art is hard

Well, writing an artist statement is hard, anyway. I was required to write on for inclusion in the exhibition catalog for the upcoming show. It’s so funny: I consider myself to be a pretty good writer–got a college degree in it and everything–but I’ll be damned if coming up with a teeny little 3-paragraph artist statement wasn’t one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to write. Well, I suppose it’s hard to write an artist statement when you’re not really an artist. 

Big props to Julia, who had some experience with this sort of thing and helped walk me through the process and figure out both what I wanted to say and how to structure it in a standard format for art-world accessibility. I’m going to add it as a page on the sidebar, but in the event that changes or evolves in the future, I’ll post it here, my very first artist statement: 

I am not an artist. I simply like to make things. I believe that form follows function and I like to make functional, everyday, useful objects, but ones that incorporate beauty and meaning and rise above mass-produced, cold and hollow objects that fill our lives. In the past I’ve made everything from dance costumes to crystal paperweights, but I’m currently focused on textile forms with social and communal roots such as clothing, quilting, and knitting. 

Much of my childhood clothing was made by my mother or my grandmother, both of whom passed along their knowledge to me. In turn, I shared this knowledge to others through Girl Scouts and other classes and workshops. To me, textile arts embody an individual’s style and creativity, but also a communal component, such as wartime knitting circles or quilting bees of yore. This and other juxtapositions, from contemporary garments constructed from vintage textiles to architectural and infographic designs executed in traditional patchwork and appliqué techniques, motivate my work. 

In May of 2009, I moved to the Brewery Arts Complex, the world’s largest artist-in-residence community. Here I hope to extend my experimentations to further blur the line between art and craft, old and new, science and emotion, and the individual and the community. 

you win some, you lose some

A day or two after I got a letter from GoggleWorks accepting one of my pieces, I got an email from the Ventura Museum of Art notifying me that my piece was not included in their upcoming innovative quilt show. I’m not so bothered by the rejection, although I am a bit disappointed, since that was a local show. I did think it was odd that the acceptance came via letter while the rejection came via email–quite the opposite of my experience with fiction writing.

I didn’t let it get me down, though–I made a lot of progress over the weekend, including finishing the Hawaii map quilt top and sandwiching the flowchart quilt. I also finished my January block for the Stash Busting Bee–just in time for the February fabric to arrive!

I anticipate this weekend will be lots more of the same. I can’t wait to report more progress!

holy artf*ckery!

I just got accepted to an art show!!!

Remember when I was talking about submitting some of the Brewery pieces to gallery shows? I got a letter in my mailbox today from the first place I submitted, the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts. They had a call for entries for a themed show called “More Than Fiber [PDF],” highlighting both traditional and interpretive fiber art. The letter came in a business-sized envelope and looked remarkably like the standard rejection letters I used to receive from literary magazines. With writing, in my experience, if you’re accepted you often get a phone call or an email, and a letter almost always equals rejection. So I pretty much figured it was a rejection and I was already resigned even as I was struggling to open the envelope in the parking lot as I walked home from the mailbox.

Halfway across the lot, I finally got the envelope open and unfolded the letter and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that one of my pieces (out of three submitted) had been selected to be in the exhibition! Interestingly enough, it’s the same piece I talked about in my earlier post that I personally never thought was all that stellar, but people at Artwalk really responded to it:

It’s very exciting, but also scary…I have to figure out how to ship the work there, which means finding or building some sort of crate, figuring out insurance and return shipping. I have to find the paperwork from my original submission so I can remember what sale price I quoted them. I have to write a bio and artist statement for inclusion in the exhibition catalogue. (I always meant to write an artist statement for Artwalk, but I kinda ran out of time and never got around to it, so I suppose it’s about time I did it anyway.) I’m invited to attend the opening reception, but this place is in Pennsylvania and I doubt I’ll be able to make it, which is kinda disappointing.

Gosh, that’s a lot of work. I wasn’t really expecting any of my submissions to be accepted, it was just all part of the artfuck game, just the same kind of fun ’see-what-happens’ attitude that I have when making stuff.

But I still might go outside and spin around and shout “Whee!” really loudly anyway!

rain!

Now that I have quite a few quilt tops pieced, the next step is to sandwich them with the batting and backing, so the quilting can begin. The only problem is…RAIN! For those of you living under rocks, you may not have heard that Los Angeles has been drenched with substantial downpours all week long (there was even apparently a flash flood warning for downtown LA yesterday)! What’s the rain got to do with sandwiching quilts, you ask? Well, I like to use spray baste to hold the layers together, which, unfortunately, requires lots of ventilation, even in my big studio area. With all this rain, I can’t open the windows for ventilation without soaking everything in sight! So sandwiching has to wait for a dryer day, I fear.

In the meantime, I started piecing the layers for the topographic map of Hawaii. I hereby dedicate this photo to the random anonymous internet surfer who stumbled across my blog when searching for “topographic quilts.”

Seeing that search phrase led me to wonder what else might come up if I searched for that phrase. Which in turn lead me to the website of the amazing Leah Evans. So inspiring! I feel like my stuff is too direct and cartoony after looking at her pieces, but I have to remind myself that we’re aiming for very different things. Boy, I sure would love to own one of her pieces, though. Anyone have a spare $1800 and want to buy me her “Red Lock System”? It was just my birthday, after all…

what’s progress? this is progress!

Now that’s what I call productive! Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I had 4 days off this past weekend.

The first thing I did was to get (re)organized:

Anyone who knows me knows that I love the Dry Erase board. It is so functional and flexible. I like writing down my projects as well as all the underlying steps therein, so I can cross each one off as I finish and feel like I’m accomplishing something, even if the whole project isn’t finished. But as you can see, I was running out of room on my whiteboard!

Since the steps for each project don’t change all that much as each project progresses, I decided that paper checklists would give the same organizational satisfaction, offer the expandibility needed to cover all my projects, and free up the whiteboard for other uses. So I printed out each project’s checklist on a sheet of 8.5″ x 11″ paper and tacked them to the wall, in order (L to R) of % completion + priority. (Note that this photo only shows about half the projects…there are about as many more off the right side of the frame…)

Once I got better prioritized, it was easy to focus on exactly what needed to be done on each project. This was convenient, because in lieu of a formal birthday party this year, I decided I’d rather spend the afternoon just making stuff with my friends and family, so I invited everyone over for a “making stuff day.” I worked on projects that didn’t need too much concentration and wouldn’t suffer from too much distraction from a crowd of folks–like ripping out the misaligned seams in the flow chart quilt and piecing the backing for the blue and green leaf-themed quilt I’ve been working on. Unfortunately, I got busy with the making stuff and hanging out with friends, so I didn’t take too many photos. (I think all I have is one of Robin with some yarn down her shirt and a napkin in her pants, and I think I’ll spare her the embarrassment…) I had a really good time, though, and it seemed to just hit the right spot for how I wanted to celebrate my birthday.

My sweetie, who was out visiting for my birthday party, was also tolerant enough to accompany me to the Road to California annual quilt show. I have to confess, I was a little disappointed. Everyone talks about this show like it’s the biggest, baddest, best thing since sliced fabric strips, but to me it seemed not only smaller than the Long Beach show I went to last year, but also less diverse. Where I found many, many innovative and interesting quilts at the Long beach show, I didn’t see much at Road to California that really grabbed me. Sure, all the pieces were flawlessly executed, and many were nice. But not many grabbed my attention with that “wow” factor, and I didn’t see much to influence me in my less traditional path. There were a few exceptions, this being number one:

“Burgoyne and His Spin Doctor…” by Helen Remick. Road to California quilt show, January 2010.

This piece was (one of about 3) in the ’science’ themed section. Mostly what I love about it, besides the colors and the contrast of curved and rounded applique circles juxtaposed with and overlayed on the straight, square-pieced border section, is that those cut-out spaces between the two sections are actually that–cut out. The black you see is actually the backdrop curtains against which the quilts hang. Very nice effect indeed! I know i want to incorporate that idea into something one of these days.

This next one also caught my eye, for the use of the black + yellow as well as the small scale and hand-shaped pieces. It’s a little cutesy, but I think the small size makes it more manageable, and I love the hands which were clearly made by tracing. They could be reaching for the star, as the title describes, or, as my sweetie pointed out, they also look very much like hands maneuvering quilt fabric through a machine when quilting. I don’t think the two ideas are mutually exclusive–aren’t we all reaching for a sort of accomplishment or perfection “star” when we create something?

“Reaching for a Star” by Bobbi Finley and Carol G. Jones, Road to California quilt show, January 2010.

 

In addition to wandering the quilt show and watching napping through some football, we  also went out to dinner with my parents for my birthday. My mom got the making stuff bug and made me a Very Hungry Caterpillar-inspired cake:

Plus, she also made me this awesome Very Hungry Caterpillar stuffed toy! I’m very happy and excited about this, not just because it’s way cool and came out great, but because my mom made it just for me!

Seeing the quilt show of course inspired me to get cracking on my projects. Here’s the final pieced top for the Film Noir quilt:

And here’s me working on finishing up the top for the electromagnetic spectrum, in my wonderful and snuggly new robe that my sweetie made me for my birthday. I feel so honored to be surrounded by so many creative and talented craftspeople. It also shows the artist in her true environment: pajamas. That’s right, this is pretty representational of how I spend my mornings before going to work, right down to the uniform.

And lo and behold, here’s what the studio looks like when I actually make progress on projects and organize them neatly into piles. That’s how I know progress was really made! (Click through to the Flickr page to see notes).

what is progress, anyway?

I wasn’t going to post an update until I had at least one quilt top done, to have “something to show” for all my work. It so often feels like I do all this work, and it advances progress, but there’s nothing “finished” at the end to show for it, no milestones or markers. And then I try to post a blog entry about it, but they always come off like a whole string of posts saying how I did a lot of work and accomplished nothing. And that’s really hard to read!

On Tuesday morning (my usual post-weekend update time), I was *almost* done with at least 4 different milestones of projects. So I thought, “oh, I’ll finish them up today and post about them tomorrow.” Then Wednesday, I wasn’t quite done, and I said, “oh, I’ll finish them up tomorrow and post about them on Thursday.” And them Thursday rolled around, and, you guessed it, stuff happened and they weren’t quite done and…

But it got to the point where I would never, ever update again if I kept sticking to that “finished before updating mentality,” so I decided to just bite the bullet and do it anyway. So the stuff isn’t as far along as I might have liked, and the photos aren’t all that great, but here it is, anyway.

I did actually finish the flow chart top. Yay! Then, when trimming, I noticed that some of the edges were misaligned and would need to be redone. Boo! This will require removing three of the horizontal seams and realigning and restitching. It could be worse–at least I didn’t cut any of the pieces so short that I need to remake blocks. Whew! So while this top was “finished,” it’s not actually done until I fix that issue.

I pieced all the black and white Film Noir blocks into strips and added this great mottled burgundy sashing that I found at New Moon Textiles. I wanted to place one strip at an angle for visual interest (art is in the anomalies!) but I still have to tweak that strip a bit more before I can set it into the top.

I usually don’t post too much description about my works in progress or ideas because I always feel like I’m going to jinx myself and not have it turn out as I described or not finish the work at all. And let’s face it, I can be a little paranoid about people stealing ideas and such. I wish I had posted a little bit more earlier about the Film Noir blocks and quilt, about how the idea was to play on the idea of value quilts using strictly black-and-white and one solid contrast color to ‘pop.’ Now I see that other people are starting to experiment with similar concepts. Oh, well–I think they sound different enough in idea and execution, and there’s certainly enough room in the world for both! :)

On the table you can see all the cut pieces for the Hawaii topographic map. Cutting all the layers out seemed like it would take forever, and it sure did a number on my hands (and scissor blades!). Finally, I just set myself to cutting out one layer of fleece every day until they were done. I cut multiple layers on the last days because those layers had fewer and smaller pieces. I ended up with quite a bit of fleece left over, way more than I was expecting, and now I’m trying to think of ideas how to use it up. Suggestions?

Of course, as I was chugging along on those projects, I decided to start another entirely new quilt, one that wasn’t even on the list of works to-do or in progress. Somehow I got it stuck in my brain that the visual representation of the electromagnetic spectrum would be a good addition to the Artwalk show. The idea for the top is very simple, with these scrappy strips eventually forming the visible light portion of the spectrum. I wanted a variety of black-on-black prints to use for the other waves, but the selection of fabrics available at the 3(!) stores I went to disappointed. So I went with only one fabric, but one that lends itself well to electromagnetic waves, I think. After piecing (which shouldn’t take long with such large wholecloth pieces–knock on wood), the plan is to quilt a wave pattern, varying the frequency to correspond with the spectrum.

All of that, plus other extraneous tasks, kept me pretty busy the whole week, and I really wanted to have those tops all done before posting. Next time, I swear!*

*Don’t hold me to that.

save the date!!

Mark your calendars for the next Brewery Artwalk, Saturday and Sunday, April 17-18, 2010!

I plan on presenting a show tentatively titled “The Visual Display of Quilted Information.” Follow the works in progress here on the blog and then come to check them out in person at Spring Artwalk!

so much for not buying any fabric in Denver…

 

And I haven’t even been here 24 hours yet…

what I like best about the holidays

Sure, I like spending time with my family and eating lots of great food…but I can’t deny that I love the extra time off to make stuff!

Even though I didn’t finish any projects this weekend, I sure got a lot done in the studio. First, I pieced together all the blocks I need for a flow chart-themed quilt. The curved pieces were especially challenging. I’ve done curved pieces before, but never a piece like this:

How to make that bottom curve? My original plan was just to piece it, but I didn’t think it would have turned out very smooth. It occurred to me instead to use a lapped seam, a technique often used in vintage clothing construction from the 1930’s and 40’s. Here’s what I did:

1. After printing out a template,  cut a rectangle slightly larger than the finished size. Then trace the curve on the right side of the fabric with a chalk pencil.

2. Press the fabric under, following along the chalk line and clipping when necessary.

Here’s the piece right side up after pressing:

And here are all the pieces:

3. Cut another rectangle of the second fabric, also larger than the finished size (it’s always better to trim later than to come up short). Then pin the turned-under fabric to the backing along the curve.

4. Using a topstitching length, sew along the curve, close to the turned-under edge (maybe 1/16″ away). Voila! Your block is done.  Here’s a photo of the seam up close (sorry for the poor quality photo):

And here’s what it looks like on the back:

Trim any excess fabric as desired, and repeat for the remaining blocks. Then you’ll have enough to make something like this:

Yes, it’s the flow chart quilt in progress up on the design wall. All the blocks are pieced and they just need to be sashed together. I’m thinking of calling it “If This, Then That.” I’m really happy with the way it’s turning out so far and the amount of progress that I’ve made on it.

I’ve also got a few (dozen) other projects in progress, including cutting out pieces for the topographic/contour map quilt: 

Unfortunately, my scissors got too dull to finish! Cutting paper templates and fleece sure does a number on the blades.

I’m also making good progress on the black and white design:I was hoping to have a moderately transportable project to take with me to Denver this week and it looks like this might just work. I’m going to see my sweetie, and I love him dearly, but I would go stir crazy without being able to work on any projects for a week!  It’s mostly just pinning and straight sewing, and a small enough pile to fit into my suitcase, as long as I don’t buy any more fabric or yarn while I’m out there…

piles

Gosh, I haven’t done jack-all between my last update and now. I haven’t made anything. I blame the ubiquitous “holidays” and my convoluted quarter break work schedule. About the only thing I have done is manage to acquire even more fabric and yarn, despite my self-imposed moratorium.

On Sunday, I bought the fabric for one of my Artwalk projects, a topographical/contour map design:

Also over the weekend, a friend of mine who is relocating out of state was culling her yarn and fabric stash and sent me home with 7+ boxes of stuff. Here’s some yarn:

And some fabric:

And some more fabric:

It was a whole wagon full of stuff!

Now I’m really behind in making stuff, despite having loads of good stuff to use. I hope to get cracking this weekend, as I have some extra time off for the holidays. After Christmas I’m going to Denver, and while to hope to bring along some stuff to work on, it’s not the same as being in the studio and working on large projects. then when I get back it’ll be January, 2010, and a few mere short months until Artwalk. I’m already feeling the pressure, yikes!