Writing workshop

George & I are taking a writing workshop for this weekend. Our teacher is Ellery. He's given us a number of interesting start ideas....

"Tonight I feel....."  "I have brought who or what  to this workshop." The role I played my my family. Tell about how this role carried forward in you life. The captured moment-- I wrote about two.... Write a dialogue, imagined or real, with a person living or dead.

So doing this I get to review my whole life and see myself through many lenses. I only have a few in my computer photo-bank. Here are a few. I see the rise & fall of ambient moods.

I see younger/older too. Many different years.

I see myself in stress.  And below getting older & shockingly wrinkled from THIS angle.

Earned wrinkles! That's the best spin possible. Of course I do not 'like' this image. I have only myself to blame, as I took it.

I've had a terrific two days. I love writing. I'm happy in this place.

That's it for now.

Mosaics

In the past two years I made a number of house numbers in mosaics. This one was for Jennifer Trivett. I love the hen-feather look of the outer framing. There's lots of gold in this one that you can't see in this photo.

This was my first one:
for our house.


I went ape for all the blue/white china available.


Chipped plates were
broken... with a hammer
inside a heavy canvas
bag!









                                     I was on a "blue/white" roll! The Mayflower year!

These two were edged with unfortunate Zimbabwe broken plates... a very sad story.

This one is Boulder. From this one I learned a huge lesson in contrast. 

At night the numbers don't stand out in the sea of grey. Oh sigh!!








I have decided I'm putting my equipment away for now. This way I'll make more space in my studio. I'll come back to it another time, but this spigot got closed off by choice for now.


                                                           That's it for today.

Paper Ya

 A while back when I was taking a workshop I went into PaperYa on Granville Island. They have a huge collection of papers from all over the world, mostly hand made or hand processed.

 When I am at Paper Ya I want to buy it all! It was much the same when I went to fabric stores as a child. The wares are arranged so well that they look incredibly lovely & lush together. HOW could I just choose one? Torture!! That's what lead to patchwork for me.

         

 That's it for today.        

Graffiti Day

Graffiti is in some ways our present calligraphy.


Calli [beautiful]
graphy [writing]


I am fascinated with the letter forms, layout & color choices of these artists.

I've long ago stopped trying to read the words. Look at that A!

   I love the gesture & rhythm of it all.

I wish I had more to show you, but this is the full extent of my photo collection.

                                                       That's it for today.

Whoooopeeee!

Today I got a proposal for a show together.
Tomorrow I hope to mail off to the Surrey Art Gallery a proposal for a show with my Project called Oh, Solo, Double Trio: Numbers in my Life.
The next day I'll prep the similar proposal for the Richmond Gallery which is due in April. I dasn't mail it in too early. Things can get put in drawers & forgotten if timing isn't right. That happened to me once being too eager.

This proposal has been on my To Do list for quite a while.
I still have 3 quilts to finish, but that's ok. Even with a go-ahead, I'd be given a date a bit off from acceptance time.
And I'll have some time to develop the peripherals to the show that I'd like to do.
I have quite a few number artifacts... that would be fun to have there.


So here's Fingers & Toes, the quilt about the number 10. I made the stampers for this, from my own hands & feet. I even used the off-cut from the first hand stamp to make the negative image for the other hand. Similarly for the feet.

This one starts with the careful knotting of a transparent ribbon -- one of those really nice-edged ones.  If you knot it just so, not too tight & not too loose a magical pentagon will show up, as will most of a pentogram.   [Hold it up to the light.]

This one is for the number 5.                                                                                       Well, it's actually getting too complicated....         but by a few more steps you can construct the famous golden rectangle, and build several more on top of that.                              And if you turn this quilt over I stitched a logarithmic spiral into the back that goes with the quilting on the front, but I have to make it darker, it doesn't show up enough yet.  Maybe you can see a faint spiral arc above my head. 

# 7 below. This one is about all my 07/07 birthdays that I can remember, with various xeroxed photos stitched on to the quilt-top.

For 12 I decided to do a clock face. One of my favorite features of the graphics for the quilt is how clearly 1/2, 1/4, & 3/4 of an hour gets shown. So innocently.

 

     

That's it for now.

Simple simple

The other day when I was out with Lucy I noticed a reflection, then a duck behind that boat house,

...then water.... my camera panning by sections to the east.

            I am mad for these & all the subtleties.    That's it for today.

                                       

Projects

Nine years ago my project, Much Depends on This Quilt, was at Craft House on Granville Island.  In a way it was my PhD, the result of research, curiosity, exploration, journaling & complete absorption. Last week I took 4 of the 10 quilts & 2 of the 4 journals to Bellingham & UPSed them to the New England Quilt Museum for consideration for their collection, as a donation. Psychologically this was a momentous move. This project was a lot about the meaning of my life or put another way-- a meaning I gave to my life. I have other threads!

This is one of the quilts I sent: Much Depends on the Quilt-Maker.

I have two blocks from old quilts of mine & five older ones from other people.

The text asks questions about the quilt-makers, like
How much education did she have?
How many languages did she speak?
What time of day did she work?
Did she have electricity?

You get the idea...

This one about thimbles was sent too. I hope you can read some of the questions.

The scissors in this quilt are from my personal collection. Until I went to Italy in 2006 I couldn't find good research sources my project. I certainly & surprisingly couldn't find catalogue books, the way I could for thimbles, for this quilt.

This one is about dyeing & printing. The swatches  came from my stash. Some were dyed &/or printed by me, some were commercially done, & some were hand-made in other places in the world. The writing tells the story of each swatch.









 

                                 


My next project is to have a show with the number quilts: Oh, Solo, Double, Trio: Numbers in my Life.

                    I am working on submitting a proposal to a few galleries for that.  

                                                                    That's it for today.  

2 day Chaos

Well, silence has now redescended on our house, & I am in reflective mode.


For the two mothers, Joslyn & Lesley, it was the usual level of chaos; & for George & me, it was greatly accelerated chaos. Noise, clutter, & social interaction levels all greatly increased.

Sunday morning the blue track got set up in our living room. It suctioned onto the window.

The 4 children participated, each at his/her particular level.

I did the pics.

This is Reed with Lesley. Though the blue track is usually at his house this time he was an observer.....except when he had some important side business,

Timmo had a favorite truck called Pantry Truck [a name that has great sticking power] that rode the blue track many times with many mishaps-- over turnings, jumping the tracks, & going disastrously airborne. This truck got kisses for all the pain it sustained in crashes.

Then Max's approach was that a car in the hand was worth two or more on the track. He wasn't up to relinquishing his favorites cars into the common fray.















Lucy was completely into it: races, crashes, & her car that both went into the air & landed back on the track. I forget her truck's name.

                                           

  I went outside to take pix. Great reflections....

            This all was so fun.  One hour of play. Oh My!! It was a lovely visit.

Erica was here too Saturday night, sandwiched between her new program in osteopathy. I didn't get pictures of her, but I did earlier.

                                                                   That's it for today.