Carol Larson - textile artist

Last year I was quoted as saying I never work in a series because why would I ever want to do the same design twice. Yet one thing I have really learned about myself is that which I protest the most about, I will be involved in shortly! In fact, last year I decided to fast forward the wait and took a workshop from a woman who I vowed to never take a workshop from. And I enjoyed it.

My idea of a series is work that all looks similar. And we all know those whose work has not changed in a decade, maybe two, which is instantly identifiable. That was the kind of SERIES work to which I referred in my quote. While the Tall Girl Series has the word series in the title, the only thing repetitous about it is the subject line.

Yet I have been drawn to creating smaller series of similar work. Most recent examples began with Splatter 1. It was so different from my other work that I decided there should be a Splatter II, and then because I like odd numbers Splatter III is about to come off the wall for stitching.

Another thing I said I wouldn’t do is go backwards. I said I would never go back to a finished piece and re-make it. While I haven’t actually done that, I have on several occasions added layers of paint to previously finished work, like this one, Inside Out. I loved the piece, but something was missing. The big pieces in the center were actually the enlarged image of the screen from which I printed. So voila! more paint changed the whole thing and now I like both versions equally well…except the old version is only available in jpg format!

Which brings me to my latest challenge. Weeks ago a friend and I were searching for treasure in Sebastopol. I found a bunch of clean remnants of handwoven samplers. I dyed, over-dyed and painted the heck out of them. One was this scrumptious piece, which I decided would make a killer art quilt. After I pillow-case backed it, I began to stitch, and it went from spectacular to seedy in nothing flat. As a former weaver (of 25 years), one would think I would have remembered how the cloth would migrate while being stitched.

Part of me was tempted to toss this piece, but because I LOVE the design so much, I am now removing all the stitching! Then I will take off the backing and press the handwoven to stablilizer and start anew. Also high on my to-do list is removing never from my vocabulary.

My husband with a lot of encouragement from me has agreed to replace an outdated backyard lawn with native plants also known as drought resistant. A number of others in our neighborhood have already done so. So our morning mile around the block is a feast for the eyes of glorious and unusual plants in bloom.

A month ago I noticed this one plant, that looked like a nest, all curled up into itself with soft furry long leaves. Within a day or two it had shed it’s shyness and the leaves were all extended. Then a day later this tall spire appeared and it literally changes by the day.

Today, I finally took my camera and captured it…not only to entertain y’all, but I really and truly want this wonder in my new garden. My husband rang the bell a few days ago to ask the occupants the name of this glorious gem, but they didn’t know. They paid someone to design the garden and seemingly had no other interest in it!

I expect to traipse down to the nursery with my page of images, but if anyone knows the proper name of it, I would sure be interested. In the meantime, enjoy the show…

05/01/09 It has a name!!! It is . Echium wildpretii http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echium_wildpretii It’s called the tower of jewels sometimes. Thanks to Louise Schiele.

As I wrote a couple of posts ago, my attention was recently called to a new book Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry’s Quest to Manipulate Height by Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove. Over the weekend I read this book and it was chock full of both amazing and shocking information about how the medical industry continues to mess with Mother Nature.

Additionally, my story was told on page 21, with only the names changed to protect the innocent! They used my maiden name, at my request, because 1) that is who I was in 1965 and 2) I was still fearful of going public with my story in 2003, when I last had contact with the authors.

Through a Google search I found Susan Cohen and e-mailed her. It was great to re-connect as our previous communication was long before I began the Tall Girl Series. Later I watched an archived video from a local afternoon TV show where these two women were interviewed, and the subject of medical manipulation was in reference to pre-selecting specific traits in unborn babies.

My surgeries were conducted to make me “normal.” Susan said it best It’s real people who bring the discussion of what is normal, and who gets to define it, alive. Obviously little has changed, except possibly the definition of normal. That might be, whatever it is that one doesn’t already possess.

Complete change of subject…you know it is spring in the US when the mid-section is twisting if not frozen solid, the south is flooding, and the west is frying. This week we are expecting a thirty degree drop in temp from Monday to Friday. Today is sweltering, so I have barricaded myself in to do paperwork! I may even tackle an overdue good deed.

An elderly former neighbor and life-time watercolorist moved to a retirement village in Washington a few years ago. She is 90 now and still has all her brain cells. She can type, but does not do the internet. So in her Christmas card she asked if I could send her photos of my quilts.

Now why is this so difficult?! What did we do before websites and the internet? We exchanged photos!

So I decided that “someday”, I would put together for her a collection of my artwork, 300 dpi printed out and send it to her. Four months have passed since I decided to do this task so I believe today is the day!!! It has to be cooler than slaving over an iron and just might make her day.

today’s image: rock path Missouri Botanical Gardens, St Louis

Last fall we bought a “new” car, to replace a 20 yr old model on which the only thing still working was the engine. We bought a 2004 lease-return fully equipped to do everything but wash itself. Initially I was really stoked about the GPS. So far the little woman and I have parted ways four times when she declared I was at my destination and I was not. So what does any of this have to do with art? I have found my intuitive sense is stronger than the little woman in the box on the dashboard!

I recognize that all the bells and whistles in the world do not necessarily make my art better. In the past year, I have become much less enamored with two of the three ‘art quilt’ periodicals in my mailbox. Initially I was seduced by the outstanding color separation, the quality of the paper, the breadth of the articles. Now, my body tenses as I read through it, often in an hour’s sitting or less.

Recently I decided to let my subscription lapse on Quilting Arts. True it is totally an eye candy magazine, which initially drew me to it. Yet it has become so technique and craft-oriented that my dog can make an art quilt! This publication has evolved from state-of-the-art work to you too can make this in a weekend. I can’t stand it.

Disclaimer: While several of my peers have been published in said publication, my revulsion has nothing to do with them! I admire and applaud their successes in publication and their art in general.

Long ago I recognized that I was seduced by color. Initially my blog profile said I would buy fertilizer if it came in fuchsia. Once I realized my attraction to something was about the color and not the actual object, I cut way back on my spending.

For me this publication is the same. The color seduction gets me every month, but there is no substance there, for me anymore. My time would be better served reading a gardening (color! color! color!) or an architectural magazine.

Clearly I am at a turning point in my art career. While it feels right now like I am just procrastinating, and I am… really I am processing. I do some of my best work when I do nothing at all!

Today’s photo: a 5′ fava bean at the Missouri Botanical Garden

It is a good day to be a tall girl. After decades of living in the shadows (ha!), tall girls are all over the news. Not only is there my wonderful book (shameless promotion) but also two more news items have crossed my desk in the past month.

A week ago a friend sent me a chunk of the April 2009 Vogue which is an article written by a tall 28 yr old woman about her life experiences. She made reference to the shin-sawing surgery as being mentioned as an option for her. This totally freaked me out and inspired me to fire off a letter to the editor, only to discover there is no way to contact the editor of Vogue. The reason it freaked me out is this is the same kind of surgery that was performed nearly 44 years ago, only mine was much more complex than just sawing shins . I am aghast that such procedures were still being bantied about by anxious parents and surgeons just 18 years ago. Have we made NO progress in accepting bodies as they were designed?

Then another friend who is a college librarian sent me the link to a book she came across while buying textbooks. It is Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry’s Quest to Manipulate Height . It was just published in March by a big time publishing house. I studied the authors’ names and one was really familiar. So I looked into my TG file and voila! she was the same woman who interviewed me 2-3 years ago for this book she was writing about the generation of guinea pig women who were given hormones to control their growth, as my younger sister was. The author had said she would comp me a book, but I hadn’t heard from her since, so I bought it used on Amazon for $1.85!

Meanwhile I have been busy getting ready for the next chapter in the Tall Girl Series. I have been designing the PowerPoint presentation. And I wrote an exhibit proposal and sent it to eight venues for 2010 and beyond. And Cathy Ortelle asked me to do a presentation for her art quilt group, the Pointless Sisters in late May. This gives me a doable deadline to get the PowerPoint wrapped up, so I can get back into the studio and create work for an upcoming non-TallGirl exhibit!

And then there was one….book! Last week when my book inventory was low, I attempted to open the files, upload and reprint the book. Because it is a honkin’ huge file, I had previously used the capabilities within the software to move the files to my external drive, after publication. So as I tried to pull them back over, the publishing software would not recognize them! Ack. Two days of emails back and forth between their tech guys and still no files. The most frustrating part was I could see them with my naked eye…why couldn’t the software?

So I bit the bullet and over the weekend re-designed it, on my laptop, which has more room and works faster. I moved the files over on a flash drive. After I got the second edition all finished, I saved a copy on the laptop, and then exported the files to the flash drive to load onto the PC so I could proof on a higher resolution screen. And guess what?! The software would not recognize the files. By then, just about ready for the guys in the white coats, I showered and went downtown with my husband to see Leon Redbone.

…hours later. I am happy to report I was able to finally open the 2nd edition of my book on the PC and order it. I have decided to just leave it there from now on, but did go back to the laptop to make a copy there and now it won’t recognize the files. Ay yi yi!

Now all I can say is ….no regrets, no hard feelings, it’s over…