Saturday, December 14, 2013

Textile work -- Rare Opportunity

I was going through my photos this morning, clearing out not-so-good-ones, & I came across my piano photos from my May trip to Nancy Crow's farm in Baltimore, Ohio.

What a rare opportunity it was.
Farms are great places for collections, detritus, and quirky finds.

The two piano frames were in the quirky zone.
I loved them.
Lines, shapes, textures, & all the nostalgia that abandonment
evokes in me having to do with lost stories, lives gone by.
The amazing engineering of it! The tension....Upper strings starting to go...


 Corrosion & rust...That whole feeling that nature will overtake it...... & chaos is already starting... I was traveling with my really old friend Mary Beecher Price, so there was a serendipitous touch....

So I hung out with these two pianos quite a bit & applied cloth & then dye-wash to them to make prints of a sort.
The first tries were with unslashed cloth, but it was hard getting good string contact that way.



 So I then tried cutting into the cloth so cloth & strings made more contact...


 ... & enriching the colors...


This was before I washed the dye-stuff out but it is now dry. I took the cloth out yesterday & look forward to playing with them.

                                                             
That's it for now.


Monday, November 18, 2013

Textile work -- The Migration of a Shape

Few years ago in Paia, on Maui, I saw the sculptures of a very fine sculptor named Pascal Pierme. He's from France & lives in the US.

I took some photos & then started working on his alluring shapes.

I made notes in my journal.




I still haven't done exactly what he did, but he got me started on a great trip. 
And I'm not done yet. 
I have enough now to sketch out various stations & stopovers.
Here are my first configurations. 

This is where it all led.  Above it is quilted by machine & I didn't like it, so I ripped all the stitching out & hand sewed it. It's a stunning example of the visual difference between machine & hand quilting.

Then I found these amazing silk plaid bias strips.  Experimentation began: I couldn't settle on something that I thought really worked....

 





This project was done last winter after my trip to Vermont.
I rather like the flatter look better, though maybe that's just a case of not-so-great photography or bad lighting!
Or it could be that my batting had too much loft & was too poofy.


This was an exercise started at Nancy Crow's class in May.

 I hand quilted it without batting, part way through didn't like it. I tore it out, machine-quilted it, & liked it way better.... oh, & I added low-loft batting into the sandwich of quilt front&back. You just can't get those fabulous lines with hand stitching. It's faster too.
When I do this kind of machine quilting I generally make stuff up as I go along. At the beginning a few lines get put in spaced throughout. These secure the basting. Then elaboration begins.


I'm kind of in love with the transition from this......to this, with slightly softened rectangles a la Pascal Pierme...
I also love my mother's Venetian scarf coming into play. What would she say?  She & her large shadows.

 I came home with from my May workshop with Nancy Crow with two large beginnings: one was in grey tones & one was in color. The righthand image is when I have started quilting the piece up.


 

 The color version went though a number of auditions too.
    
  
 This is it right now, on the frame. I am making decisions about thread colors, lines of stitching, & adding more softened rectangles quilted into the overall design. The blue shapes on the upper large brown shape shows where I am going to quilt in interior shapes the way I did with the large yellow shape.
  

Upstairs, on my work wall, is another piece-in-process.
The silks are the last scraps of my mother's scarf. I'm intrigued by the change of ground in the center. I was planning to put red where the white work wall is, but suddenly I think that white shape is just too much to give up.  I now have to work that thought out!

What a journey.
I've loved it, wrestled with it & am still not done with it.
I still want to get into the nesting idea.

That's it for now.


Saturday, October 26, 2013

My Neighborhood

I've taken to carrying my small camera when I can. The iPhone's ok, but not nearly so flexible, so if I'm not feeling already-too-encumbered I put it in my purse.

Last weekend through a curious chain of coincidences I got to meet a world famous photographer, Fred Herzog.


Fred is a big story-teller, & George a very willing listener.

His opening is next weekend at the Equinox Gallery, so he is signing the to-be-framed photos.

I was quite taken with his photos. I have an affinity for doing that kind of photography myself.
So here is a small crop of my photos in response to seeing his work.
Some were taken recently & some taken ages ago.
Most are from my neighborhood.
   Isn't it a 5 or IS it?

                                            The space inside is being renovated.

A surprising sitting room: strangely inmate & intentional.


A foggy day...last foggy week...

...and below views from the Granville Street Bridge....The men are working on the up-grade of the bridge.



....& back to the bridge...

That's it for now.