Ispirato

It’s been a wonderful week. A week of serious work, laying out issue 2 of Astarte’s Mega-Zine. It is the “Law of Attraction” issue and I am blown away by the quality and diversity of the 20 articles that made their way into this zine. WOW. It is a good one, if I do say so myself. It gets released May 1st.

There is a set of affirmation cards you can download as one of two bonuses with this issue. Felicity Smart (Happiness-Studio) was one of the authors of the cards - she’s a wiz with affirmations! My own article for issue two involves polymer clay. I designed three different types of card holders. One is pictured here, along with a card I decorated with watercolors. The cards are the same size as Artist Trading Cards - 2.5 inches x 3.5 inches.

I got so excited by this project. I want to make a set of cards and a card holder as a gift for each of my sisters. This project reminds me of what I like best about art and craft - the transformative potential. When we make art that is about making a better life, well, it is akin to sorcery. Maybe I was a sorceress in a previous life. (Or maybe I’m just drunk on creativity.)

Just before Easter, my dear friend Jane came to our house for a three day stay. She lives in Sydney normally, and she is a patchworker. Her daughter was also in Melbourne, performing in a band competition, so we attended a couple of concerts.

We went to see the Australian Quilters Association biennial national competition exhibit at Bundoora Homestead. My friend Glenys Mann had a quilt in the exhibition. (I re-designed her website for her recently.) Bundoora Homestead is a lovely venue and the quilts gave us much to discuss!

We also went patchwork fabric shopping and we got a pattern to make this wonderful handbag. Jane made the one shown at left. I’ll put photos of the others we made using different fabrics at the end of this blog post.

Here’s a link to the blog for the bag pattern’s designers, “Melly & Me”: http://www.mellyandme.typepad.com/ And if you want to buy the pattern yourself, Jane and I got ours at Patchwork on Central Park which also has a mail order service.

(There is more where this came from … )

Still using the blanket as a background, I began experimenting with fabric collage. The fabrics are from my vintage scraps collection. Most - maybe all - of these scraps were from my grandparents’ home in Southern Indiana.

A couple of different tutors at Horsham had used ladders as a motif in their own work. I saw this in their slide presentations to the forum and loved the concept. So here I am as a little girl, climbing the ladder towards heaven; towards “being good”. My angel reaches down to me.

The piece is called “The Good Little Girl”. I had a conversation with my mother YEARS ago - maybe while I was in my twenties. I had this image of myself as having been a naughty child. She said no, that I had been a good little girl. All her six children had been well-behaved. How could I imagine myself otherwise?

Maybe the memories that stand out in my mind are those moments when I was disobedient. I need to erase my self-image of being a naughty or unworthy child. That is what this picture is about.

 I loved the primitive, carefree way this embroidered applique came together. I knew immediately that I needed to do more of this sort of thing! So I did . . . (There is more where this came from … )

Here is a small piece I created at Horsham last week. It is meant to embellish on the story I was telling in my larger self-portrait fabric collage shown in my previous post.

The hills and yellow sky are painted onto a fabric that was printed with a white on white checkerboard pattern. The tree is embroidered. “X” marks the spot where we can find buried treasure.

My friends at Horsham really liked this piece. Or maybe they were desperate to find something nice to say to me about my work, since the cyclops self-portrait turned out so twee.

The tutor of my class had us paint cotton fabrics that had been tacked onto pieces cut from old blankets. The edges of the blankets peak out in places to frame the work. I liked working on the blanket. I learned, though, that acrylic paints - particularly if they are not watered down, result in a tough fabric surface that is challenging to pull the needle through. I will experiment with other mediums in the future.

I’m back from Horsham Textile Fibre Forum. One of my fave weeks of the year. Don’t get me wrong - I had a fantastic time - but the class itself was disappointing. The tutor - a very talented artist from the UK - gave us just one morning’s worth of instruction on Day 1. Afterwards, it was just a matter of working on a big embroidered project for the rest of the week. The tutor checked with each student’s progress a few times each day and made suggestions. But I paid for a five-day workshop - I wanted to do samples and studies and learn new techniques! The only thing I really learned from this tutor was to draw a self-portrait with pen and ink, and shading in with a paintbrush.

This is the picture I produced, looking at my reflection in a mirror. My son says it is scary. He says this is how I will look when I am old. That’s a good thing - I agreed that the result made me look older than my 46 years. Nevertheless, I was thrilled to produce - on my first attempt - a picture that actually looks like me! I don’t draw. I’ve never attempted a serious self-portrait before. And look what I did . . . There is hope for me yet. Imagine if I practiced daily, how good I could become.

I don’t know that I want to practice life drawing daily. But it is neat to feel like I have some potential.

Keep going to see the larger project . . . (There is more where this came from … )

Had a play in Photoshop with the photo I showed in my previous post.

I leave for Horsham Textile Fibre Forum on Sunday for a week. (I will tell you all about it when I get back.)

It is a week of being an artist, so I have to look the part. I always pack my arty-ist clothes. This year I wanted to have artist hair, too.  My hairdresser was so excited when I told her. This is the look we came up with: Raspberry red hair (and she did my eyebrows to match) with a chunky blonde streak down one side.

Cool.�

A finished felt piece using the mix of materials and methods I’ve “claimed” for my own. Here is the felt making, the polymer clay and the contemporary embroidery work combined in one art piece. There’s a bit of dye and gold embossing powder thrown into this bit of alchemy, too.

The felt has these six molded egg shapes protruding. I tied marbles into the fabric during the felting process, then removed them in the end step. We generally think of fabric as flat. It is one of the joys of felt that you can manipulate its shape. Of course, it is far easier to manipulate the shape of clay. I made a polymer clay “armor” for the felt.

I called the piece “Cosmic Eggs”. There was something about it that reminded me of the Big Bang. Instead of just one Cosmic Egg from which the Universe was birthed, might there have been multiple eggs, and multiple universes?

If you think that concept is pretentious, try this one on for size: I had also toyed with the idea that these felt lumps could be breasts, and this was representative of a multi-breasted goddess.

Nah.  Eggs. In this instance, cosmic eggs! Maybe the goddess will emerge from another piece.