or so rows because the distortion grew with each row of stitching.

So here's what I ended up with -- a layer of the wide topping, a middle layer of 20" strips of Sulky Solvy with the little fabric pieces glued on, a layer of topping beneath those to position them as a whole, then strips of Solvy beneath that running in the opposite direction to provide a stable surface under that bottom layer of topping. Add to this the pinning and repinning that happens with each additional layer. Confusing? Absolutely.

I have to definitely work on streamlining this process with all this layering for the next one. I can barely see the little pages pieces at this stage, especially because the values are lighter and less contrasting on this piece than the last one -- back to the cocoon image. By the time I complete the stitching, add the letter forms and rinse away all the Solvy, this bundle of entombed silk pieces (aka caterpillar) will be transformed into an airy, fluid construction (aka beautiful butterfly) -- or so I hope!

Yet the imagination is free to roam during hours and hours of The Stitching Process. I even plugged in my ipod and listened to two hours of Ira Glass and "This American Life" while I spun more strands in this web. What an amazingly talented group of people create that program.

Best of all, the repetitive activity spurred my creative side and I ended up with not one but TWO new ideas for future pieces in this series. I rough- sketched the bones of them with some notes in my sketchbook. That, along with my black and white composition notebook, go with me everywhere. New artist popped onto my radar while I was clearing away older art magazines this morning from the bedside stack that was nearing tower height -- Gail Resen, whose wonderful piece "The Unlearned Lesson" appeared on the back cover of the most recent Surface Design Association newsletter. There will be an article about her in the Winter 08 Surface Design Journal. I googled her of course and found a delightful window display of her work in a department store in Greenwich, CT. The piece I responded to is called "Lightplay";it is composed of 36 different 12" x 12" wrapped canvas units with wonderfully Louise Nevelson reminiscent cut-canvas constructions on each one. Exciting to me to respond so positively because as part of the Pages exhibit, I just ordered 25 wrapped 12" x 12" canvas frames a few days ago (yes expensive) to hang together. I wanted each piece to be different but relate to the whole and Gail's grouping hit my "YES" button. Check out the whole display at http://www.anellegandelman.com/gail.html

Gail's theme in these works is light and shadow and my greyscale works are about depth and texture and text as shapes, but seeing her work along with Karen Jacobs "bokusho" pieces -- thank you Mary Ann for suggesting I look at her website --http://www.karenjacobs.com/ --inspired more variations to incorporate into my already hefty stew of ideas. Love to keep stirring it up!

For those of you who actually read this blog, I had planned to spend yesterday at my studio, but some paperwork for my mother's estate intervened. I decided to use the time left in the day to get more stitching done on this construction, which I want to finish this week. I can then do back-to-back days in my studio making new cloth while I also plan and prep for my residency and class at the University of Rochester next Wednesday through Friday. I am getting very excited already about spending three days with art students and watching how they will respond to working with new materials. U of R doesn't have a fiber program or surface design classes.

Line by Line

After completing two magazine articles and now returning to complete this current "Pages" piece, this blog's title definitely describes my artist and writer lives recently.

After carefully pinning all the individual stratas of Sulky water soluble fabric together to connect them into a whole piece this past weekend, I'm now stitching along the centers of each row of pieces horizontally, one line at a time. Once that's done I can take out all the ouchy straight pins and fill in the rest of the horizontals and all the verticals. At this point I'm using only a heavy cream thread for all the joins. The softness of the greys and whites is increasingly appealing to me. Here is a shot of the printing (silver pearlescent) on the white fabric that I used when I decided not to fill those areas just with stitching.

I enjoyed making the screen for this last summer when I created the many greyscale, language-inspired fabrics that I've been working with since then. This one developed from partial letters I traced from newspaper headlines and ads -- their original meaning disappeared but the suggestion of language remains. I have since discovered that Canadian artist Sylvia Ptak did a whole series called "Disassembling Language" by tracing fragments of text from rare books. I would love to visit a rare book collection just to appreciate the fonts and how different sentence structures and word choices were in earlier times.

I've chosen to take a different track with adding the letter forms to this surface after some experimentation this weekend. It offers me more freedom to alter my course down the road (hey always a good choice --if General Custer could speak now, I'm sure he'd agree). I can compose these in front of and behind the little pages, just not weave them through this way. I'm willing to sacrifice that for the freedom to move these elements around and edit them after all the stitching is done on this piece. I may attach them by hand or by machine or a combination of both.

I'll continue to stitch these lines today, then take a break tomorrow to return to my dye studio and put more layers on the new cloth I'm working on there. As I write this, I realize with gratitude what a rich inner life I have -- and the outer one is pretty good too! -- and how appreciative I am for those of you who take an interest in my work. Many many thanks.

We Interrupt This Winter Greyness For A Brief Glimpse

of sunshine!! I was driving to an appointment and pulled over impulsively to shoot the wonderful pattern of shadows on the falling down frame of this outbuilding. Imagine that, SHADOWS..it put me in a wonderful frame of mind, even if it didn't last all day. Partial sun is way better than none!

I did get back into my studio yesterday, unloaded and put away all of the materials I had packed for last Friday's class. I drew some new letter forms and contemplated variations for the next new pieces, cleaned off my tables, threw some cotton into soda ash and hung it to dry so I can go back, mix some dyes and get to work! Lovely day, very relaxing and so wonderful to be back in my studio and ready to work on new fabric. I've been working with adaptations based on ancient texts and calligraphic letter forms, so also did some sketches to create patterns for resists and positive shapes, but when I walked out at the end of the day to my car, I had to get my camera out and take this picture of the icy snow melting on the pavement. I suddenly saw that I could combine my interest in mapping and texture with language -- I can definitely see calligraphic language forms in some of these melting, irregular shapes.

Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff

I am always intrigued by my own responses to beginning a new creative endeavor. First there's the anticipation and excitement in starting a new project. I almost always dive in like it's New Year's Eve and the crowd is shouting the countdown on Times Square as the ball slowly drops down -- lots of cheering and kissing for sure. Then it's 12:03 AM, the hoopla quiets down and I settle into This Is Sure A Lot of Tedious Work stage. Can a person cut out a gazillion tiny rectangles and glue them down in precise configurations without scratching their heads once in a while?? The first layer of glueing the small rectangles on the water soluble is done and I can easily edit it at this point before I proceed. This is supposed to hang on a high ceiling and my board only goes up six feet, so use your imagination to see this hanging properly!

Now that the first layer is on, I can move on to the R & D phase -- finding out which of my original ideas for this piece work and which ones don't, then either ruling them out or tinkering with them until they do. I've tried and vetoed about five or six variations for this piece already. I wanted to explore the idea of leaving open sections of this new piece with threads sewn in just one direction so I could weave scraps of contrasting sheers in and through the spaces, then stitch over them again in the other direction. Here's the first sample.

This much open space will distort how the piece hangs. You can see the distortion already here. To show you where I'm heading with this, imagine the red shapes on the piece below aren't just scraps, but elegant language forms. I want to incorporate those on the surface, both behind and in front of the rectangles, and weave them in and through the threads in the open space at the center. I may try laying down the shapes in the open center first and then stitch over them both vertically and horizontally rather than weave them in. I can place red sheers in front of and behind the grey rectangles in other areas.I honestly enjoy this sampling process so much that I don't mind it when some ideas don't work out. It is so fascinating to work through the ideas, address the problems and come up with innovative solutions that I do think this is my favorite part of working with a new idea. Once I hammer out the bumps and wrinkles, I'll know if the idea -- and my execution -- succeeds in capturing the original inspiration. I really am an explorer -- I like the journey way more than the destination and there is always another new port on the horizon.