Meanwhile back at the studio… last week I began an abstract piece of a stone path.  Very quickly I got the I hate this vibe! So I backed away (& no one got hurt) and approached it again a few days later with the idea that if I still got that feeling it would come down off the wall and I would begin anew with something that made my heart sing.  I was so surprised when during my second attempt at designing the path I was overcome with joy at the result. It also could have been just stepping out of the chaos of driving 1000 auto miles in two weeks to being back in my sacred space.

As I cut and pinned the entire design to the thrice-washed African batik it  never occurred to me that any miniscule amount of wax residue might impede the fusing process!  Until today when I stood at the wall, hot iron with long extension cord in hand and attempted to fuse the stones to the wall. No go. So I re-pinned the entire piece and took it to the machine and stitched the edges of every stone to secure before I next attempt to fuse it flat.

It seems now that the stitching pattern for the rocks has been predetermined! It will be a wonky random stitch to camouflage all the base just put down as anchor.  I am not sure if this has released any of the cortisol streaming through my body or merely added to it but I am working more and driving less which is always a good thing.

The original image was taken through over-hanging branches. In the end I could see it surely did not need any more layers of fusing or stitching, proving that contrary to popular belief you can mess with mother nature!

Because I have found my artistic voice I seldom take workshops anymore but I always learn something when I do. Sometimes it is that I never want to do said technique again and to me that is worth the price of admission.

What I learned this time is how much I love designing landscapes. They are a wonderful puzzle of value and texture. It is great fun to audition fabrics until just the right one pops the composition. I also learned that as much as I love the ease of designing with fusing, I hate stitching through what could become 5-6 layers of fused fabric. I plan to continue with more landscape work although using more piecing and applique than fusing whenever possible.

The next piece is a detail of a cropped landscape thereby making it very abstract…stay tuned.

I went on my merry way discharging  grey Kona cotton to get this… and  black rayon for  this …When the book was published I was thrilled to see my work in living color on page 90.  I bought four extra copies of the book and gave them to friends. That’s when the fun began. One friend said that other F word commonly came to mind as she attempted Furoshiki!  She noted it is important that the cloth be large enough before proceeding. I had also learned that when I tried unsuccessfully to double fold two paperback books.

Then I decided to cover sofa pillows and this is the result.  The cloth was a vintage damask tablecloth which I had dyed, discharged and painted 3 years ago for an Art Cloth Network exhibit. It’s languished on the shelf since. It is a beautiful piece but for what purpose?   It took me just seconds to cut it in two and then literally five minutes to cover these pillows.  One uses the right side of the cloth… and the other the ‘wrong’ side. Voila…furoshiki!

Thanks Deb and Kris!

After three days of catching up with business, monkey business, photos and email after a one-week trip, I decided today would be the day I got into the studio.  That much is true! I did get into the studio and of course I am back out already.

Yesterday while looking for treasure to pass on to the San Jose Quilt & Textile Museum for their annual May Day fundraiser (for which I received 3 days notice of the deadline) I decided that having already culled the studio this spring, I should instead cull my jewelry drawer!  Mind you I have no great jewels just lots and lots of mostly hand-made earrings and necklaces which had become a jumble.  I sorted it out, and made a pile for charity of mostly orphan earrings. I also made a pile of  rarely worn Czech glass beaded necklaces to sell on EBay.

Today when I went into the studio to sew I was met by laundry to be ironed so I did that. Then there was still stuff from the trip on my design table which I put away as well as the aforementioned cull from the jewelry drawer. I decided to photograph and list on EBay and get that out of my hair.

I got out my point/shoot and pointed and shot. Soon the camera malfunctioned one more time (4th time in last 2 weeks) so I changed the batteries again. It still did not perform well…hmmm what could be the problem?  I came back to the PC and uploaded the images most of which were poor quality. Mind you this is the same point/shoot I took to Texas for landscape shots and had mostly trouble.

So I opened the drawer where I keep the p/s camera and lo and behold there is another one in there! I tried to remember which is the new one I bought before going to France last year and which is the one I should have thrown away and not taken to Texas?!  It should be quite obvious by now!!!

I got out the new p/s, took the jewelry back to the studio to photograph and within a couple minutes the new p/s  started beeping that the battery was low! Of course it is.  I opened the bottom to see it is a lithium battery. So I went to the bathroom where we charge all our devices, untangled the Nikon charger from the nest of cords and this project is now delayed as I wait for the camera to recharge!  Maybe I will get in the studio after all.

The above image is a detail of a cotton embroidered vest I bought in Austin at an antique collective for $19. It was handmade in Mexico and while the body is quite large the armholes are tiny. I will be re-making it into something wonderful if I can just stop getting side-tracked.

Last week we participated in a Road Scholar program in Austin and San Antonio, TX.  We enjoy Road Scholar as hubby gets his fill of history and revolution as I soak up everything visually delicious plus meet interesting people from all over. Additionally I am convinced the fountain of youth is to be had in hanging with older folks because they think we are just kids!

I experienced so much pre-trip mobility angst that for the first couple of days there my brain was full and I could not absorb any new information.  As I was able to negotiate my way around Austin I started to relax and began to witness the texture, pattern and color of Texas. Not to mention the incredible barbeque and pomegranate martinis!

We arrived into Austin two days early to explore on our own and booked a lake-view room so that we could witness the bats fly out from under the Congress St. Bridge at dusk. Hubby went out onto the bridge nearly every night as I glowered from the room but neither of us ever saw a bat. About the 3rd night I began to think that looking for bats anywhere was really a bit odd!

The awakening of my right brain began at the State Capitol where I captured this view of the rotunda through ceiling glass. The exterior of  a barbeque restaurant also caught my eye.

What would a trip to Texas be without boots? A friend steered us (pun intended) to a cowboy boot store that must have had 3000 pairs of boots, many embroidered. I was lucky they did not carry my size or I would still be there trying to decide which pair I wanted to make me walk two inches taller!

As we moved into the Hill Country I shot lots and lots of landscapes and the worn vintage lino in the kitchen of LBJ’s boyhood home.

… rocks at a rest stop.  I was capturing images on the ground, up the side of the wall, and even peering into glass brick bathroom windows!

At the missions in San Antonio …

…pattern in unexpected places…the metal awning at a Luby’s Cafeteria

…passageways… @ the mission and McNay Art Museum

…signage…is it just the dyslexic in me? I love the humor in this…parking to take away customers?!

Shortly after my right brain came to life I began to ponder what it was I was supposed to learn on this trip chock full of history.  And then I forgot all about it until the flight home when it  came to me. It’s about writing.

I was captivated by Lady Bird Johnson’s diary of her time as first lady. I opened the volume in a bookstore and turned immediately to 1966 when LBJ dedicated the Point Reyes National Seashore (about 20 miles from my home) and she had breakfast in bed in a San Francisco hotel overlooking the bay, or harbor as she noted. I have always loved reading biographies which essentially is history with a voice. I decided to both read the book and resume my own writing.

A gut reaction came…who would read it? Who cares? It doesn’t matter. What matters is I write it, I chronicle my life, especially when one day blurs into another and years zip by. Wouldn’t it be grand to have something tangible and of substance to chronicle my days instead of a Facebook timeline or a stack of returned emails? Granted I won’t be giving up my internet habits any time soon but instead setting a priority to recognize the essence of  my daily existence.

As  ‘writing’ came to me on the flight two other instances in Texas came to mind: a storyteller and a visit with a good artist friend our last day there.  Indeed…writing it down was the message from my Texas experience!

There were also epiphanies about new work which I will share in another post…

Finally I decided to do minimal stitching to hold all the tiny fused pieces on, then pillowcase and stitch in sections.  When it is all stitched I will add the final layer of over-hanging branches.

What came to me today is how much I LOVE stitching landscapes.  I love changing color of threads and going different directions to create movement as seen here where the tree-line meets the water. It enchants me to stitch each section much like putting together a puzzle.  It has been a while since I have stitched a landscape as my focus has been predominantly abstract work the past few years.

What does not enchant me is the layers of fusing. Stitching the textural mountains is not going to be fun, so of course I will leave that to last!  When this piece is finished surely I will design more abstract landscapes as it is both challenging and fun but I will be piecing more of the backgrounds than fusing so it will be that much easier to stitch. Stay tuned…

“I was intrigued by what you see as Norman Rockwell’s decline with age. Do you think artists must inevitably suffer a waning of their powers as they grow older? I would like to think that, unlike athletes, for example, we can just keep getting better and better.”

…The Canadian painter A.Y. Jackson called it “painterly senility.” He thought it had something to do with the number of paintings painted. “Every painter has 2,500 paintings in him,” he said, “no more, no less.”

When I heard that statement (in a radio interview in 1974) I was already up to 7,000. I briefly figured I was prematurely on my way to the old painters’ home, but I was wrong, and so was he.

Seven thousand?! I have no worries. I must get back to work!!!

My need for control is so much less than it used to be! In other words I used to be a maniac control freak and am now only partially so. A lot of the time I just don’t care anymore which I believe is a really happy/healthy place to be with room for improvement!

I stopped the blame game years ago… a complete waste of energy and again, who cares?!   I also don’t trash talk self.  After all we can only count on ourselves really.

I don’t complain much except to my husband and there I complain a lot. I have recognized it before as a really bad habit…room for improvement. I can work on my criticism of others which falls under complaining. I don’t label often except I do have one select group that peeves me greatly…move over, make room! Excuses are a waste of time although a very wise woman once said…what good are excuses if you don’t use them?!  True.

I don’t live to others expectations...menopause cured that! Actually it looks like I am in pretty good shape. Hmmm, are my affairs in order?

More life lessons…yesterday hubby and I went to the Giants baseball game.   It had been a couple of years since I had attended a game and I learned so much this time around.  Primarily if I want to watch a baseball game I should stay home and watch it on TV!!!

Now mind you, this is not complaining…but fact!  At the stadium there was one thing I could eat and that was popcorn. However I wanted to eat all the food that makes me sick or fat. At the stadium we were seated in lower box seats underneath the upper deck. It was a chilly April day with a 20 mph wind aka freezing! And at the stadium I could not see the ball when it was hit until I heard the thud of it hitting the stands above or around me. I can tell you the final score was 8-1 but not much else.  I was so overstimulated by the sea of orange and black and constant movement of fans in the stands.

When my husband turned to me and started talking stats I knew I was in deep trouble. I got up to “stretch my legs” and came back planting him next to a woman who was also talking stats. They got into their stat talk and I went back to my people watching!

So the lesson I learned was if I truly want to watch (and enjoy) a baseball game stay home in my warm house, with my gluten & dairy free foods, where I can see the ball and will remember who pitched the game. Oh and find hubby a friend who speaks stats…

Yet workshops challenge me in unexpected ways!  I have a fabulous studio custom made to my specs. I don’t share it with anyone or anything.  For me to work in a small shared space with all sorts of distractions is a challenge but one well worth it this time.

I have lousy depth perception when it comes to making art so my many attempts at horizons have often been curved…the world is round, no? So it was a great delight to consider abstract ways of constructing the landscape.

I chose this photo of Lake MacDonald in Glacier National Park for my starting inspiration. I am not going to include the fisher-person and boat as the leafy branches provide enough interest for me. 

This is a black/white/gray fabric prototype of the photo.

I have completed the forest and one of the mountains in the background using a Hundertwasser mosaic technique.  I am next creating more mountains as I am leaving the dreaded water reflection to last.  If I can conquer my reflection anxiety then I have a lifetime of fabulous images from which to work!

Because I cannot work in a totally cluttered area I spent this morning finishing up some things in progress. I finished sewing a stack of embroidered linens together to paint and made cloth storage bags for the new recently finished works. Now my  studio is free of that clutter and ready for me to create new clutter as I press on (pun intended) with this new work. Stay tuned…

The curved line has really come to represent my work. And it happened only when I got out of my own way and noticed that any doodle I made always had a curved line within it.

More than a decade ago when I began this work I thought those who worked in a series were boring,  lacked imagination, and had only one idea which they were going to make until they died!   As I became more artistically astute I became aware of identity and cohesion when making art. As I entered more shows and processed entries for others I began to see a pattern of  artists whose work all identifies as their own.

In January I had the honor of  being a juror for an art quilt exhibit and again it came through so loud and clear about having one’s voice; making work that looks like it came from the same hand.

It has been a lifelong pattern for me that anything that peeves me generally ends up being something from which I am to learn. Lesson learned: I plan to continue to design more curved line work as it inspires me. It is a metaphor for the lifeline, always in flux, always in movement, always changing.

The accent piece in Currents #20 was a well worn dishtowel, found in my father’s kitchen, with the word ARTICHOKE printed underneath what else? an artichoke!  I dyed, screen-printed and inserted with some incredible soy wax batik. No doubt that artichoke towel was one of a series someone designed and sold to a kitchen store in years gone by. There’s that lifeline again…