Week 24 - in the Studio

I’ve been working hard for a great art show this past weekend, it was the first event to showcase two of my new series, Starting from Anywhere and Timeless Moments. It was exciting to plan the layout, make the show cards and get some great words together to talk about my work.

 

Then it happened, you know, the thing we’ve been living with for the last 2 1/2 years... not me, but in my household. Oh my, gosh darn, and several other expletives! There were a few tears shed, but I was offered Plan B. I was able to go early and hang my pieces, others volunteered to look after them...thank you dear friends! But it wasn’t the same....

 

So I’ve done a few other things this weekend, I worked in the garden, read a book and I started using a CMS or Content Management System to organize my ideas, plans and goals. It’s called Notion and the basic one (which I’m sure is enough) is free. And I’ve done a bit of research about dealing with disappointment... one source talked about 5 steps to work through it:

• Let It Out - don’t let it fester, feel it - ok I shed some tears

• Get Perspective - talk with your support network - ok, I dumped on my family

• Know Your Own Heart - My art and I were not being rejected

• Practise Self Acceptance - Like breath, disappointment comes and goes. So breathe into it and let it pass

• Don’t Let it Fester - Winston Churchill said it best: “success is the ability to go from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm”

 

I appreciated these stages, disappointment will come and go, and there is always another opportunity and I will regain my enthusiasm. But I also remember to acknowledge all this and make it part of me.

 

So I spent time looking at different e-commerce sites to put up my work and I have some plans for videos. I was also totally thrilled with a piece I made for the Silent Auction at the show - I’ve been mulling over some small works for my Industrial Shoreline series and it I think I totally nailed what I had in mind.

Sailing into Hope

The piece is about 6" x 18" and is my response to the theme "Resilience in the Time of Climate Change". The board behind is a piece from my husbands family farm in Manitoba, I used a hand dyed vintage linen napkin, some indigo dyed fabric and paper collage. In the artist statement I wrote that "strength and focus will be two of the important components to making change for the future"

Here are a couple of closeup views:

This morning I pulled more barn board out from our shed to work on more pieces...any suggestions for a title for this sub-series?

Week 2 - My Studio

 Another week that was spent mostly out of the studio - but still art stuff going on...I was busy getting the Cloth to Codex Online Workshop lessons set up on my website. It was fun to revisit some of the videos and look at how I might plan each lesson. Last time they were all on a private Facebook Group and it was fairly straightforward to link to them. Now I need to add more text, still images and edit the videos a bit and set them up as "evergreen" meaning they never expire. AND, there's room for you, I would love to have you join in this creative journey.

You can sign up here:https://www.susanpm.com/2016/11/23/cloth-to-codex/

Textile Totes Tutorial....

Do you ever get an idea, a really great, awesome idea and have to just run with it? Right to the end to see where you'll end up? Maybe it comes in the middle of the night and all hope of sleep is lost? Or perhaps when you have another immediate, important deadline? And it stares you in the eyes and says DO IT! DO IT NOW!

Yup, it happened a couple weeks ago and I needed to try it out!!! I needed canvas - I live on an island - no canvas here! So a trip to the big city to the art store....several types of canvas - yikes! what to do? OK, buy some of each! Go home and test them all out. Primed canvas didn't work for my idea so paint the other types - the tight weave, more expensive canvas - not a success either. But the cheap, looser weave was perfect!

Did you know there's such a thing as clear gesso? Wow, I bought some and used it up quickly, had to buy more, damn that stuff is expensive! But it works equally well diluted with water! Who knew?

So I made a couple prototypes - playing with size and shape, which paints, brush strokes, markers and the like....love, love, love them! And of course, I lined them with some of my ice dyed fabrics....

Two years ago when we moved to our Island, I had to give up both my large studio and a separate "wet room" where I could get paint all over and not worry. Now I use the top of my washer and dryer which is quite ok, but not nearly as large.
Here's my progress pictures as I laid down a dark background and then picking up the vareity of colours in the lining fabric - did more painting and screen printing, layers drying in between.

I like the relaxed "slouchiness" of them but I could add a stiffener in if I chose. There's lots of alternatives to the design and if you visit the "black hole" of Pinterest you'll find tons of them!

I have three different sizes and you can see the variety that I've made in my Etsy Store:

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/756162464/textile-tote-hand-painted-and-hand-dyed?ref=shop_home_active_5&frs=1

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/770556385/textile-tote-hand-painted-and-hand-dyed?ref=shop_home_active_3&frs=1

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/770857855/textile-tote-hand-painted-and-hand-dyed?ref=shop_home_active_2&frs=1

And I'm offering free North America shipping on these fabulous totes!

If you are inspired as well, I found this tutorial that is similar to my process:

https://dearhandmadelife.com/diy-fabric-bucket/

And if you use Pinterest, just search for Fabric Basket Tutorial - if you disappear for a few days, we'll understand!

How Do You Handle Design Challenges?

Imagine being given a photo of Italian art to use as design inspiration.....how would you handle it?  Would you use the imagery as it is - a realistic portrayal? Would you take pieces or elements of the photo and go from there? How about colours....or size? So many choices, so many decisions!

 

A few months back I was invited to create a piece of textile art based on "The Annunciation" by Fra Angelico......as a group of artists we were each given a different art work to use as a "jumping off point" for our own work. I'm not sure what images the others were given but since the exhibition is at the Italian Cultural Centre in Vancouver, I imagine the art was all Italian.....haha!

Have you ever taken part in something similar? How did you approach this? What ideas and decisions were you faced with? Sometimes it's easier to work within parameters than being given free rein. I began by turning the art into a rough portrait format and thinking how I could place the figures, I also loved the multicoloured wings of Gabriel.

After some reflection I realized that I really had never used figures or people in my work and I didn't want to start doing so......amidst all the design work I wanted to explore how this piece might be come a beginning for a new series. I had taken masses of photos during my recent walk on the Camino de Santiago and had some great interior shots of the cathedrals I had visited:

So then I started to focus on the building part of the artwork - the figures appear to be in a "cloister" which is generally "a covered walk in a convent, monastery, college, or cathedral, typically with a wall on one side and a colonnade open to a quadrangle on the other". It was beginning to make sense for me...look up to the soaring arches of the space above>

I wasn't sure about the columns, so those were eliminated. I was working at simplifying the design to some very basic shapes.

 

I'm  looking now with the idea of construction - how am I going to put it all together? As my career began as a traditional quilter, I'm familiar with a wide variety of piecing methods so I decided a "stack, slash, shuffle" method was the best choice. the widths of the sections would be the same but I could work with different lengths and thereby achieve a variety of rectangles and get some visual interest going....

The fabric had been chosen a while back, luscious hand dyed vintage linen with wonderful drape to it - a little on the heavy side but I knew the texture and thread count would be perfect.

Construction began and went smoothly - put together in less than a day.

 

I had pulled out a dozen or more threads for the quilting but in the end only used four - I thought some metallic would be good but changed my mind. 
And so "In the Cloister" heads off for the exhibition shortly and the shapes, imagery and design will be considered for the future, perhaps this winter would be a good time to begin!

In the Cloister

I hope you'll join me at the Exhibition Opening - September 12th at 7pm. at the Italian Cultural Centre in Vancouver.

 

No More Ships

I've just finished photographing my latest art quilt, measuring the dimensions and setting it up into my online gallery. Those are the detailed tasks that are always a pleasure to do, bringing some closure to a piece that has consumed a lot of my physical and mental efforts over the last couple of months.

Now it's time to send it out into the world....the first stop is the TD-Art Gallery Paint In, more commonly know as the Moss Street Paint In this coming Saturday. No More Ships will be the feature piece, it's the largest art quilt I've ever done 44 1/2" x 59". It's my intention to work large (for me) in the future, after visiting a couple of high end art quilt shows recently, I like those larger works....going to give it a try!

No More Ships is the latest in my ongoing series Inspired by Structure which focuses on the abandoned buildings of the Burrard Shipyards in North Vancouver. I'll be continuing to work on this for the foreseeable future.

The fabrics I used are either hand painted (the sky) or dyed and painted. I tried some of the painted fabrics and then decided they were too stark so toned down the contrast with some textile paint!

The sleeve and label will be sewn on this afternoon and then it'll be one more item checked off the list for the weekend. If you're around Victoria, please stop by at Booth #114, south of May Street.

Here's a detail shot of the building:

New Fabrics

Last week I spent some time dyeing up half yard pieces. Today I got them listed in my store. Lots of creativity happening in my dye room.....

 

Come by and take a closer look: http://fabricimagery.com/category/yardage/