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I’m writing from my laptop, which I rarely use as it has Vista for it’s OS and I have been waiting to install Windows XP. I have Windows XP on my desktop pc and just find it a lot more user-friendly and also easier to install my printer drivers, camera software, copies of MS Office, Photoshop, etc. My friend Simon up in Scotland is going to give me some long distance help with this.
Yesterday, I switched on my desktop and it simply wouldn’t. I’ll try replacing the fuse on the plug tomorrow. In the meantime, all of my photos are stored on it, so I don’t have access to my archives. (I’m still waiting to replace my camera). Just as well I don’t have it yet, as I can’t publish photos of what I’m currently working on until after it has gone on show.
I’m finishing two quilts for the Festival of Quilts 2008 at the NEC in Birmingham this August. ‘Manhattan Angel’ is an homage to the photographer Lee Miller. I’m working on her dress and some Art Deco angel wings and just about to fuse all of it into place. Then I’ll sandwich the three layers and do the machine quilting.
‘Ivory Fish’ is a paper quilt made from monographs on cartridge paper. It tells the story about a fish I carved from a bar of soap when I was eight years old. I have glued the centre squares together and added a border. Just finishing up hand stitching the border to the centre, then I will ‘tie quilt’ a fabric back with a hanging sleeve and blanket stitch around the edges. Then, voila!
My low-tech difficulty is that I have lost the 2nd leather thimble I bought for the hand stitching. I’m sewing through 2 or 3 layers of cartridge paper and PVA, so can only work for about 30 minutes at a time until my finger gets too sore!
Yesterday, I went to the South West Quilters Summer Meeting in Okehampton. I got a lift from my friend Dorrie who was hosting one of the speakers, Edinburgh-based textile artist Pat Archibald. Her talk was ‘A Creative Journey to the Roof of Africa’ in which Pat told the story in words, slides and quilts of her inspirational climb to the top of Mount Kilamanjaro and the resulting award winning quilt ‘From Addis to Kili: From Dawn to Dusk’. Quite a journey and turning point.
Pat will have a booth at the Festival of Quilts 2008 where she will also be teaching, lecturing and doing demos. During this year’s Edinburgh Festival, Pat will be showing and selling her textile art at Venue 123. So if you are in Birmingham or Edinburgh this August, check her out.
During the journey Pat and I had a really nice blether about Edinburgh, creativity, fibre art, solo vs group art making and tattie scones. Besides the serendipity of meeting a new fibre art friend, I have been looking all over Exeter lately for foils. Pat had taught her workshop Travellers’ Tales Told in Little Landscapes yesterday and just happened to have packets of foil, special foil glue and glue crystals. So I bought everything I need and got expert advice to boot! I’m looking forward to playing with these in between all of my other projects!
Did someone say that spring had arrived in Devon? Oh, it was me . . . . a couple of weeks ago! We had frost every morning last week and chilly rain, rain, rain for the past two days. This afternoon we had to park on the other side of the river when we got home.
I checked the mail before I forded the stream and found that spring had arrived in the post. I received this juicy, vibrant ATC from Fannie Narte who is based in Texas.
Pear
I met Fannie recently in cyberspace when I googled Neocolor II and found my way to her blog Imagine, Create, Inspire. I emailed her my question about stabilizing Neocolor II on fabric and she got right back to me with some helpful advice. Fannie is an artist who enjoys exploring and shares her discoveries and techniques on her blog. I also really like the interesting questions she poses at the end of many of her posts. Oh! and she had a giveaway contest last weekend in which I won this beautiful ATC; actually we were all winners.
Fannie has another blog Artistic Expressions dedicated to her fabulous colored pencil and watercolor art. She is one of those talented and creative free spirits who carelessly says, ‘This is my first colored pencil piece’ and shows a perfectly executed work of art. Mahalo Fannie!!
Crossing the river
The writings of John O’Donohue, an Irish poet and philosopher, are one of my touchstones. John’s writing draws the reader into intimate conversation with neglected or unknown regions of the soul.
Language was his greatest gift — and his greatest blessing to others. His writing is grounded in human vulnerability and the desire, the longing, for a connection to the wonder of the divine in nature, and human life within it. He was one of those rare writers whose words help others make sense of the world, because he was held together, himself, by a sense that “there is an unseen life that dreams us; it knows our true direction and destiny. We can trust ourselves more than we realize, and we need have no fear of change.”
Lately, I have kept Eternal Echoes – Exploring Our Hunger to Belong close by. While reading it, I find myself frequently putting this book down to allow the words to travel through my interior layers and reach their intended destination: my soul.
I’ve quoted him a couple of times and have been planning to write a post about his writing and it’s influence on my spiritual journey sometime soon. I happened to have a free hour in a cafe in Exeter yesterday morning and it was with sadness that I read in the Guardian of his death in January of this year.
Here is a link to a memorial site which has some of John O’Donohue’s writing and a link to his last radio interview The Inner Landscape of Beauty.
Finally, here is a recording of John reading his poem Beannacht, or Blessing.
Beannacht
On the day
when the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble
May the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you
May a flock of colours
indigo, red, green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean blackens
beneath you
May there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
- John O’Donohue ( 1956-2008 )
I paid a visit to my friend Heidi while I was in Greenville. I met her in 2002 when I had just sold my first quilt to a couple in Davidson, NC. I went to The Sewing Bird, a quilt shop in Charlotte to see if they had any silk velvet that I could use to wrap it in. Heidi was into quilting at the time and we struck up a friendship that has continued long distance. She took me on my very first visit to Mary Jo’s Cloth Store in Gastonia.
Heidi now lives in Greenville and owns The Beaded Frog – a full service bead store in the downtown area. Her shop offers classes, beads galore, custom design and repairs. The shop has a very good vibe: friendly and welcoming with lots of creativity going on. As well as running a great shop Heidi is an art collector, promoter of emerging artists and a jewelry designer. She is on a spiritual path which we spent a good deal of time talking about. I think of Heidi as a breathtakingly level-headed angel.
When I was in Greenville last week I met a Southern Fried Folk Artist who paints on fabric and makes it 3D with beads and thread.
Susan Sorrell
Susan lives life in Glorious Technicolor and her favorite color is red because ‘it is obnoxious, vibrant and loud’. She took my friend Heidi and I out to her studio which is located in Solteria Studios at Poe Mill, an old textile section of Greenville. There are about 20 different artists in the space and it seems like a really cool community.
Some of Susan’s work:
In addition to making and selling her artwork, Susan teaches online fiber art classes and marries people for a living. No, she doesn’t practice polyandry. Susan is a Notary and can perform marriage ceremonies. She has teamed up with photographer Anne K. Taylor to form ‘Weddings in a Flash’. A service for couples who want to get married without the expense and fuss of a large wedding. Susan and Anne will come to meet you anywhere to perform and record the wedding ceremony: a park, at home, in the laundromat where you met – you name it!
Ring Susan on (864) 233 8934
or visit her website – www.creativechick.com
Last week I went to Asheville to hear Laura Cater-Woods, a working studio artist, give her lecture about how she came to fibre art. She has an M.F.A. and started off as painter. All was well, until she went to a Quilt National show. This is an amazing, cutting edge, bi-annual (odd years) art quilt show held in the Dairy Barn in Athens, OH. There she discovered what can happen when artists make quilts and she started her love affair with fabric. The rest is history. Laura uses mainly batiks for her piecing and thread paints over it.
She spoke about the Fine Art vs Craft division that a lot of people hold to. Her philosophy is that the best art is well crafted and good craft is art. That there really isn’t a hard and fast split. I really agree with this and I love craft better than fine art, because you can see and feel the artist’s hand in the work. It is meant to be touched and used.
Some of Laura’s work:
Shell Game
Shell Game – detail
Reflection: Rust
Reflection: Rust
Solace – detail
Solace – detail
Over the next couple of days I had the privilege of taking Laura’s two day workshop Tempting the Muse. She taught her piecing technique and gave many helpful tips for thread painting and keeping your sewing machine happy.
In addition to being a fantastic teacher, Laura is a Creativity Coach. I learned about the creative process in general and how to embark on making a new piece of fibre art by starting where I know I want to start and working out each step of the design and making process as it comes. And keeping the process open to respond to where my journey takes me.
I was initially inspired by transition, bridges, crossing over to a new place – which is exactly where I am in my life. On my way to Asheville, I had stopped to look at the Bunker Hill Covered Bridge (1896) in Catawba County, NC.
As I worked out my initial sketches someone suggested that I get out of the box. So I began with the image below as my starting point, my Stillpoint. I am using a color palette inspired by my trip to Ocmulgee.
This piece will be three dimensional and will include words and text. It is about coming Home. It was so great to be working with fabric since I have been away from a sewing machine for nearly 2 ½ weeks! Laura and everyone else in the workshop kept calling me Lindy. I love it! Part of my voyage of discovery on this trip is re-connecting with my Southern roots. My mom used to call me Lindy Lou and since everyone has to have two names in the South, Lindy Lou it is.
On the way back to Mooresville I stopped off at Mary Jo’s Cloth Store in Gastonia for some more batiks to complete my palette.
At the workshop I met some very talented fibre artists, was invited to join the Asheville Quilt Guild (which I did!) and have entered a quilt in their August 2007 show.
Sunspots – Wendy Bowen
Prayer – Willow Glenne Austin
Willow owns a custom fabric wallhanging business called Laughing Willow Designs. I am definitely going to get together with her soon and swap some text onto textile techniques.
