Studio Kit

When I was trying to get "just the right effect" with my rust dyeing over the summer to make the fabric for Erosion; well, need I say more? lol

Those of you who have rust dyed, know that you have virtually no control over the finished product. Try as you may - things never turn out exactly how you had envisioned. So I had to rust dye a LOT of fabric - yards and yards - (about 7!) to get the piece I wanted for Erosion.

But then, what's a girl to do with 6 yards of rust-dyed fabric?

One of the ideas I came up with was the above. Each of those is a 6.5 inch square - very manageable as a piece of portable work, and if I get tired of it after these first 12 blocks, I can stop. But my intent is to make eight or twelve of these sections - so, 144 of those 6.5 inch squares (I know, right?), put them all together, and then use them as a background for a still larger piece. I imagine it will take approximately a year of lunches in total.

But who wants to think about that?! So, I'm starting with one six and 1/2 inch square.

Very manageable.

At long last, a finish! :)

This one is actually quite significant, not least because of the hours and hours of hand stitching in it. Observe:

I haven't been around for awhile - and this was one of the reasons. I gave myself a nasty steam burn, when the lid fell off of the tea kettle when I was making a pot of tea. Ouchie!

And then I had some really busy days (going in early and staying late) at my day job; and with my new limitations, I can't spend long days in the office and then also spend time in the studio - so the studio has had to wait.

And this calendar is already radically behind, as that first one "someone" which was supposed to be finished the first weekend is November, is still not finished now -pushing back everything else. *ahem*

However...

I think there's some great reading here – I hope you'll enjoy it!

This is a *very* interesting article by Kathleen Loomis about Anne Loveless winning the Art Prize (the world's biggest purse in the art world - $200,000!) with her beautiful textile art piece Sleeping Bear Dune Lakeshore. But it's not what you think – it's about why this won't make any difference to the larger art world, and why it won't change how textile art is thought of (craft, women's work, not-art)>

http://raggedclothcafe.com/2013/11/03/the-biggest-art-prize-in-the-world-by-kathleen-loomis/

This is an article from Matthew Schuler. He writes about how he believes creative people think – mean to be shared with the people in your life who just "don't get" you. I recognized a lot of myself in it – perhaps you will too. :

http://www.matthewschuler.co/why-creative-people-sometimes-make-no-sense/

This is a fantastic article – one of my favourites that I read quite often – about how the art gallery system works. You may have read it before yourself (it's not new); but some of you may not have – and it bears reminding if you any interest in those kinds of shows. Good reading even for those who don't!

http://www.artbusiness.com/osoquugalsys.html

This is a fiber artist I "discovered" through this blog, Ana Teresa Barboza. Her work is incredible!

http://www.ignant.de/2013/09/03/ana-teresa-barboza/

And these are a set of articles about using quilts to talk about words we are uncomfortable with. The accompanying interviews may be enlightening to those of you haven't considered the impact of the words on the people they are being spoken about. Warning - the words are NSFW – but we're all big girls here, right?

http://cauchycomplete.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/life-as-a-picnic/

http://bitchesgetstitches.net/2013/11/13/champagne-strawberries/

http://cauchycomplete.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/a-follow-up-on-the-n-word/

I actually haven't forgotten about the lunch time project - but it's taking a lot longer than the last one did!

The repetitiveness of these particular stitches is hard to be motivated by, and I have to put it aside for long stretches of time and work on something else.

But I'm in the home-stretch now. This hooped portion is nearly all I have left to do.

Well, that's what we'll start with, anyway.

I was in a park near work collecting leaves for a project, when I came upon this man feeding peanuts to the squirrels. I must have taken 20 or 30 pictures of this scene. I mean check out the squirrels! Those black blurs are squirrels coming and going - in the few minutes I stood there, snapping away, he must have individually fed 20 or 30 squirrels!

I was really just trying to get a good picture of the squirrels, but when I got home, after looking at two or three of these pictures, I completely forgot about the squirrels. I kind of fell in love with this man as a subject.

I mean, wow.

There's a species of resignation in his face that reads as a quiet kind of sadness despite the fact that the squirrels were coming and taking the peanuts directly from his hands and the fact that he must find pleasure in this activity. Seeing the lush foliage around him that is nevertheless in an early stage of decay... as I looked at the photos, a story about him fell into place.

I was quite taken with the aptness of it's being fall in this little scene - and suddenly, I realized, I'd captured something much more than I had intended.

I think this will be one of the pieces I work on over the winter.

But back to what I'm working on right now...