Clarity -- and a Give-away!

I awoke Wednesday morning with a definite sense of what I had to do, and a surge of adrenalin with which to do it.  The way seemed so clear!  Which way?  That way, of course!

In other words, after over a week of agonizing about what to put in my sketchbook, about which contemporary applique artist on which to focus...I wrote this to my tutor:

"...it’s been a challenge, and I haven’t really made up my mind on a single, particular artist I want to investigate further.  However, for the purposes of this exercise, I’ve chosen one: Canadian-born, UK artist and teacher, Sandra Meech, author of Contemporary Quilts: Design, Surface and Stitch (which I own) and other books (which I do not – yet). 

Right behind her on the short list are these artists:

·        Rosemary Eichorn, author of The Art of Fabric Collage, who, I’ve found out, is retiring from teaching in 2013;
·        Bonnie McCaffery, author of Fantasy Fabrics (among other books), noted teacher, podcaster and video (vid-cast) host, and designer of DigiBobbE (Digitized Bobbin Embroidery) designs;
·        Laura Wasilowski, teacher and author and delightful humourist, Director of “The Chicago School of Fusing”, who combines fused appliqué with hand embroidery in very colourful, whimsical little quilted hangings; and
·        My absolute favourites, Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn – Double Trouble – who are really embroiderers but who use appliqué in their fabric creations.

 Okay.  Why did I pick Sandra?

First...to back-track a bit: while there’s been a bit of a revival in needle-turn appliqué (at least in North America) in recent years, especially with the exquisite work of Elly Sienkiewicz and her Baltimore album-style quilts, and while there’s great popularity for fused/bonded appliqué, I have to admit, I’m not a huge fan of the more traditional styles.  I am, rather, intrigued by texture and colour found in nature (especially trees – leaves, bark and seed pods/cones), and really want to do more to explore this in textile and stitch.

So...to be even remotely true to what I want to explore, I’ve chosen to equate ‘appliqué’ with ‘surface design’.  I mean, strictly speaking, appliqué is defined as the application of one or more ornamental devices to a larger surface or, to quote Wikipedia, ‘appliqué’ is a term from the French meaning ‘the thing that is applied’.  All of the above artists have used this technique in one form or another. 

Ms. Meech and the Double Trouble team of Beaney and Littlejohn use the techniques I want to work up most.  Ms. Meech starts with photographs and may replicate them – or may deconstruct them.  She combines photography, collage, text, line drawings in her sketchbooks.  Beaney and Littlejohn use more paint and layering in addition to drawing, but they also use photos for inspiration.

I  particularly love Meech’s use of layering (example at left, from Contemporary Quilts, Batsford, London, England, 2004, p. 106: her piece “Winter Sun”, which she describes as “The last rays of the low, cold sun on the horizon.  Transferred acrylic painting, quilted over wireform and shaped as a block.  Machine quilted with metal and hand stitching.”) – inspired by her travels in Arctic Canada, which has been a major influence on her work and inspired an entire series.  At the top of the piece you can just make out threads of blue scrim (cheesecloth) pooled in a water-like fashion, below which is couched/stitched metal – possibly copper, based on its colour.

As for Beaney and Littlejohn, I have several of their soft-cover books and their DVD, In Action, which I’ve watched (as I have yours, The Painted Quilt) several times, trying to work out their enthusiastic use of their sketchbooks, a habit that I know you and my former teacher, Anna Hergert, espouse and have been urging me to cultivate!  I’ve taken to posting photos on a cork board in my sewing room, as inspiration for the pieces I want to create – currently to do with trees.  

In trying to get a sense of the work of these artists, I did a couple of exercises from Meech’s book, Contemporary Quilts, which you’ll see in the attached photos.

Photo #1: a series of colour studies based on a detail from a photo I took of a rusted old hand pump located on the grounds of an abandoned country school a few miles from here; 

Photo #2: a two-page exercise - a rough sketch (left) and a collage with paint (right) of a piece I have in mind to make as a door quilt (38" wide by 80" long) for the office of my parish priest (building: 1894);



Meech's exercises loosened me up a bit but what was really a break-through for me...was the creation of the bark studies with acrylic paint and torn tissue-like paper, scored and punctured with a blunt-end bodkin for added texture.  I've been carrying these images around for some time and they finally exploded out of me (at least that's what it felt like ...and suddenly it was clear -- what I wanted to paint and how -- and I stopped procrastinating and just did it.

Photo #3: my sketchbook painting in which I attempted to express what I saw in bark I've collected:

(L) Ornamental Cherry; (R) Birch

That was pretty much the end of my e-mail.  Linda responded this morning with her usual kind words...and a caution about determining format/structure so that I won't end up with a piece that is all texture and no form. Good point.  A good design has a foundation; it mustn't be texture for texture's sake, or colour for colour's sake etc.  And so I move into the Project Planning phase for my final assessment piece. Hmmmmm....!

On the heels of a break-through in the use of my sketchbook (at last!)  there's one other thing about which I am clear this morning:  

This is Post #925!  

In the run-up to my 1000th blog post, methinks it's time for a wee give-away.  :-)  I have 3 wonderful books I once bought with great intentions, but have never used.  I'm going to give one away at Post 925, one at 950, and one at 975...so let the games begin!

If you'd like a soft-cover copy of Collage Lost and found: Creating Unique Projects with Vintage Ephemera, by Giuseppina (Josie) Cirincione, F.W. Publications, 2006...simply leave a comment to this post and tell me a bit about why you're interested in the book's subject.  I'll make a draw at random from all who comment between now (Thursday, October 18 at about 9 a.m.) and 9 a.m. Saturday, October 20.  (Click the link above to look inside the book at amazon.ca.)

All for now!

P.S. I've made it easier for you to leave comments now!

Distracted

That's how I've been this week.  And grumpy.  Ups and downs.  Many prayers muttered under my breath as I dealt with my wounded car.  >.<

Based on the Black Book value, I thought it might be a write-off, so I've been researching replacement costs.  Blessing #1: in the process of this research, I found out that my Canada Pension income is going to be more than expected, beginning at the end of this month.  Hooray!

Blessing #2: It now looks like it can be repaired after all (hooray again!) but the shop can't get me in for at least a week -- currently backed up with hail claims from the summer and recent 'deer hits'.  I know; it sounds as if the good citizens of Lacombe County have conspired to decimate the local white tail population ...but I doubt it.  Just adjusting to longer dawns and earlier dusk-driving, which is when these beautiful creatures decide to leap out at drivers from the side of the road.  I've been very blessed never to have had such an encounter; my car damage came from other humans, while the car was parked!

Now I have to wait till Monday to confirm who's going to pay for car rental while the shop fixes my baby...later this month.  I'm hoping that my patience -- such as it is -- will be rewarded with Blessing #3, and that all the costs will be covered by the other parties' insurance company.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Pookie had her first immunizations yesterday and this morning she is a bit off her feed and certainly subdued.  I'm keeping an eye on her, but expect this is par for the course.

For most of the week I've been working on and off on my second C&G assignment, involving researching contemporary applique artists I like, and deciding who to focus on.  While I admire the fine work of Elly Sienkiewicz and the fast, fun, fusing of Laura Wasilowski, I am really leaning toward applique as surface design -- or should that be 'surface design as applique'?  This means I've been looking at Sandra Meech, Bonnie Lyn McCaffery, and Rosemary Eichorn.  And then there's the team of Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn -- "Double Trouble" -- who are embroiderers who use applique to add to the texture of cloth they make completely with stitch on water-soluble fabric.

My mind has been a-whirl with ideas, excited by simply reading about what these artists create and how they do it!  I want to try everything at once!

I decided to try to calm myself by working through the 3 exercises in the one book I own by Sandra Meech: Contemporary Quilts: Design, Surface and Stitch, Batsford Publishing, London, England, 2003.  It took me the better part of puttering around yesterday, but eventually I finished Exercise #1, based on a photo I took a few years ago of a rusty old hand-pump in the overgrown yard of an abandoned country school (now a historic landmark).

This sort of exercise is not new to me, but it is particularly useful in training the eye to see, in studying colour, and in focusing the mind on one's art -- and off one's problems!

Today has dawned brighter than the past few days; the snow on my front lawn has melted, and I'm off for a good run jog.  Then it'll be time for Meech's Exercise #2, some work on the reconstruction of my daughter's sweater, and maybe some embroidery to round out the day.

On My Wish List

Every Christmas, someone in my family sends me into bliss with a gift card for books, so I've just added this title to my wish list at Chapters/Indigo.  SAQA Central Canada's members have work featured in this book!  I mean, how cool is that?!