Planet Textile Threads

Galicia is as unlike ones stereotypes of Spain as it could be. The music is Celtic with its own harp and bagpipes, the lanes are green, green, green. The stones here are slate grey and rich browns and all is covered with mosses, succulents and wild flowers as thick and varied as a good Texas spring.

We are staring day four of our slow easy last 100 k of the Camino de Santiago, we will be on the way until next Saturday when we will attend the Pilgrim 's mass at the cathedral where relics of Saint James are venerated.

Internet service is a bit sketchy so my posts will be sporadic, but once home I will upload a PDF of my trip journal for anyone interested.

neki desu
 

We had an early morning start today. Our part of Japan has been readying itself for viewing the solar eclipse that was visible around 7:30 am. The stores have been selling little plastic glasses/filters, the schools requested that the children be on the grounds by 7:15 am. But was it going to be a clear day? We've been having a lot of rain and the sky has been cloudy. I didn't buy the plastic filter figuring that $5 for an uncertain three minutes of solar eclipse was extravagant. (if I had had kids at home I probably would have...)

I had to be at the crosswalk this morning by 6:45 and so there I stood in the bright morning sunlight. By 7:00 the principal joined me and he was very excited about the eclipse and kept peering through his plastic filter. He let me have a glance and... AMAZING! What I perceived as a normal morning sun, through the filter was a partially eclipsed orb! But I was on duty... no time to look at the sun and I couldn't be carrying a camera. Too bad. I was probably going to miss this eclipse. But by 7:15, everyone was at school and so I came home to NOT watch the eclipse.

But wait! The news had mentioned the interesting shadows that would be made filtered through tree leaves. We certainly have the trees around here! Tetsu brought out a piece of white paper and lo and behold! Eclipse patterns! How exciting!

I do not understand why the sun shining through the leaves reflects the eclipse. Just looking through the leaves we saw nothing.

You DO see all the crescent shapes through the leaves don't you?

A beautiful piece of art right there.

And these millions of orbs (getting close to the complete eclipse) were the eclipse filtered through the fir tree branches.

Why, Tetsu! Your white t-shirt has crescents all over it!

A fascinating morning. I didn't miss not having a plastic filter at all!

When we left Black Butte Ranch Friday morning to head home from our retreat, we took a small detour off the main road to see the head of the Metolius River. Gerrie had been told she should go there since we were in the area, so we were all game. We parked at the information area. It was a fairly short walk through the ponderosa pines down to where the river emerges from the earth. The day was beautiful and the soft sunlight filtering through the dense forest took the edge off the chilly mountain air.

The Metolius comes out of the ground as springs in the dark area of the photo below, and quickly widens into a river that bubbles over rocks and winds into the forest.

From there we drove a few miles to the little community of Camp Sherman where the river rolls through. Here is the the Camp Sherman store. We bought supplies for a picnic for further down the road. It is a charming little store that is well equipped and has a large section of fishing supplies in the back.


From in front of the store you see beautiful cabins along the river.

We were all so enchanted by this little piece of paradise that we decided to check into renting a cabin here for our next retreat.

I love these yearly retreats. Now I am home, and glad to be, but grateful for that time with my friends and change of scene. I think we all need that.

PS  For those who are curious about such things, the white flowering bushes in the river photos are Syringa, also called Mock Orange, which is a wild relative of lilac. Also the state flower of Idaho. The tall trees are Ponderosa Pine, which are very fragrant, beautiful trees with an unusual patterned bark. The plant in the store photo with the red-tinged leaves and yellow blossoms is Oregon Grape, the state flower of Oregon.

Yesterday, Tetsu took me on another adventure. Our drives all turn out to be adventures because we never seem to know where we are going...

Tetsu announced last week that he had Saturday off and thought we should make good use of it by going somewhere. He mumbled about making an early morning start by leaving at 4:00 am. but the night before we were still watching TV at 10:00.

"Are we or are we not going to do something tomorrow? In which case I want to clean up the house tonight."

Tetsu was still hemming and hawing so I went to bed. (House untidy.)

The next morning at 5:00 Tetsu was raring to start the day (I'd glanced at the clock at 4:00, noticed he was still asleep and figured the day's plans had been put on hold.) Tetsu cleaned up the house while I took Choco for a walk and by 6:00 we were off and away.

But to where?

"Oh, south. Have you ever been to Harajuku? How about Sky Tree? Or Yokohama? There's a bridge that is interesting. We could go to Kamakura. Where do you want to go?"

All these names and I don't really know much about any of them so I don't know where I want to go and Tetsu knows perfectly well that if he hasn't taken me to any of these places then I've never been to them.

So we drove south... On back roads. After 5 hours of driving we still didn't seem to be getting to our destination (wherever that was) and my mood was spiraling. The streets were crowded, Tetsu kept throwing out new suggestions as to where we could go (he has that GPS now so he feels almighty and can go anywhere... if he could only remember the names of some of the places he's heard about.) I contented myself with reading the photography book I'd brought along. A sure formula for a headache... Reading while riding in a car, Japanese language, and the unfathomable digital workings of a camera....

But at lunchtime we stumbled upon the new outlet mall somewhere near Tokyo. Oh good. A chance to stretch our legs! The mall was beautiful but too much like Rodeo Drive with all the brand shops. A blouse on half price off for $200? No thank you. We got back on the road without any purchases.

BUT!!!!!! Look where we ended up!!!!!

This is called Umihotaru... Literally translated as "Firefly of the Sea." It is a man-made island in the center of the Tokyo Bay and is connected to land by a bridge on one side and a tunnel on the other. The distance across the bay is 14 kilometers, the bridge being about 5 kilometers and the tunnel being about 9.

The amazing thing about this bridge/island/tunnel is that the highway suddenly disappears in the middle of the bay... How is that possible? Why doesn't the sea water just lap into the tunnel? What happens when there is a typhoon? Isn't this the country of tidal waves? How could any architect conceive of a mid-sea tunnel?

Here we are driving over the last of the bridge and heading into the island. It actually looks like a large ship resting at the end of a long pier.


And this is the view from the top looking back towards the shore and over the bridge that we'd just crossed.

And this interesting object is part of the drill that was used to drill under the bay the last 9 kilometers. It was a bit of a thrill to stand next to this huge piece of machinery and think of how it had been put to work.

The bits are worn down in places and slightly rusting... Making it easier to imagine the massive job the drill performed.

Really a beautiful piece of machinery!


I'm getting carried away here.


I should have worn red or bright yellow or something. That is me down there on the left in the black.

And the hazy dot on the horizon I think is the end of the tunnel... Or maybe a special ventilation island for the tunnel.  In which case the tunnel end is further on.  The island just slips down into the sea and the highway comes up again at some far away point.

Even the island surface is artistic.


Umihotaru itself is 4 stories high and besides two floors for parking it has a lot of shops and restaurants. The nice thing about it is that once the parking is filled, that's all the people that are going to be on the island so the crowds weren't overwhelming. Of course to cross the bridge, visit the island and go through the tunnel to the other side of the bay runs about $35 a car but it was nice to sit on the deck with a cup of coffee and watch ships passing by and enjoy a short but very different vacation.

And here we go around the loop and back onto the highway heading under the island and under the depths of the sea...


It took about 15 minutes to make the rest of the trip through the tunnel.


I've lifted this picture off the Internet so that you can actually see how the road and island disappear into the sea. Not a picture I could have taken myself!


Our car took us other places in the late afternoon. I'll post those pictures later. We arrived back home around 9:00 at night (using the tollway) making it a long day of driving for Tetsu but he was ever so pleased with himself for discovering a place that excited me so much!

My daughter, Stephanie, has often told me of the beauty of this area of Oregon. She and her family camp there every year. I knew it was near Sisters.

Then, at the art show last week, one of the artists sold a painting titled, Metolius Light. I had not connected it to the place Steph loves until, I had a conversation with the artist about the painting. She told me it was a river near Sisters that she loves. I said I am going up there next week and I hope to go see it.

The magical thing about this river is how it starts as a spring bubbling up out of the moss. You can see it up there. And then, you look to the right and very soon, it has become a river.

You walk through the Ponderosa Pines and fir trees to find this magical spot.

It is quiet and peaceful except for the musical sound of the bubbling spring and the river flowing into the distance. I was entrance by it and could have stayed there for a long time.

We finally walked back to the cars and drove into Camp Sherman, which is located on the Metolius. It is lined by cabins that you can rent.

I came home and told Mr C that we are going to rent one of those cabins so that I can spend some more time on the Metolius.

Today, I planned to do some gardening. I only got as far as planning how to move my herb garden to planters on the deck. This required some internet searching and a trip to a couple of stores with Mr C. We ordered two of the larger ones from Restoration Hardware. They are made from galvanized sheet metal. I think the will look great on the deck.

Tonight, Jack and M and M came over for dinner. Steph is getting back from a week of work  for 3191 with Maria in Maine late tonight. I haven’t posted a photo of M & M for awhile. They are really growing up so fast.

They are engrossed with the Alchemy app on my iPad.

This sketch of the upper Yellowstone River Valley was created by the Hayden survey team that visited the area in the mid 1800's.  I enlarged it to create the Thermofax screen.  Then, I colored it in with watercolor crayons and painted with water to create the washed effect.  I lived in this valley for 10 years.  The tall peak on the left is Emigrant Peak.

Day 1 of class and I'll get right to the point.  Here are four blocks before they were cut into smithereens and after they were transformed.

Main event at college for the week was the practitioner lecture, given by Silke Dettmers, who used to have a studio on the site of the Olympic Stadium. Many people lost their studio space there, and on eviction she started taking photos of the "blue fence", some of which were published in the 2007 Guardian story (but aren't in the online version).

She says she's attracted to disasters and has made a number of works from salvaged wood - I found this small-scale one particularly resonant -
"Blue House" also speaks to me -
Artists she mentioned: Anne & Patrick Poirier (Domus Aurea); Charles Simonds; Rebecca Horn (the piano in the Tate); Daniel Buren; David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology (in LA); Vija Celmins' replica of stones; Tim Hawkinson's Balloon Self Portrait; Marian Bantjes' book I Wonder; Helen Maurer; Anna Boggon.

"Some books are to be tasted" is an exhibition of bookworks shown in three countries - Colombia, Poland, UK (website here; view from a participant here).

Read her article about the necessity of wonder here.

Late yesterday I got home from three days with my friends at our yearly STASH retreat. This year we went back to the house at Black Butte Ranch where we were a couple years ago. I organized a surface design project for us just so we would not feel too relaxed! We experimented with paste resist on fabric, which we then painted. It was a good kind of project for a several day long retreat since there are steps that require drying time between. We could do step 1, then leave it to dry and go off on some adventure of sightseeing, or shopping or eating. Eating was big.


Step one: Mix up paste and spread it on fabric in a thin layer. We used a combination of rice flour and wheat flour. Some were left with a simple paste layer, others we marked into the paste with various tools. The unmarked pieces will, with any luck, become allover crackle patterns.

Suzy, Gale and Gerrie here, spreading the pancake batter-ish goo on their fabric. Then we took them out to the deck and spread them out to dry and went off to the Black Butte Lodge for an incredible dinner with the sun setting behind the view of spectacular mountains, lake, golf course and ponderosa pines. A couple of the group with foot surgery and medical issues drove to the Lodge and the rest of us walked. The walk was beautiful, but our memories were faulty concerning how far it was, plus we were confused about walking to a different restaurant two years ago that was a much shorter walk, so we were quite late for our reservation and dragging our butts by the time we finally arrived, but were soon refreshed by wine and really just wonderfully memorable food and good conversation and lots of laughing.

Step two: The next morning we "cracked" our dry pasted fabrics, then painted over the tops with acrylic and fabric paints—the plan being that the paint seeps into the cracks and marks onto the fabric and the rest of the fabric is protected from the paint by the paste resist.


Again, we spread them out on the sunny deck to dry and headed into Bend for another adventure. We found Starbucks and then a beautiful quilt shop that we had never been to before. We were happy to leave a few dollars at Quiltworks and bring home some beautiful fabrics and threads. Our lunch at the Pine Tavern turned into a marathon. We waited for more than an hour for our food, but it was outstanding once it arrived and they apologized for the delay with complimentary desserts. Again, plenty of good, often hilarious conversation. We do the eating/conversation part so well!

Step three: When we got back to Black Butte our creations were dry and we began the arduous task of cracking and scraping the dried paste off our fabrics. The paste can be removed more easily by soaking the piece in water overnight and then washing the remaining paste out, but we did not want to make a big gooey mess in the rental house or try to dispose of all that gummy, sticky wet paste. And—we wanted to be able to see what our fabrics looked like before we left. So we scraped with a spoon and picked with our fingers and revealed at least some of each piece to admire. Soaking and finishing will happen back home.


Here are areas with resist removed.

Pretty great, huh? It was fun and exciting to see the results. I think we all got a lot of ideas about how to improve the process and inspiration to try variations. Can't wait to see what we do with these fabrics.

It was a great getaway with friends—wine, good food, laughs, stories, games of Draw Something and Mexican Train and the beauty of the pines and the aspens and the mountains of the High Desert country of Oregon.

I feel refreshed.

During a customer-service-failure incident at M&S, which made me resolve to avoid their Covent Garden store at all costs and forever, I had time to reflect that it was silly to be buying the wrong sort of socks, no matter how little money would be spent for them. This morning, after a peaceful hour spent darning, the beloved socks are restored to functionality, if not beauty.

 Elsewhere, an embroidered map by Susan Stockwell -
 and this rather desirable chair -

At last, a use for those pre-digital photos -

And faux-cactus - some made of cloth, others of wood; elsewhere, they were stuck with toothpicks for spines -
Back in Covent Garden, another creature that we left in the store -
The highlight of the afternoon was trying on the jolly yellow footwear - a size too large, though, and even after reducing, still costing £115 - as they say, "in your dreams.." -

 Here are a few more images from taping day at Quilting Arts Workshop.  This is not the Quilting Arts TV series where the artist is sharing the set with a host.  This is just me teaching and demonstrating my technique all by myself.  Above, we are deciding whether I should be standing or sitting for the taping.  They have to set up the camera for one or the other.
 Here are the smaller pieces I brought in as details for the technique.  The floral piece in the upper right corner is the project for the demo.  Below, the next two photos show the wall hangings I brought for my background.  The cottonwood piece on the left and the seedpod piece on the far right have not yet been shown on the blog (I expect to get around to showing the process for them at some point).  Some of you may recognize the red and yellow piece in the center that was one of the first pieces I did in this style.

We ended up deciding I should be seated for the taping.   I really do not know when the DVD will be available for release.  I am sure they have to edit and prepare for production.  I'll keep you posted as I learn more!

What  beautiful scenery and weather awaited us in the high desert of Oregon. I loved seeing the beautiful aspens, once again. This time of year, the leaves are small and green, but still rustle in the wind.

Shortly after we arrived on Wednesday, Terry got us started mixing up flour paste to spread on fabric. And then the mark making commenced.

Here is Suzy making marks on her fabrics with a skewer. And below, is Terry.

 

Reva brought a piece of fabric that had marks from a previous surface design project.

Here is one of my pieces.

Here is that piece after it dried and started crackling.

The next day, we painted the dried and crackled pieces.

I still have to remove the paste and extra paint from my pieces. I will report on that later.

Do you know why Sisters, Oregon is called Sisters? A trio of mountains is the reason – known as the Sisters.

There are only two in this photo. I am really tired. I’ll be back tomorrow. G’ Night.

They were digging up the streets in Clinton so I didn't take any pictures there, but as we walked across the bridge, this was the scene. YES,people, this is New Jersey.


After that, we headed to Frenchtown, NJ where we dined al fresco at the famous Frenchtown Inn.
Here is Carol (the drink is mine) wearing what looks like two pairs of glasses. Hmmm...
And here is the requisite foodie picture. Jumbo crab cake: I wasn't sure whether they were referring to the crab or the cake, but I realized that it was probably both. It was delectable.

That's all for now. I promise to take pictures in class tomorrow and will hope to get some good before-during-after versions. 'Nite.

  Mr. Handsome and I walk every morning along the river. The water is high now  and peak run off may be about to begin. The traditional marker for this is the blooming of wild roses. They have just begun. This has been such a strange Spring, weather-wise, that who knows, anything can happen.

Watching the Osprey, Eagles and all the smaller birds is a delight. Daily, we see a huge Bull Snake. Beau is mystified when it disappears.

Here’s Beau, enjoying the view through the newly installed French Door.

 

We are moving into the very beginning of Gardening Season in my part of Montana. The weather has been alternately very hot (85), quite cool (40) or raining , as it is today. In between watering the weeds and pulling some, not much is happening in the gardens. I had intended to plant the scarlet runner beans and sunflowers today, and may yet, if the weather clears.

The primary focus  has been on the house improvements and promising myself and others, to reopen my Etsy Shop, begin the now very late MayDazed Sale and trying to maintain what passes for sanity as I move into Year Two as a person without a partner. We never quite know how much our partners actually DO until they are not doing it. <G>

Right now, all the sheet rock dust is cleaned up, the floors are mopped and the space is being restored as a place to  live and use. I love the change and am glad the work is nearing completion.

The State of the French Door:

  This is what we see (looking North East) as we come in through the South facing front door. The cats love it. The light is wonderful.

You may not be able to see the Russian Iris, 3 feet tall and purple but they are lovely and aromatic.  The arbor was originally built for privacy, for the birds and for grapes. Alas, the grapevines are dead now. I have to decide what to replace them with. This year, for quick growth and color, it will be scarlet runner beans, attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds, but for the long haul, perhaps clematis.

FWIW, the blinds are “temporary shades”,  accordian folded Tyvek shades, sold at the Box Store Home Improvement places. They block heat but allow light. Thanks to Sarah and Bob for introducing me to them !

Looking South East, you can see the “living fence”: Silverlace Vine, aka Polygonum, aka  “mile-a-minute”. <G>. I am training it again this year to cover a curved arch over the side gate and will aim for all season visual interest combined with privacy. It’s a daily exercise, going out and braiding or twining the vines.

The workers, my current  heroes, will be here this weekend to finish the exterior work, weather permitting (crossed fingers for us all!).

As you can see, I am not re-painting the inside walls and ceiling yet. That can wait. My next priority is updating Gallery Four and the Etsy Shop so we can begin sending the new work into the world.

Stay tuned and thanks for visiting.

Time was, I 'd find any old thing to blog about -- even nothing. But this week, I got sidetracked with finding my possible relatives after I had my DNA done. So interesting! I have realized that going back 5+ generations, I am related to half the world. In any case, I have heard from a number of people on whose list of matches I came up and vice-versa...and I have been doing research, trying to find the common link on my mother's side of the family. Very complicated, very confusing, and fascinating.
If you've thought about it, go to FamilyTreeDNA and check it out.
I highly recommend it. I see a number of people who have been adopted and are looking for biological relatives (even distant ones, like 5th cousins) through DNA matches. I hope they find some connections.

The other thing I've been doing at night instead of blogging is finishing up some small Cinderella (UFO) blocks as class samples for what you can do in a day in one of my workshops. Of course, nobody's results will look like these, but they are just examples. I will bring them to class this weekend, which is why I have been so preoccupied.





This next one, I just finished putting together and haven't done anything with it yet.  The components were made while I was working on the book and have been sitting around forever.  Yesterday, I decided to do something with them.  Here is the remaining Ohio Star, followed by what I finally did with it.

 The pix are slightly fuzzy because I took them in a urry, but you get the idea.  Just a whimsical, off-kilter piece that will eventually end up as a finished one. 

And now, back to packing up supplies for my weekend class at Courthouse Quilters in Frenchtown, NJ.
This is one of my favorites to teach, so I can't wait!  Will try to find time to blog over the weekend.
xo

About a month ago I started filling a notebook with "over-written" sonnets, spending an hour every day or two writing the 16 lines, starting the process of lodging the poem in my memory. They were taken from Poems on the Underground and so should be fairly well known: Donne, Michael Drayton, Keats, Edna St Vincent Millay, Milton, Wilfred Owen, Shakespeare (2), Wordsworth (2).

The notebook is now full - if ten poems can "fill" a book! - and the project has taken on new dimensions.
These strange pages may well look off-putting, unappealing, incomprehensible -- they need some explanation. Yet ... they should speak for themselves...

Looking at the punctuation (always a troublesome aspect in memorising poems) led to the "stitched sonnets", using a four-sided stitch for each syllable and a vertical line for a punctuation mark -
Stamping in the actual punctuation mark simply didn't work. To add interest to the collection, I'm using a different thread (from my wide-ranging thread collection) for each sonnet. Drayton, on the left, is variegated perle, Owen in the centre is variegated rayon, Millay on the right is also cotton. Currently I'm doing a bit of Milton in linen. They take about 3 hours each to stitch; though I've pulled them out to work on when travelling on bus and tube, it's best to be sat at my table (the one with under-table heating), listening to Radio 4, looking up occasionally to see birds in the tree outside.

Here's the Milton - that's the last line being stitched: "They also ..." What's missing from this "before and after" pic is the important intermediate step - the printout of the poem that I follow carefully -
Next step is to scan in the stitched version and print it out with the (typed) words on the back. These two attempts show that lines and words have to be carefully aligned both vertically and horizontally -
The one on the left was printed on typing paper and waxed; the one on the left, on onionskin and not waxed.  Once more are ready, they can be put together into a concertina book.

Another possibility for the over-writing (and help with memorisation) is line-by-line, using the words in each line. Since each line of a sonnet has 10 syllables [though some don't!], five can go each side of the gutter. I have some larger sheets of graph paper with faint squares, and aligned the type to fit the other side of the pages, aiming to make a series of two-sheet sections, each with the largely-illegible sonnet in the middle and a nicely legible version before and after it -
The size comes to 9.5cm wide and 21 cm tall. The mock-up shows a problem with the grain of the graph paper - the way it curls inward shows that it needs to run the other way -
This means rethinking the height of the page to fit the printed poem the other way round. Either the title or the author's name will have to go ... which could be a problem, or could be an opportunity ...

Questions I ask myself - how do sonnets fit in with my theme of everyday journeys? is this project interesting in any way to anyone else, or am I simply having an indulgent time, enjoying writing, memorising, and stitching (and problem solving)? is this worth continuing with, and if so, where's it going? how did I get started on this in the first place?

The starting point, or what I remember of it, is my concern with failing memory. The erasure of forgetting, and the unfelt absence of what has been forgotten; as well, the horrible realisation that a chunk of memory had disappeared for a while and the unwelcome thought that other chunks may have disappeared without trace. As we get older these memory-experiences are very real, yet even while we are younger, remembering and forgetting are things that happen to us every day - they are signposts on our everyday journeys. How better to exercise the memory-muscles than by learning a poem or two? (Even people with mild Alzheimer's are able to memorise poetry, I've been told ... and in trying to check this, have found there's an Alzheimer's poetry project. To be investigated...) Also I'm intrigued by how the process of memorisation works, on the practical and the psychological level.

The over-writing represents the jumble of possibilities as we try to reconstruct the memorised poem. In repeatedly writing a line, you become the poet, in a sense, as you become more familiar with the words. In trying to write the line from memory - and making a mistake - you become aware of why the poet chose the words that finally make up the poem. The length of the re-writing process, and the slowness of handwriting, give you time to consider these things.

Now I have 10 poems half-memorised. Trying to keep track of them as they accumulated day after day was confusing, but each time I revisit them they become more embedded and feel more like "friends". Stitching the poems without any distraction (talk on the radio) is most helpful - I wonder whether music would be a  distraction or helpful in some way.

Things to do to continue or finish this project:
1. add title page and  Index of First Lines to the book of overwritten sonnets; scan pages in, print out with typed version of poems on the back, make into concertina book
2. stitch enough sonnets to make a concertina book; scan them in, print out on appropriate, make into book (possibly by stitching pages together rather than gluing)
3. revisit the punctuation (somehow)
4. can the stitching be done in a different way - on cloth? with a different stitch?
5. think about why, or how, stitching fits with sonnet (or poetry in general)
6. if any of this is going to be waxed, find the right paper; if it's not going to be waxed, find the right paper
7. reconsider fonts for the (computer) printed version
8. write out the line-by-line version along with the printed version; make into a book (consider paper, cover, etc)
9. think/write about how memory "works" as an everyday journey

Desired outcome: several books that complement each other. (What will they be "about"? How can they be "read"? What would make someone want to look at, figure out, know more about them?)

As you know, or may know, I offer creativity coaching, and work as a volunteer mentor for people starting their own businesses.  I've got a background in personnel and self development, so I hope I'm fairly good at helping people to work out what they want, and how to get it.  That's particularly important in a small business, because you are often your only resource.  One of the most important things a coach can do is get you to listen to yourself, to what you and others are saying (often about you and your business), and work out what that means.  I'm currently working with another textile artist, and we came to a somewhat unexpected conclusion to what her business might actually be.  In reaching that conclusion, I said to her that the word people use about me and my work most often is 'inspirational', but that sadly, they never seemed to actually buy the work. 

On the way home, I was reminded of a Facebook conversation between myself, Annabel Rainbow and Felicity Griffin Clark, about the making and selling of work.  Annabel's comment (and I paraphrase wildly...) was that you either made work to sell or you made the work you needed to make, but the two didn't often go together.  That rang in my mind with the comment about being 'inspirational' (you, of course, may have another word to describe me...feel free to add it to the comments, I'm always interested in feedback).  And suddenly, it all clicked together in my mind.  I may have to make the work...but I don't have to sell it.  I don't have to do anything, really, except what I want to do.  What do I want to do?  I want to inspire people...it's what I seem to do best.  Perhaps the nicest thing anyone said about me  was that when I was on form, everybody around me changed their lives for the better.  That's what I love most.  Much of the art I make, is to illustrate a point for something or someone...like the Spunbond Sensations! blog, which is predominately a teaching blog, which I hope, eventually, will become a community. 

This feels like a huge breakthrough.  My art is important to me, and I won't stop doing it (actually, I don't think I could),  but the pressure of working to sell is something I just don't need.  I would rather enable others to do what I do.  I want to make up some kits using spunbonded fabrics, and others using hand dyes, for people who would like to try working with these things, but aren't quite sure where to start.  Enough 'stuff' for the project, and full instructions.  Hurrah!  I feel so much better about things now... sometimes, all you need is to listen to yourself...and the feedback you're getting.   Phew.

I spent a lot of time getting my sewing fix yesterday! It sure feels good to get things accomplished!

I have finished quilting Mrs. Furui's applique medallion quilt. I'm leaving the binding for her to do so this isn't considered a finish yet. Hopefully we will get it photographed in one piece before she takes it to the hospital. This was a learning project for me... I've never done crosshatching on the machine, I've never done such extensive meandering. I probably should have thought of something more striking than stitch in the ditch for the pieced borders but I was getting tired. Mrs. Furui did an excellent job of basting so the quilt moved not an smidgen. Still... all in all this took a lot more time than I had expected it would. I was hoping for a three day project and this took nearly three weeks. Of course a lot of time was wasted while I pondered what I should do on the next rounds etc...

And I put together a small baby quilt in the remaining afternoon. I have wanted to do this quilt for a long time and I first saw it on Sew Create It's blog and followed her link to the tutorial on Bee Square's blog. This went EXTREMELY fast and was a lot of fun to do. I may put on a border still if I find any time this weekend...


Chip approves!

 Last month, I was invited to submit a proposal for a Quilting Arts Workshop DVD.   My proposal was accepted and I went to Interweave headquarters in Loveland, Colorado last week to tape the video demonstrating my technique for hand printed quilts.  Here are a few pictures of me on the set.
 The finished DVD will be about 1 hour 10 minutes in length and I demonstrate all the steps involved in creating the block printed quilts.
 The DVD includes painting the background fabric, carving the printing blocks, a discussion of fabric paints, and finishing techniques including the fused and quilted binding I have been using with this style.

Now that the author has given permission for me to use her text, I'm moving ahead with making an edition of my first "erasure" letterpress book.

Some re-evaluation is needed

Available as a print here (no affiliation!)

Even if you aren't making your living from art, a business plan might be useful for helping you focus on the work you're setting out to make, and help maintain motivation. Somewhere, research has shown that when people write down their goals they are much more likely to achieve them. 

My friend at the Japanese sweet shop just had a new grandchild. This morning we were talking about the differences in customs for new mothers these days. Though it has been 30 years since my first baby, I thought I'd reminisce today (before it gets too far in the past that I forget!)

With our first baby, I still didn't speak much Japanese and I remember visiting the doctor and having things explained to me and not really understanding much at all. And doctor offices then (and now!) often have an inner waiting room with other patients waiting just on the other side of the curtains. I distinctly remember thinking

"Everyone in this room is understanding this doctor's conversation with me, but ME!"

With one baby I remember the doctor consulting his calendar and announcing that I would be wrapped up in a long piece of gauze (in those days they didn't use girdles) on Dog's Day because dogs give birth easily. It didn't seem to be a very medically sound reason for choosing this day (and let me tell you, that gauze wrap was uncomfortable!) but that was what the custom was.

With our first baby we wanted Tetsu be present at birth but we were the very first couple to make such a request and the doctor thought it a very odd American custom. No such thing as Lamaze classes so Tetsu, me and the hospital rolled with the punches. Young, first baby, not much Japanese language. I REALLY needed Tetsu there. With our other two children at different hospitals, for some reason they wouldn't let Tetsu attend the births.

"That's okay. I saw it once."

"Let me tell you, fella! It ain't for your observation!"

I managed the others alone.

In those days, though Western hospitals were letting mothers go home the day after having a baby, in Japan mothers were still being kept a week. I remember people being so surprised when Princess Diana was televised leaving a hospital with Prince William the day after he was born. My sweet shop friend's daughter-in-law came home after 5 days so things are changing in Japan too.

"They kick you out of the hospital these days because there are not enough beds to go around. Poor girl..."

And new Japanese mothers will go home to their own parents' house for a month to let their mother take care of them and the new baby. I've always thought it a shame that the father gets very little bonding time with his new baby that first month. Sometimes he will only visit the hospital after the baby is born and then a month later go to pick up his wife and baby.

At the very least, the new mother's mother will come to stay for a month to do all the laundry and cook and wash dishes etc. In the old days, it was supposed to be bad luck and bad for the health for a new mother to touch water. A new mother wasn't even supposed to bathe for a month. YUCK! You can be sure I threw out all those Japanese customs right away. Tetsu mother came and helped for a week or so but we had our own tiffs about how this new baby was going to be cared for (does the baby sleep face down or face up?) and Tetsu's mother gave up quickly, went home and let me make my own American mistakes...

I think I'll go upstairs and think about making a baby quilt for my friend's grandchild.

                




also finished the cloth for the front of the top. life is good.
( although there's another tangled skein looming in the background )(^_^)










neki desu

 Here is another fabric screen printed with the same screen - it reminds me of the shards of rotten wood we have been removing from an outdoor deck at one of our commercial buildings.  I have used the other two pieces from this screen as whole cloth, but I am bothered by the distinct grid on this piece.  The grid comes from the individual screens that were printed in a row, close together.  I decide the thing to do is to cut this piece into squares cut on the diagonal.

Talking to my mother on Mother’s Day, she mentioned that she had recently written a memoir for her college class reunion. I asked if she’d send it to me. When the email arrived, I realized I’d been given a wonderful gift — chance to know my mother better in a different time and place. She said I could publish it, because I thought others might be interested in these memories of college life in the late 50′s.

Washington University had an awesome reputation for a young, naive woman like me in 1958. We began with Freshmen Camp at Potosi and then rode buses back to stately Macmillan Hall with its paneled walls, well-worn wood floors, and creaking stairs. From the window of my third-floor room, I could see the post-WWII faculty housing across the drive. My possessions were minimal: a manual typewriter, lamp, clock, dictionary, clothes for a year, hatboxes, and head-sized hair dryer. In the hall was a phone for receiving inside calls, and pay phones were downstairs…

For breakfast I got in the long line oozing down the stairs to the double doors of the kitchen to give my order to the maitre d’. He called my request in to cooks who were making toast, frying pancakes, or scrambling eggs all to order. Dinner was different. In the wood-paneled dining room, at square tables for eight, we had china and linen table cloths and were served family style by fraternity guys in full dress. Out for the evening? Be sure to sign out telling where you were going, who you were with, and what time you would be back – 10 during the week and 12 on weekends.

The campus was dead after 8 o’clock unless you were a University College student. When I pulled an all-nighter, a little arthritic lady making the rounds would come in, pat me on the shoulder and say, “Try to get some sleep, dear.” The 1959 tornado blew by Wash U taking off the roof of the Arena, mangling the Highlands Ferris wheel, causing devastation in Forest Park, wrecking tenements and killing 21. In the dorm, most of us slept through the storm.

Another year and another home, the South Forty. The longer walk to campus was on a sidewalk built through the losing Battling Bears practice football field. The Hawaiian Club donated a newly-designed flag to fly over Brookings to celebrate Hawaii’s entrance to the Union as the 50th state. One Saturday morning, Angel Flight met at the ROTC building to see John F. Kennedy’s motorcade come down Big Bend. Kennedy, in an open convertible, gave his famous smile, and I understood what charisma meant. There was a new student center where we discussed Castro’s visit to the U.S. We watched in black and white as Ben Hur won 12 Academy Awards, and we saw the power of TV imagery in the Kennedy-Nixon debates. There was talk that Wash U was expanding to Chicago to recruit students. If that were successful, the University might try New York.

St. Louis was a great recreation place. The Esquire provided entertainment, and Parkmoor provided the chicken dinners that we took to Forest Park. Art Hill was a favorite spot day and night. I could travel the clang-clang trolley downtown, passing the flower shed on Skinker, on through the backyards of the rich and famous who lived on Lindell, to the Central West End, Gas Light Square with the Crystal Palace and finally to a downtown that always smelled like a licorice factory. The Climatron was a new venue, and the Arch an idea on paper.

It was always crowded by the main library on the quadrangle with its huge study hall. Not being trusted in the stacks, we would submit our call numbers, and runners went up to collect our books. I learned about growing up in New Guinea, the sermons of the Puritans, the salvage laws from Moby Dick, the importance of fruit flies, parabolic curves, and the dark side of Victorian poetry.

A rumor was whispered that, in the middle of the Cold War, there was a card-carrying-communist professor in Poly Sci. I wondered how I could have signed up for field hockey as the girls from Mary Institute were out to kill me on the field. At Graham Chapel Wednesday Lectures, I heard Indira Gandhi, daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, speak of the United States responsibility to third world countries. She was assassinated in 1984.

Those were happenings 50 years ago when I received my LA (Liberal Arts) degree. The world and the University are different today.

Thanks Mom – and Happy Mother’s Day again!

Time was like a falling star for me so as I look at the date of my last post I realize that it has been awhile. In the spirit of taking care of myself I found it was necessary that I take some time to process the experiences in my life. Sometimes as we walk this Good Red Road of life we need to pause and find a place to rest and just be totally present in the moment. Being still can be challenging work and I find it necessary for growth. Being still and soaking in all that is around you to connect with yourself and where you are in the universe, physically, mentally, emotionally, creatively, and spiritually can be good medicine.

I took some time to look back down the path, acknowledge where I have walked and celebrate the messages and lessons learned. I stopped to take a deep breath and gather what I need to begin walking forward again. So after time for reflection, re framing, and shedding new skin I am once again ready to begin moving forward. Take time to pause on your walk and celebrate where you are on the road right now.

Lots of jewellery - interesting shapes, made in interesting materials -
Indeed, everything is all about the materials - as well as design and skill-in-making. Here's a tiny selection - starting with the Craft Council's travelling Raw Craft show. This table is balanced to support itself at any height -
 Lacquer and pottery beautifully displayed on an immensely long scroll containing details of its making, and using reclaimed materials like pottery shards, by Tang Mingxiu -
 A neck piece using old paintbrushes! by Jacomijn van der Donk -
 Deidre Hawthorne's sagger-fired pots - she calls them "racers" as they remind her of schoolchildren, lined up, restless and ready for action -
 Nora Fok's cheerful knitted "cherries" necklace, and an intruiging, seemingly endless, plastic coiled piece -
The Project Space had brilliant displays, with the artists on hand - I was especially intrigued by the video tape and paper cutting -

Lately I've been preparing the pages of the inky books separately - here's some stitching in progress -
Perhaps the white area, showing the ends of the lines (journey lines, written while travelling and screenprinted onto paper which is then saturated in ink), indicates the ends of many little journeys - ? Or maybe I just like black and white stripes!

In the recent batch are some little books (about 2"/5cm square) with stitching added before inking -
Although I'm really enjoying making these, it's time to call a halt. Enough have accumulated for a piece for the upcoming exhibition at college, which will look something like this -
The current title is Memory Overload -- brought on by a combination of our "information age" and the mere fact of increasing chronological age, with the perils that brings.

I've sent off my square for the SAQA Benefit Auction - Just dancin'.  It is part of a design which derived from the envelope in which my Surface Design magazine used to come.  It used to be covered - yes, covered in bright stamps from Hong Kong, direct from the printer.  The design shows how I felt when such envelopes arrived.
Meanwhile I am juggling blocks of time and mind between printmaking and stitching.  The areas are further broadened by my initial small researches into the world of tapestry weaving.  I have just read a beautiful book published by the excellent Black Dog (I have recently read The mechanical hand, a printmaking title)- Tapestry: a woven narrative. (I was delighted to find a splendid offer for the book in the current issue of Embroidery magazine.) This is another area of textiles I've been interested in for some years, and now I have the time to explore.  But I shall be spending more time stitching during the day as the tennis season is in full flow - no need to feel guilty while watching tv in daytime!
In printmaking I have been devoting this half term at least to exploring more painterly ways of creating marks.  The above image is another early example with blocks of Liquitex sand medium on one perspex sheet, and a drypoint line on another plate with chine colle using printed tissue paper from Paperchase.
I have also been mixing carborundum grains with PVA and with Liquitex heavy body in four alternative mixes, and have painted each mix onto perspex.  I shall print those perspex plates tomorrow, and will let you see the results next week.  Nothing is instant in printmaking!

 no photoshop™ here, just hard work.







neki desu

Wordless Wednesday. I'm off in a few minutes. (Already how many words is that?)

This was an interesting tree that Tetsu and I found on one of our drives. It is called a handkerchief tree and looked like lots of little flags waving in the breeze.

The azaleas are blooming in the parks and in the forest. (That picture I was trying to figure out how to blur the background on photos.)

Toi and Patora have moved to the cat house for spring. I don't know if they are happier there or not but they have more of a view and they don't tear things up in my sewing room.

Toi loves Patora (sleeping practically on top of her). Too bad he hates Vel and Cleo.

The greengrocer's apostrophe has made its way to Japan - as shown in this selection of Japanese signs. Delight in further punctuation schadenfreude here.

Small town girls enter the big city.

This is the subtext of the Madrid leg of our adventures in Spain. Not so much culture shock (more on those issues later) as size shock. Our Pipe Creek life is quiet and rural; even San Antonio reads as small ciy with its familiarity of 40 plus years. Madrid is major, we remind ourselves as we walk past amazing monuments,more museums than I ever remember seeing in a city, more plazas and churches and cafes and people....When faced with such abundance of sights and sounds and input, I have learned to go for deep rather than wide. I don't feel compelled to see or sense or experience as much as I can in three days, an approach that makes me crazy. Rather I find the one or two do-not-miss experiences for focus.

We saw two exhibits yesterday, went to the bullfights and ate at the San Anton Mercado. The art exhibits were both incredible, and the photos on this post show my attempts and learning as I use the iPad for art and journaling.

First, a Chagall exhibit at the ThySsen-Bornemisza Museum. I rediscovered my love and affection for Chagall, and also acknowledged how much his work influences my own narrative work, with flying figures, rich colors, textures and interlocking stories and images.

Next we went to see Guernica at the Reina Sofia. I had seen this monumental and powerful painting in New York several times, before it returned to Spain. Although the gallery was crowded with school groups and the San Isidro visitors to Madrid, the painting holds its presence. Of most interest to me we're the sketches and related paintings in the adjoining gallery and I spent about an hour making iPad sketches, to much interest of bystanders, I admit. We had to talk our tablets into the musueum as photos are not allowed, and the guards were suspicious until I explained that this WAS my sketchbook.

PS
I also have art news:

+Susie Monday is the featured artist on the d@8 artists blog http://dinnerateightartists.blogspot.com/

PPS Linda has more to say about the bullfight here: http://cuellarsblog.blogspot.com.es/

We had a quiet Mother's Day around here. I guess so, children all flown (including me... away from my own mother). But I heard from both of my children and I gave my mom a call.

Hmm. My mother is 90. For more than 30 years we have called back and forth each week or month and would chat on the phone for over an hour. Think how much money the phone company has made off of us! But gradually those telephone calls became few and far between.

This is one of the ways I evaluate my mother's aging process. Whereas we used to have to pull ourselves away from the phone, there came a time when neither of us seemed to have any news. My excuse was that my children were gone and there is only so much you can tell someone about cats. My mother gradually ran out of things to tell me too. A new jigsaw puzzle. Book titles she was reading. Friends she had visited. But jigsaws became too difficult. Book pages she would read over and over. And at 90... not too many friends left...

It was painful for me to answer the same questions in the same telephone conversation.

"Now, HOW many cats do you have? Six?! That's too many! How did you ever get six cats?"

And those repeated questions would come at shorter and shorter intervals and our telephone conversation shortened to 30 minutes, then 15 and recently when I hang up the phone I realize I've only talked to her 10 minutes or less.

But on Mother's Day I'd better give her a call. She wasn't at "home" when I dialed but I caught her at my brother's house (20 steps away!)

We chatted a few minutes and I answered her same questions. When I asked for family news, my mother kept relaying my inquires to my sister-in-law. Finally she said,

"Why don't you just talk with Marcy. She can tell you all that."

It seems that telephone chatting is getting to be a trial for my mother these days...

Ah well, hang-in there Mom! Tetsu and I will be visiting in July and hopefully we can get in a lot of in-person chatting.


Tetsu and I did visit HIS mother for Mother's Day. Obaachan is 88 and she lives alone in a little apartment and is not very happy. She had called and said she was feeling too badly to have visitors so please not come, but that is what she says every week and to NOT visit your mother on Mother's Day when you CAN, would be a terrible flaunting of filial duty.

Tetsu bought his mother some sweet potatoes and eggs for Mother's Day. Not exactly the same realm of flowers and handkerchiefs but the thought is the same. (Tetsu's mother specifically said that flowers were too hard for her to care for and she hated all the useless stuff that she had accumulated.) Though she perked up enough to sit and chat with us she DID NOT want her picture taken.


So this is my rendition of 'mother and son' in poor lighting photography.

 

I’m back, for a day or two; today was the last full day of work for the Trinity Artists Among Us show. Today, we dismantled the show and then checked out unsold art to the artists and purchased art to the new owners. I got home at 7pm and went out for Mexican food with Mr C – as I really wanted a margarita.

I am a bit exhausted and looking forward to some time away with my STASH friends on a retreat near Sisters. We are leaving on Wednesday. Tomorrow, I have to take my computer to the Apple Store to be shipped to the Apple Dr. My track pad seems to have a mind of it’s own. I will see if I can remember how to blog from my iPad.

That lovely jar up there is called A Prayer Jar. I fell in love with it when it arrived at the show. Mr C bought it for me for Mother’s Day. I am very lucky!

Here are some photos from the show. A view of the show with some fiber art. The pieces with the oak trees are by Karen Miller, a superb Katazome artist.

I really liked these screen printed pieces.

This painting really spoke to me – that is truly my color scheme!!

A grouping of metal sculpture.

And I M Bookman, created from books and stuff.

I love how dramatic the walls of Kempton Hall look with paintings from floor to ceiling on the beautiful wood paneling.

I decided I needed to get back into the studio so I managed to make one green 3 X 3 tonight.

 

One of my favorite things about Monday right now is that no matter how much I have to do or what state my studio and work is- I go to an hour and 15 minute  yoga class at Bend Yoga here in Prescott.  They only opened months ago and since I love hot yoga and could take classes only when I traveled- I was really excited to see they were here.  So I started with 2 days a week, went to 3 and now a couple weeks ago added Mondays!!!  I am back in my studio now and ready to start my day and although I worked my butt off for a bit earlier- I am energized and flowing creative energy.

On the agenda, more writing-  I have started my book on digitally printing alternative surfaces. For today I will finish the chapter on my 6 printers so readers can see just how I use all my printing tools.   This book will be crammed full of all sorts of information on my digital printing process.  I will do complete how to's on surfaces I have been creating and sharing and some new.  There will be information on printing with all 6 of my printers so surfaces will be designed for non-art printers also.  Coming up when I have finalized my table of contents I will post it.

Front of a cheesecloth skin.  The image is a detail of one of my digital mixed media pieces on slightly dyed yellow cheesecloth.
This shows the back of the above print on a cheesecloth skin.  The yellow tone of the dyed cheesecloth is visible as the base of the print.

With a couple of decades of critical engagement with (medical) text under my belt, I find it difficult to read "artspeak" without wanting to use slash and burn tactics on it in an effort to extract its meaning. (Though the possibility that it's meaningless has also crossed my mind occasionally.)

"The LCD screens used in the exhibition serve not only as transmitters of a digital content, but also function as material devices which are constitutive of the artwork itself. Each of the slideshows present a cycle of digitally rendered documentation stills. These cycles display a wide variety of material, including images of sculptures made by the artist, video stills and digital elements, shown in complex configuration with one another. Throughout the duration of each of the slideshows some aspects remain fixed whereas others vary from one image to the next in a seemingly arbitrary fashion."

Here's what I think it means -
As well as showing digital images, the two LCD screens are part of the artwork. The slideshows are sequences of photos of the artist's sculptures, stills from videos, and other digital elements, shown for various lengths of time, so that images on the screens seem to interact with each other.

Stripped of the buzzwords, of course it sounds less impressive. And it's so easy to get caught up in using buzzwords...

Maybe editing artspeak is like editing poetry - query the misspellings (they may be deliberate) but don't change anything - ?

This Emma-ism seems to cover whatever the occasion is, as long as it is cause for celebration. Just fill in the blank! Today I had a happy day; I spoke to all of my children -- both biological and acquired, and I spent the day with two of them and three of my grandkids. "Twas lovely.

Here is one of them in the backyard of the restaurant, where we spent the 1/2 hour wait for a table. She had just identified a basil plant and was feeling rather proud of herself.
Yesterday, I visited my mother to say Happy Day and took with me pictures of her mother and her mother's mother so we could talk about them.  I also brought her two dark chocolate bars, which she sampled immediately.

It was a delicious day in every sense of the word.  Here, before I go to bed to recover from my Happy___Day, are two more "only in New York" pictures I took today.  This first one in the Q train, en route to Brooklyn.

We've been laughingly referring to my old sewing space as "the man cave" or "the rumpus room" (how's that for an antiquated term?) since I moved out and Ray started getting the room fixed up. It will occasionally house guests, but it is mostly Ray's place to get away and make noise. I think I'll call it "the music room" because that sounds so very refined.

Ray has been a drummer since he was a teenager and played in school bands and marching bands and, when we were first married, in rock bands. In those days I was often the "roady" who helped haul drums and set them up and break them down. I know how to set up a drum kit. When we lived in Ashland he played drums with a bagpipe band and wore a kilt. Hubba hubba! In Ashland he also got together with a bunch of old guys at the Elks Hall where they played old big band music just for the fun of it. We called that one "the old man's band." Here in Portland he played music for awhile, but finally sold most of his drums and packed the rest away. Yesterday they came out of storage.

Cool African drum. It sounds wonderful. I love seeing the drums and percussion stuff again. I know how happy music makes Ray. I hope to be hearing some rumpus coming from the man cave.

There are times when I am just speechless and extremely humbled.

As you may know, I've been researching Georgia quilter Harriet Powers for the last few years and wrote a book about how her two known Bible-themed quilts survived more than a century to be housed today at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Smithsonian American History Museum. In the course of my research, a copy of an 1895/86 letter by Mrs. Powers was uncovered in Keokuk, Iowa.  Mrs. Powers wrote that in 1882 she "... composed a quilt of the Lord's Supper from the New Testament." For reasons outlined in the book, I believe in the possibility that a quilt by Mrs. Powers could have been sold to a woman in Keokuk - and that, if true - that quilt may have been sold at an 1959 auction in Keokuk.

Last year I couldn't shake this thought that a quilt by Mrs. Powers might still be somewhere in a family's collection. To help get the feeling out, I designed what I thought Mrs. Powers' lost Lord's Supper quilt might look like. Elyse Whittake-Paek took my funny stick-figure sketches and drew proper quilt blocks. Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi then took the quilt blocks and made the quilt now on the book cover.  

Mrs. Harriet Powers' spirit was indeed in the project!  Recently Dr. Mazloomi shared the photos below of quilts lovingly stitched by members of the Women of Color Quilters Network, Dayton, Ohio chapter. These sistah quilters are Christians and know well the Bible stories in the Lord's Supper Quilt. I LOVE how they took the patterns and made the designs their own!  Don't you agree?  Look at how unique each interpretation is!  Congratulations, ladies!

Happy Mother's Day to the WOCQN - Dayton, Ohio!  Enjoy!