Carol Larson - textile artist

Taking the lead from my friend Cathy Ortelle, I recently cleared the paint shelf of various vintage bottles of Dyna-Flow paint. I had purchased it years ago when I found my passion for surface design; much to my chagrin it was too runny for screen-printing. This is another example of keeping something long enough so it is eventually useful. I am by no means a pack-rat and yet in my dye-paint area, I have a lot of paints, tools and what-not that might come in handy someday.

This is some mysterious fabric I had on the shelf. I believe it is cotton, and crinkled as well. So the paint absorbed really wonky, but I like it. I just took one long piece downstairs to paint and the other two I will use as is.

When I was in Long Beach over the weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Maureen Thomas from the UK. She is the quilt artist who taught Cathy this technique. I told her about my recent play and dumping of all things dyna-flow on fabric, so she asked me to send these images.

Additionally I have just finished updating my website. Contrary to my previous remarks, I am working on a series! I finally put my obsession for the wiggily line into many works and am still going. I wanted to title them streamers but out of consideration for Liz Berg and her streamer series, I didn’t. Instead I titled them Currents after spending hours pouring through the thesaurus. Three of the Currents series and one other piece will be heading for the hills next month to exhibit at Shenandoah Winery for the remainder of the year.

I am just back from a whirlwind trip to Long Beach to attend the International Quilt Festival. I am the curator for a SAQA exhibit Points of View which opened there. I use the term curator loosely as it has been an absolute joke, although it does look fabulous on my professional resumé.

My experience has been so completely exasperating, that I recently resigned as a future volunteer for this organization, with the exception of finishing out my term as curator. It seemed essential as they continued to ask me to take on more tasks. They function primarily as a volunteer organization, but need to learn to take better care of those who are working to build their public image.

The best part of being their curator is a fellowship of sorts has formed amongst the curators of the various exhibits as we all have had abundant experience in banging our forehead on the wall! Meanwhile the exhibit looked beautiful and I got to meet some of the artists whose work was in it and they lavished me with thanks for my efforts on their behalf, so that was gratifying.

The smartest thing I did this weekend was rent a scooter for two days. As I zipped in and out of the crowds, saw the entire 400K sq ft building from corner to corner, zipped over to the hotel and back, I continually felt gratitude! I had no pain, got stuck in just two elevators, jammed one hotel elevator, and hung countless wheelies. I even got unsolicited advice on buying one of my own from other riders. I want one that will fit in my purse!

On Thursday I saw a killer exhibit at the Long Beach Museum of Art called “Novel Constructions’. It had less than 10 pieces which were all mixed media with book themes. There were several with multiple layers of hand-made papers, and two made from tar paper. There were another two by Cheryl Sorg which intrigued me, made entirely with cellophane tape and strips of text. One looked like giant nasturtium blossoms (above) and the other like vintage lace. And there were just paper and tape. Photos were discouraged and I had left my camera in the room anyway…of course, but I did snap this with my cellphone, even though I protest too much about people who do that exact thing!

I also checked out the permanent collections which included the image on the website of the woman on the escalator which was a painting. The gallery holding the permanent collection had a full wall of windows which overlooked the (long) beach. Then I dined on the veranda of a big house next door, and felt like a real grownup enjoying life in the southland on a sunny summer day!

I may have mentioned before that I am a retired workaholic. Basically what that means is I was a recovering workaholic who retired! Back then I still dressed for work and made a salary. Now retired from the day job for a decade, collecting no salary, I devote possibly 30-35 hours a week to the business of art. I vacillate between being a sloth and retired workaholic as I take time to make art, exercise, eat, sleep, see friends and relax. But I still am an organizational freak and today I discovered how that has really come to serve me.

In my last post, I mentioned I have been chosen to present a class/lecture on the local art center’s fall calendar. There was just a wee problem with my proposal and that was I did not actually have the PowerPoint lecture I plan to deliver! So over the weekend I culled slides from a similar lecture I gave 4-5 years ago. I sent 40 of those off to be converted to digital images.

In the studio, under the design table is a ledge, with an old wood letter box. In there filed under organizational freak I found many, many photos of original inspiration for my work. I also found notan designs, sketches on acetate film, photographs etc. I have managed to create most of this presentation from stuff I kept. While I have sorted through this pile in the past, I often wondered why I was keeping it? I had no plans to go back and do these pieces again. There would be no series of these older works.

The 2nd quilt I made was of scraps (above detail); which if you think about it, how many scraps could I have had with my second quilt!?! I was going to title it “Daughter of the War Bride” until I was asked to bring it to Tokyo to hang in the big Quilt Expo there. I re-thought it and came up with “Fragments,” instead.

Why I continue to keep stuff which I believe is of no use and then suddenly I need it years down the road is truly another important trait of both the Daughter of the War Bride and organizational freak.

There is an old religious expression that my grandmother used to say quite frequently…God does not give you more than you can handle. Being more of the Eastern philosophy myself, I believe if we put it out there, it comes back to us. I am currently experiencing a lot of this. It is both exciting and exhausting!

Finishing the general excavation of the Tall Girl Series, artwork, book, and PowerPoint freed up incredible energy which has enabled me to move forward, putting it out into the world and starting anew with my ‘everyday’ art. In the past week I landed my first solo exhibition for this body of work. Additionally, I picked up another TG PowerPoint lecture, which now makes three.

Most recently I have put four visions for my work out there. Three have come back, so far. Included in one is a request to talk a bit about time management and how I do it all. Ha! fooled them…I will let you know as soon as I figure it out. Fortunately when I am off the computer and making art, I am very prolific.

Friends have often said I should be teaching. I believe I do have something to offer but am uncertain if I have the patience for it…although I am a mother. So I decided to find out and wrote a class proposal for the art center’s fall program schedule. And today I learned the class was accepted. So now I need to prepare that PowerPoint which I wrote up in my description!!

Now this is where it just gets weird. I gave this as a slide lecture about 5 years ago. At that time, I digitally shot images that held inspiration for me, and had them made into slides. Now that I want those digital images for this new PowerPoint, you think I can find them? No! I looked all over this PC and all through the external drive and no go. Maybe they are on a CD somewhere? So I suppose now I need to have the slides converted back to digital images. They ought to be really great quality by then! After I go to this trouble, I hope I really like teaching.

While searching for these images, I did find BEST HAIR 2005. I am really sorry I didn’t keep those frames as big eyes are back in style. This image gave me pause though…what if I let my hair grow out and did that look again? Oh yeah, I remember, I’ve told my hip hairdresser I didn’t want to be just another middle-aged gray haired woman with a bob! Maybe I will just put it out there and see what happens…

I am a sucker for a good purse. I always figured it was because I couldn’t find shoes but I do know others with this affliction who have no shoe issues. It probably has some deep seated psychological meaning about needing to containerize my life!

I am off on a quickie jaunt to Long Beach, soon and so I have started my usual pre-travel prep. Before every trip of recent memory I go through a ritual. Often it is the jacket ritual, where I design and sew a killer jacket to take on my trip. I have been known to dye and paint the fabric, design and sew the jacket, find the perfect closure and then not take it on the trip because it doesn’t fit in my bag or I have changed my mind about what to wear in the interim.

For some reason, this trip I have been obsessed with the purse! After too many visits to the chiropractor decades ago I gave up on the tall girl needs a big purse theory. Actually my favorite purses are a large wallet with a strap. And you can tell they are my favorite because the two I currently use are looking a little beleaguered. So this past week or so I have been on the hunt for the latest, greatest up to datest perfect purse replacement. Well, of course as any consumer knows, one can never find it when one is looking. Why, some of my best purse purchases have been in airports. By then it is a little late!

Finally, I gave up in disgust and started rifling through my purse drawer. And what did I find? An old lover, beat up with a scar on it’s face. Never fear, Lumiere is here!

I taped a resist pattern rather randomly with blue masking tape. It did leave a mark, dulling the finish but since the rest of the black is covered, no biggie. I also am on a jag of using the metal colors in paint. That is quite evident with the new work on my website! So while this purse looks really fancy, I will still be wearing it with my Chucks….which are of course painted!

All this reminds me of the saleswoman in Ikea who told me I looked like an artist. She did not mean it as a compliment but I sure took it as one!!!

Today I received the fantastic news that my Tall Girl Series: A Body of Work exhibit has its first venue! It will be shown at the Wiseman Gallery, Rogue Community College, Grants Pass, OR in Feb 2010. I am doing a major happy dance!

After all the work of healing my spirit and body from three life-changing surgeries; designing, painting & stitching 23 pieces of work; designing and self-publishing a book, developing a PowerPoint presentation of it, I knew my process was still not complete.

My initial motivation for doing this very painful, courageous and laborious body of work was to use my story to benefit others; that some good would come of all this. It has taken psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, accupressure, buckets of tears, supportive friends, massive quantities of chocolate, peanut butter, brownies, ice cream, wine, books of journals and years of procrastination to arrive at this point. And yet I feel such incredible freedom for the work I have done. The exhibition of this important work is the frosting on the cake of my story. And I am ready, fork in each fist!

Initially I sent proposals to ten venues. I have so far received 5 declines. Yet I have never wavered in my determination that this work be shown, that a venue with the vision to show this controversial work was out there, and that it might take awhile to connect; and potentially with one or two or three exhbits the word will spread.

This week, I set a pile of at least 40 calls for submission on my desk. Argh… It is a big pile. I don’t want to start, I’d rather play another hour of mindless computer games, watch CNN till the cows come home or do anything but the paperwork! Just yesterday I rationalized that a reasonable goal was to have ten TG exhibit submissions out at a time, so now I only need to do 5! This is doable….manana!

This has been one of the weirdest energy days of all time…starting with tears @ Jermaine Jackson singing at his brother’s service, to a dynamic TG focused tarot reading to 2 hours at the nursery picking out plants for the new garden to coming home to this letter and another unrelated piece getting into another unrelated exhibit! And there are also emails about my Dad that I don’t want to even consider right now.

I guess that is the thing about growth…the more you do the more that gets heaped on! Perhaps I need a larger plate to go with my forks…

This afternoon I went downstairs to apply of layer of ack! Mod Podge to this work. A couple of weeks ago I posted to the SAQA list looking for a solution to seal the type-face on this piece.

When I brought it home from last Tall Girl lecture and was rolling up for storage, I had tiny letters of stories on my finger-tips. Since this piece was legitimately finished last year, I knew it needed something to seal the ink of the digitally printed fabrics. What the heck, this piece already has the aforementioned fabrics, gesso, textile paint, fabric, thread and paper on it. What’s another layer, especially something as stinky as decoupage glue?!

The first thought that popped in my head while down there was the chance encounter last Friday when the original owners of the place stopped by. We have called this place home for 35 years, and there was a brief occupancy before us, so it has been at least 37 years since they lived here. I had been out volunteering at the art center so I was presentable from the neck up. From there down, though I had thrown on some really ugly clothes, a ratty t-shirt and wrinkled harem pants! The house was fairly tidy, but I didn’t obsess because they had dropped in.

We gave them the entire tour and they remarked about different things, including my studio being Joey’s room. When we got to the basement, the Ms. told me that the Mr. had dug that basement out himself. I will be forever grateful to him for giving me such a great space to dye, paint, experiment and even use mod podge!

After the Mod Podge, I decided to stay awhile and play despite our mandatory water rationing. We are supposed to cut our water usage by a scant 15% this summer, because we had too much California sunshine last winter. We had foolishly cut back several months ago on our own, so there is not much more we can do.

So there I was rinsing my painting screens with water and bargaining with myself. I can paint more cloth if I shower less! I had already figured out I could cut consumption an additonal 15% by showering at the gym once a week. I painted five pieces of cloth, so I may be showering at the gym all week. Of course that means I may have to exercise too while I am there.

If only that were true! As I have said before, my work often gets out more than I do. And for this piece, Rue Boulangerie that is the case.

Rue Boulangerie is off to France! This piece was inspired by a side street on the way to the bakery in tiny Cote Azur, near Toulon in the south of France. We traveled to Toulon by train from Rome, in 2002. We had just finished a fabulous 10-day tour of Italy, where most in the group had a ghastly cold. By the time we hit the rails, I was coughing, hacking, sneezing, gasping, feverish and generally miserable for the entire 12 hour trip. At least no one bothered us!!! Once we arrived in Toulon and were comfortably settled in our friends’ 3 story fixer-upper in this tiny village, I went to bed and did not get up for three days. I was upset that my precious time on the French Riviera was spent in bed, but c’est la vive!

When I finally was able to pry myself off the bed and get out of the house, I wandered to the nearby bakery for fresh croissant, taking my camera. This side street captured my attention and thus the work inspired by my love of all things French bakery!

So I am returning to Cote Azur vicariously through my work which will hang in the three story fixer-upper, perhaps in the room where I lay for 3 days contemplating the croissant!