The woman in my current piece has had more costume changes than a Cher concert.  No less than three since my last post, but looking objectively and carefully, I was able to make some important decisions:

1.  The orange was right but it was too strong.  Trying paler orange fabrics blended into the grass too much.  So I decided to make only the top of her dress orange, therefore limiting the amount of the color and it’s overpowering strength.
2.  The hat had to be blue.  Blue is the opposite color of orange, and therefore blue gives the orange a little punch. (a punch in the good way, no violence here).  The overall composition also lacked some deeper, darker areas (there are a few dark areas of grass, but that wasn’t enough) so the hat became dark blue.  Only a coincidence that it was dark blue or dark purple in the original photo.
3.  In deciding that the bottom of her dress was to be another color (it was actually a shirt and skirt of the same fabric) I chose a fabric that blended an orange ground with some magenta and deep blue/purple colors.  This not only gave the blue hat a little support, but also introduced another darker value which made her more prominent in the composition and made the overall composition more interesting.

So here she is:

I am getting tired of looking at her–ready to finish and move on!

The new piece got tweaked and now seems to be working for me.  Here it is so far:

Yes, she still needs a neck (it got lost somewhere in the mess on my work table) and some more little changes are in store.  But where I am happy is with the new green fabric choices and that is due to their color and value.

The last two choices (they didn’t look as bad in person as they did in that photo) were muddy and made her look like she was sitting in a swamp, rather than a meadow on a sunny spring day.  Of course, the swamp could have set a whole different scene and mood, but I won’t go there.  The other problem was that the value of the green and the value of the orange of her dress were too close to each other.  No contrast no interest.

So I could have changed the dress color but decided the muddy green was the problem anyway.  These crisper, lighter and yellower greens work well with the orange.  They look like spring.  She looks like spring.  Even the column behind her looks better now that the green issue is worked out.

Onward….

Blah blah blah, I talk alot.  Some of the talk comes in the form of writing on this blog.  Why just the other day, I wrote a post about trusting your instincts and knowing when you don’t want to go into your studio (workspace, etc) that it is a signal that something is wrong.  I am so busy sprouting I don’t even hear what I say.

I started a new piece this weekend.  The starting point was this photo I took last summer:

Love it, cropped it, ready to go.  Started, as I always do, with the focal point–the central figure, in this case the woman eating the apple (yes, if you look closely enough she is holding a half eaten apple).

I spent some time in the studio working on her and decided she should be in pink, a nice contrast to the green of the grass.  Besides, the white dress in the photo was too close to this woman’s skin tones (what was she thinking when she got dressed that morning!?!?).  Valid decision, here she is:

For whatever reason I decided I was done for the day.  Usually I am anxious to continue, but I didn’t give it any thought.  But the next day I was too busy to work on it, and the next.  Was I really that busy, no, I wasn’t.  Did I recognize this as avoidance?  Not soon enough.

I had sent the image to a friend who said she was great–so summery.  But she looked to me like she was so sweet I was getting diabetes just looking at her.  But summer was good, so I didn’t listen to my little voice.

That little voice.  Finally today I decided that the little voice was screaming at the top of its lungs.  So after avoiding the piece for several days (what did I say the other day about knowing sooner when something wasn’t working?) I looked at it with fresh eyes.  What bothered me?  The pink.

Now this is not to say that there is anything wrong with pink either as a color or in this piece.  But the pink did not speak in my artistic voice.  It wasn’t me, it was too sweet.  This was not the place I was making a new statement or moving out of my comfort zone.  The pink just bothered me.  That doesn’t make it wrong, just wrong for me.

So having made the decision to ditch the pink, I made more progress today.  Here is the piece (just laid in place at this point, so I can absorb and reevaluate again tomorrow):

This still is not working for me yet, the dark green is too close in value to her dress, the light green needs to be lighter and more yellow in tone, and the column may need more increased value changes.  I even think the hat should be either darker and/or another color–maybe purple.  But the elimination of the pink.  Ahhhhh.

So what does all this mean?  That pink is bad?  Not at all.  That pink was not consistent with my voice?  Maybe, sometimes, in this case, yes.   Color palette is a very important component of a person’s artistic voice.  In this case I felt that the pink was too cheery and bright to work as part of the reflective nature of what I liked about this photo.  But obviously, this information didn’t spring forth right away.

Every piece takes a step forward and a step back–by making changes we make our work better.  Unfortunately, as evidenced by all the little scraps of fabric now on my studio floor, the first decision is not always the right one.  Or the second, or even the third.  At every step we need to evaluate, be honest with ourselves, and be willing to make changes.  Believe it or not, that is hard for many people–myself included.  It is there, it is fine, just commit.  But fine isn’t good enough.  It has to be right.

Why did I take a break to write this blog post?  Because I am sure losing the pink was the right call, I am still not sold on the orange.  So avoidance jumps in again.  But this time I know it and recognize it and I will acknowledge it by going back to it first thing tomorrow and tweaking the elements until they work.

So when that little voice starts to whisper “something here is not right” don’t ignore it.  It gets hoarse when it has to scream at you.

After I had completed all the figures I would need (plus some that would ultimately be eliminated either for space or because I didn’t feel they were as strong) I had to decide how to fit them all into the layout and how to create the “sightline” that would draw the eye across the series of pieces.

I began with the idea of placing the figures in a fairly realistic background, perhaps a large staircase in which some figures were toward the front and others farther back, but abandoned it as too literal and too representational.  So after playing with it for awhile on the computer, I instead decided on a fairly abstract background, primarily in deep purples and blues.   The figures would be highlighted by using squares or rectangles behind them which would also serve as the unifying element that would become the sightline.  The figures would not be surrounded completely by the rectangles, but rather coming forward as if out of these rectangular shapes.  Yellow was the obvious choice because it is the complimentary color to purple and therefore would create the greatest visual contrast and “punch.”

Getting a rough idea of the sizes of these rectangles gave me a better understanding of how much space each set of figures would need in the final layout.  (I used the orange construction paper because I didn’t have any yellow!)

Moving the figures around on the computer was the easiest way to determine their position and layout.  You can see from this mockup all my notations on size, so I could be sure all the pieces were right size and everything would fit.  Now that I had a pretty good idea of what figures I was going to use and where they would live, I did another computer mockup that would more closely resemble the final pieces.

This also helped me finalize the sizes of each of the central pieces.  With a plan in place, I double checked all my numbers on graph paper—

I did the three central pieces one at a time, building first the backgrounds and then adding the rectangles and the figures.

Here is section #1 pinned in place.

The challenge became how to keep all the pieces together in a room that did not have ten full feet of continuous wall space!

After the three central pieces were trimmed and finished, I prepared the backgrounds of the lead in and lead out pieces.  Here, I didn’t want to use purple, and didn’t want the same rectangle effect, so I began with a very vertical arrangement of gray tones in the first piece with a strip of yellow used to accentuate the vertical placement of the background pieces.  From there, the yellow in the second lead in piece (in the train station) begins to move into a diagonal (which is more dynamic and begins to show movement–and making certain that the yellow from the lead in pieces lined up with the yellow in the central sections).

The figures in the central pieces move from younger to older, ending with the older couple heavily burdened with their “baggage.”  In the final two pieces we see the older couple standing in the train station again, here, the yellow lines begin to lead the eye to the curving curb on the final piece, where we see an old woman “finishing her journey” alone, punctuated by a yellow handbag–like the period at the end of a sentence.

My final decision was to add lettering to the surface of the pieces, both to create a stronger visual line to follow, and also to allow the viewer to understand my intention–almost like putting an artist statement onto the piece.  Again, first I wrote the “poem” and then roughed out the layout on the computer.  Next, I wrote it exactly as I wanted it to appear, and pinned the paper onto the quilts.

Then, using freemotion, I stitched right onto the paper and pulled the paper out when the lettering was done.

The poem reads:

Alone
We embark on life’s journey
Some have families who prepare us, pack our bags and see us off
Some make their way to the train station on their own
Some find like minded travelers with whom to share the trip
Some get off the main road and take a different route
Some bring their baggage with them
Some acquire it together along the way
Sometimes the road is clear, the air is clean and the scenery is beautiful
Sometimes the road is filled with rocks and the weather is inclement
Some reach a fork in the road and decide to follow different paths
Some reach the final train platform together
There, we leave our bags behind, say goodbye, and finish the trip home
Alone

Here is my final installation:

I hope you enjoyed taking my journey with me, and that you will visit the SAQA site to see the other amazing works by the thirteen other artists.

Exhibition Calendar:

International Quilt Festival-Houston, November 4 – 7, 2010
International Quilt Festival-Cincinnati, April 2011
Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine, Golden, Colorado, April 2011
International Quilt Festival-Long Beach, July 2011
Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, Louisiana, January 2012

Invitational Curator: Virginia Spiegel with advice from Jenny Bowker

Managing Curator: Clairan Ferrono

The “sightlines” catalog is 64 pages, hardcover, with a gatefold that opens in the center to illustrate the entire exhibit.  It was designed by Deidre Adams, photographed by Gregory Case and is available from the
Studio Art Quilt Associates store here:

http://www.saqa.com/store-detail.php?cat=9&ID=11

The publication of this catalog was supported by a generous donation from Herb Anhaltzer, in memory of Mary Anhaltzer, who wanted to put art quilts on the map. In 1999, Mary opened Thirteen Moons Gallery, the first and only gallery in Sante Fe (and quite possibly the country) to focus on the hot ‘new’ medium of the art quilt.

The catalog provides each artist with a four-page spread including an image of their installation, detail image, artist statement, and artist bio. The artists include:

Britta Ankenbauer
Regina Benson
Shelley Brenner Baird
Yael David-Cohen
Linda Colsh
Sue Dennis
Anne Helmericks-Louder
Fulvia Luciano
Wendy Lugg
Kathy Nida
Pat Owoc
Mirjam Pet-Jacobs
Jayne Willoughby Scott
Leni Levenson Wiener

The exhibit will be premiering at International Quilt Festival in Houston this week. You can preview and purchase the artwork here:

http://www.saqa.com/store.php?cat=25

Be sure to check out the exhibit in person if you can, or at the SAQA site!

Going through my photos looking for couples, I identified lots I could use.  As I started to compile the images on my computer, I realized that there were “gaps” in what I had, lots of overlap in the types of couples and some missing.  I wanted to include all kinds of couples, all ages, all different stages of their relationships, so I began to do some Photoshop combinations.

This couple was perfect just the way they were.  I began to refer to them as my “yuppie couple.”  In the same photo, there were two men walking next to each other.  I decided they were going to be my “gay couple”–

A photo I found online gave me the information I needed to link their arms, and two men walking next to each other now had a new meaning in the overall piece.

Likewise, this couple also had an adjustment, going from two people the same age, to a May/December couple–talk about plastic surgery–this woman lost about 20 years in less than 20 minutes!

I also decided that only happy couples did not truly represent all the stages of a relationship, so in some cases I combined figures that would work together to show what I wanted.  These two people were not actually having a disagreement, in fact, they were photographed two years and over 100 miles apart!

This is my favorite couple in the entire piece, I love the body language, it shows the weight on their shoulders, both figuratively and literally…

And we can’t have a May/December without having the same thing in reverse, a cougar couple; this couple didn’t make the final cut as I thought as cute as she was, she was just too cartoony.  She was actually based on a photo that was posed, rather than candid, which I think makes a world of difference.

After making lots of couples in various sizes, I decided on the four that lead in and out.  I needed two 8″ square pieces to lead into the main body of work and two  8″ pieces that end the grouping.  Here I decided to use my train photos, starting with two young couples–I loved the body language of the young couple who don’t even touch, followed by that wonderful head to head couple reading a map in the station.  The thinking was that we start with teenage love (which isn’t really much of a relationship at all) and progress into young love–planning their trip through life together (so to speak).

On the other end of the piece, the older couples.  This photo, taken in a train station in Taiwan, has such a lovely connection between the man and his wife (and I love the counterbalance of the young woman in red)

The final piece is a woman alone, having lost her partner in life, she finishes the “trip” by herself…

After making lots of potential couples (more than I knew I would use), now came the time to work out the layout and composition, and most importantly, how the sightline would meander across the pieces.  Tomorrow…..

First of all, my apologies for such a ling time without a post.  Lots of stuff going on in  my life in the past several weeks, none art related, have prevented me from working.  A nagging shoulder problem has also kept me not just from working, but has even made typing difficult.  So, at any rate, I am slowly returning to my life.

For several months last year, I was working on pieces for an exhibition called Sightlines which was an interesting concept, described this way:

Fourteen artists were invited to create an installation of artworks featuring a sightline linking all the artwork in the exhibit.  Each artist chose her own themes and created five to eight artworks, including four 8×8″ linking pieces, covering a ten foot wide space. Perhaps the required continuous line provided provocation, both conscious and unconscious, to the artists to focus on time, personal history, and memory.

What intrigued me about the exhibit opportunity was the challenge of linking all the pieces with a visual line that moved across the surface, but also the connection of artists as the work would be hung so that it flowed from one grouping to the next.  I was blown away when I was told I was one of the fourteen chosen, and agreed (as required) not to discuss or share my pieces until the opening.

Sightines will officially open at Houston in just a few weeks, and we have now been given permission to share our work, and our process on our blogs and websites.  There is a gorgeous hardcover catalog (I have never been published hard cover before) available through the SAQA website.  I am in awe of the other pieces in the exhibition, and find it so fascinating to see how the other thirteen approached the same challenge.

http://www.saqa.com/store-detail.php?cat=9&ID=11

To date, the following exhibition venues have been announced:

International Quilt Festival-Houston, November 4 – 7, 2010
International Quilt Festival-Cincinnati, April 2011
Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine, Golden, Colorado, April 2011
International Quilt Festival-Long Beach, July 2011
Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, Louisiana, January 2012

Invitational Curator: Virginia Spiegel with advice from Jenny Bowker
Managing Curator: Clairan Ferrono

So for the next few days I will share with you my approach to the challenge, and the steps I took to get there.

Instead of sharing the finished work with you now, I want to share the process so that you can see how it developed.

To begin with, I had to come up with a general concept for the pieces, which were to start and finish with two 8″ squares and required a very specific interior width.  This in itself was a challenge for me, as I usually just work and trim and crop at the end.  This would require more planning.

Obviously, the easiest way to accomplish a sightline that moves through the pieces would be to work abstractly, but since I am known for figures, I felt I had to work with them and weave them into the meandering sightline.

I began by pulling lots of photos from my files of people, just to see what I had to work with.

These are just a few of the photos that started the process.

While looking at these photos something interesting emerged–many of my shots were of couples and that in most cases, they were carrying something–a bag, a backpack, a suitcase–maybe just a function of the number of tourists that are out and about in NYC where I take most of my photos.  But that started me thinking about concept.

Another theme in my photo files is train stations.  I don’t know why, I just love train stations.  Two of my favorite train station photos:

This got me to thinking about couples, traveling life’s journey together.  The baggage would become the literal and the figurative baggage that couples bring into relationships or develop together.

Tomorrow, choosing and using those images…

Right after writing yesterday’s post, I decided to go back to the studio and flip that background fabric back to the front.  Back to trusting original instincts, maybe?  I added several strips of various widths of that softer, lighter golden yellow fabric, and began the process of adding strips to the surface.  Rather than use the technique I had used for water (which worked well for water but didn’t seem to be doing it for me this time) I went back to a technique I used several times before, including in the two small pieces of Asian faces and for the big sightlines project (I am not allowed to show you pictures of sightlines until it officially opens in Houston this year, but I can share a detail of the background).

joy and wisdom 2009

detail of background from sightlines

I liked both of these backgrounds (very similar) because they have a “painterly” effect, and although I was thinking about moving beyond them and doing something different, I decided the technique was right for this piece.

The placement of the different strips is part intuition, part controlled random placement.  I like the way this is going, but here there is too much contrast and the background looks like a piece of matzo.

(for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, this is what matzo looks like.)  The issue here, as it so often is, is value value value.  But unlike most situations, when the ideal is to have light medium and dark values, the goal here is to keep the values close to each other so that the entire surface blends together and doesn’t look splotchy (or matzo-like).

Taking the photo into photoshop, I was able to replace all the dark strips with a lighter blue to get an idea of where to go from here.  I liked the effect, so back to the studio to remove all the dark pieces and replace them with lighter values that had more color to them.

This is more what I had in mind.  Maybe a few tweaks here and there, but the surface will be heavily quilted with a colored thread, which will also serve to unify the colors and values and make the strips less distinct.

I feel as if this is going in the right direction.  You may notice something strange on the right of the photo:

This is my plumb line.  Often it is difficult while working on a design wall to make sure everything hangs straight.  I do often use a level to make sure the top and sides of a piece are hung straight on the wall, but this crude tool is very helpful when placing pieces onto the work.  It is simply an interesting rusted piece of metal I found on the street one day (I love old rusty “junk”) with a string tied to it.  The string has a loop at the top, which is put over one of the pins holding things up.  The metal piece insures that the string falls straight, and I can look at adjacent pieces to be sure they are hung properly.

While previewing this post online, I think the background is good, but still needs to be more blended.  So that is the next goal.

After looking at the developing background on the computer, I made some alternative decisions.

Notwithstanding the fact that I think it looks interesting, I have two problems with this background so far:

• it is too horizontal–the way the colors peek through looks like chinking in a log cabin (the cabin, not the quilt pattern)
• it is too bright–i love the idea of the color, but it is just too strong and takes away from the focal point.

I also can’t get the rejected fabric out of my mind, and had a thought about using the back, which is usually lighter in color than the front:

front of the fabric

back of the fabric

Subtle, but clearly lighter and therefore brighter than the front.  Ok, so we will give it a try.

Attempting to move away from the horizontal bands that were so distracting, I used the fabric as a base and applied the accent fabrics in strips, so that it is less fussy and less dense.  But then it became clear that part of what bothered me was that the pattern created by the background fabric arrangement was too horizontal, and that fought with the vertical position of both the doorway and the two figures.  Regroup and adjust again.

there are a few things I want you to focus on that i like and a few that i don’t.  first, what is working here:

• I like the vertical arrangement more than the horizontal
• the color is better, more subtle, and less distracting.  I found a beautiful golden yellow fabric that I would have used as the base but didn’t have enough, so it is added in those vertical strips–which brightens the otherwise somewhat dull background fabric.
• the hand dye, which I still love in this piece, is used more judiciously, so that it does not take center stage.

What I don’t like:

• the strips need to be more blended, so that they become more of a soft background and less stripey
• the horizontal area in gray under the figures is distracting as the orientation change grabs too much attention
• the background base fabric is looking a little too light, and I should try flipping it to the front again.

This process is greatly aided by the use of a digital camera and the computer monitor, as the problems appear to be magnified when viewed this way.  What is not so obvious to the naked eye becomes glaringly obvious when viewed on the computer screen.

So the process continues.

Now that I am happy with the central figures and the doorway I am moving onto the background.  I want the background to be more abstract, more “painterly”and not so detailed or realistic an environment.  So I have decided to utilize a technique I have used in the past to portray water.

The water in this piece, On the Rocks, was a happy accident.  Originally, I had decided to create the water using lots of very different, patterned blue fabrics.  When completed, it looked great; but when used as a background for the figures it was far too fussy and demanded too much attention.  So when life (and art quilts) give you lemons, make lemonade!

Without removing anything I had done, I decided to take a plain blue fabric and layer it over the others in order to “calm things down” a bit.  The resulting water has interest and movement, and I was quite pleased with it.

For this piece, I thought I would try using the same technique to add interest and texture to the background.  Originally, I had chosen this fabric for the background “base”…

I just love this fabric, purchased some time ago, and have always wanted to use it as a background fabric.  But in looking at it with the figures and the door, it just looked too dull and I wanted the piece to have more excitement and more color.  So it goes back in the stash until some day it is the perfect fit somewhere else.

My criteria for the background color(s) was:

• it couldn’t be too dark or the dark clothing of the figures would disappear into it
• it needed to be a color, but not one so strong that it took over
• green would have contrasted nicely with the door, but would have read like grass or leaves
• blue might have been good against the dark blue of the clothing, but would have read like water

I remembered another fabric that has been patiently waiting in my stash for the right fit.  It is a hand dye that I purchased several years ago, and have auditioned as a background many times.  In the past, it didn’t work because it was too strong, and the pink was too distracting wherever I put it.  But in this case, the yellow was a good fit, and the pink wouldn’t fight with the red door, so it became the “base” fabric much like the solid blue in On the Rocks.

I begin by laying the base down–the colors that will show through the cracks of the background.  Here, I can afford to use stronger, darker colors because they will only appear as slivers when the background is complete.  I need to avoid using underlayer fabrics that are the same value as the base, or they will be lost.

These pieces are placed in a method I call controlled random. which is exactly what it sounds like.  I take each fabric and place the pieces so that they are equally distributed around the surface I plan to cover.  Then I take the next one and do the same thing.  Moving along in the same way, I create what looks like a random placement, but with enough control to insure that the eye travels across the surface.

Here you can see that hand dye fabric, cut into irregularly shaped strips and layered over the other pieces.  This is a process that takes some fussing with–the underlayer needs to be moved around as it isn’t always in the right place; and the strips can be closer or farther apart, allowing for more or less of the other colors to show through.  The process continues…

Stay tuned!

The new piece is coming along nicely, although I have not had as much time to work on it as I would have liked.  The central figures are completed and now I need to build their “environment.”

I know, at this point it does not appear that my work has evolved, the figures are not unlike those I have done up to this point. But, in fact, they have been simplified, as I am working towards using as few pieces as I possibly can and still convey everything I want them to say.  The pieces in my head and on the computer waiting for their “turn” are all pieces that are meant to convey something about the central figure or figures by way of body language.

Next I will build the background, which will be substantially different from what I have done to date.  I also have new ideas for the way it will hang and the edge finish, but at this point those are only theories that work in my head.  Baby steps will determine if they will actually work the way I envision.

Some pieces I struggle to title after they are completed, others seem to name themselves along the way.  Such was the case for this piece, already entitled “the secret.”  Well, maybe…it might also be titled “gossip.”  I will decide when it is finished.