Studio Kit

Is that how you feel? lol

(a piece in progress at the moment...)|

My apologies!! I haven't forgotten about you, in fact, I think about you every day (truly!) That said, things have gotten a little more crazy for me than they have ever been - some very exciting things have happened and my time has been eaten up in attending to them...

But I'll be back on Monday - to share the news and also to make good on some promises.

Promise! ;)

In the black community in Canada and the US, when certain events happen to our brothers, our fathers, ourselves, we say "Oh ... DWB.", and shake our heads. It means, "Driving While Black".

It's a shorthand used to describe the times we are pulled over for driving in the "wrong" neighbourhood (affluent, mostly white neighbourhoods); for driving the "wrong" kind of car (expensive), or just for simply being around when a certain kind of cop is bored.

This doesn't mean of course, that all police are bad, racist or ignorant; but it does mean that enough of them are that a phrase like this became part of our shorthand.

George Zimmerman, a man who in the months prior to shooting Trayvon Martin had made over 90 calls to 911 to complain of "suspicious persons" in his neighbourhood (nearly all of whom were black); conversed with 911 operators on that night as well, and was recorded as saying as he left his vehicle to pursue Trayvon Martin:

"These assholes, they always get away."

...and less than 20 minutes later, Trayvon Martin - an unarmed, 17 year old boy, who went to the store in the rain to get his little brother a pack of skittles - was dead.

Trayvon Martin was walking while black.

And so he joined other black children whose deaths caused a public outcry and calls for reform - from 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 to 14-year-old Martin Anderson in 2006.

The shooting of Trayvon has engendered a lot of conversation about race, racial profiling, the roll of media, gun control and hoodies - these and many other subjects which I will discuss in my art over the next little while - all of which have nothing (or very little) to do with the events that happened the night Trayvon Martin was killed by Mr. Zimmerman.

Initially, I viewed those conversations as a "Look over here!" tactic; but as I've been thinking (and thinking and thinking) I realized that his death has turned a spotlight on those issues - and we do need to talk about them.

But as I (we?) talk about those issues, I don't want to lose sight of this boy: this-nearly-a-man who was not a perfect boy, but was perfectly loved; and who was guilty of nothing but WWB.

There has been a lot of talk about whether Mr. Zimmerman is white. But whether he was white or not doesn't matter.

What matters is that Trayvon Martin was killed, because he was black.

For those of you who are interested in the process behind the process, and why I chose to do what I did - I'll be offering an explication over the weekend. 'Till then...

Linking with TGIFF at Christine's blog.

Good morning!

I'm sure you're probably thinking.... "What in the world...?|

But a bigger picture might be coming through for you now. :)

To go back a little bit, after I left you on Monday, I used that acrylic paint to paint out my colourful brick pattern. As you can see, it's given that colourful and vibrant backgound a whitewash, causing it to look almost red, white and blue, wouldn't you say?

My original quilting of the shapes and lines didn't show up very well after the whitewash happened, I knew it wouldn't but had hoped for slightly more definition (next time I'll be using a thicker thread for those parallel lines) - but the other shapes were going to be over-stitched with embroidery thread anyway.

If you look VERY carefully at the picture above, you'll see the faint outline of a head, done in... is that encasutic? Why yes, yes it is!

We're nearly there...

Come back on Friday for the big finish! :)

P.S. I'm joining the Needle and Thread Network and Freshly Pieced for Wip Wednesday. Please go and see the wonderful bloggers participating and check out what they're up to!

It feels like I'm developing a routine, but don't get used to it! :)

And speaking of getting used to things - don't be frightened by this combination of fabrics, you're just going to have to trust me!

They're not going to be laid exactly like this, as you'll see - I was going for a brick pattern.

Once all of the pieces were sewn together it was time to quilt. As usual, I'm doing background quilting first - in this case, very thin parallel lines, followed by the elements I plan to draw out later on.

More spirals....

And some odd shapes...

And coming up next - some white acrylic paint and encaustic wax. (Uhm, what? )

Method to my madness my chickens, I assure you! :)

See what's next on Wednesday ...

P.S. I've been insanely busy the last week (both at work and at home - I'm trying to get ten NEW pieces together for a submission that's due in ten - no - NINE days) so if you posted something you'd like me to see, please let me know and I'll go check it out - otherwise, I think you'll find me quiet for the next little while!

Well, here it is, my little Tom (a yellow throated warbler), enjoying a wind bath in a convenient tree.

This piece is quite large for a sketch/journal piece (I think it's 32 x 15 or something like) but it's purpose was to learn two things. One, to quilt better sprials (which I failed miserably at, lol) and two to learn to make realistic looking feathers as I have had a piece in mind for a couple of years now that needs angel wings.

Here's a close up of that spiral quilting (as you can see it leaves much to be desired) but no sooner did I finish up the background, than I saw an article in Quilting Arts about how to make them. By that time I had already started needle felting my branches, so it was too late to pick out my spirals and begin again.

The other reason - learning to make fiber feathers? I felt was quite successful!

Next week, I'm taking on something new again for another sketch/journal piece - I want to try two new-to-me things: one involving encaustic wax (yup, I'm gonna give it another shot!) and the piece actually involves ::shudder:: hand quilting (!). And you know how I feel about that.

But the experiments are necessary because I have a piece in mind that's beautiful and scary and meaningful - and I before I try working with encaustic wax for that piece, I need to make sure that my idea works!

P.S. Hooking up with Tracy for Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday! Have a great weekend everyone!

Here's Tom - skinny legs and all.

So, to make a bird, you start out (as always), with a sketch. Now as you know, I'm not a drawer by any stretch of the imagination...

...so don't be intimidated by the word "sketch". No one's going to look at it except you (or in my case, you and me, but we'll just keep it between ourselves); and the point of it is, to be a guide - so that you know the direction you're going in. You know, so that you'll be able to work with intention (hah! I bet you thought I forgot about my word of the year, didn't you?) :)

And then, the fun part - pulling fabrics from your stash! I actually pulled about four bags of white, but I figured there's only so much interest you could possibly have in bags of white scraps.

One of the bags contained all these delicate white fabrics that had already been cut into little squares for a super secret commission I'd done last year, and some of them were perfect for little Tom. So, I fused some of those and some of the other whites, and then...

Commenced to cut out feathers.

That coin is a subway token (slightly smaller than a dime) so you'll get an idea of the size of all those tiny little feathers. I blithely assumed the amount I had here would be enough to cover the bird, and I was wrong, wrong, wrong!

It wasn't even enough to cover the first layer!

Here's a detail shot so you can see how naked poor Tom was after two layers. All in, I ended up using about 800 of those little tiny white feathers, which were painstakingly fused down about ten at a time.

(Keep in mind, however, that I chose to use very translucent fabrics and netting to get the look I was going for. If someone doing this technique chose to use opaque fabrics, I'm sure they could get the look with 300, or even 200 feathers. )

When I was "done" this is what he looked like.

I didn't like that his body was so egg-shaped and he looked rather serious to me. Despite BSP's ssurances that Tom was "perfect!" and "beautiful!" I decided that his upper body needed developing to give a better suggestion of wings, and that his head would look more engaging if it were tilted as in the original sketch. (This is why it's important to refer to your original sketch!) lol

So, I painstakingly snipped off his head (no birds were hurt in the making of this post!), added feathers to his wattle, re-applied Tom's head at the proscribed angle and then fluffed up his body to get what you saw in the first pic. Much better!

And because you've seen me needle felt tree branches about a thousand times now (if you've been with me since the beginning), I won't bother with that again.

But come back on Friday for the big reveal!

P.S. - Hooking up with The Needle and Thread Network and Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday. Go and see what everyone else is up to!