Studio Kit

To start with:

I'm showing you this because, in some super fun news, I was contacted by The Canadian Encylopedia, who asked if they could use my piece on Marie-Joseph Angelique to illustrate their article on her.

I said yes, (of course) and yesterday, they used my picture as their "image of the day" on their blog.:)

And now to get to the links:

At TextileArtist.org, there's an interview with Yumiko Reynolds about her figurative free-machine embroidery "thread on paper". Really beautiful stuff, and a brief synopsis of her evolution as an artist in paper. HERE

Elizabeth Barton has a post on the importance of focal point in our work, HERE

Over at Left Bank Art Blog, Carl Belz has a look at Dozier Bell's drawings on mylar - in terms of the pictures, they mylar creates a wonderful photographic effect (it's hard to believe that they're not photographs); the writing itself is also wonderful as an example

"Bell’s diminutive worlds are exceptional in not actively competing or being social at all. Anchored in nature and observing nature’s rhythms, acknowledging nature as source and solace without reliance on media intervention, her worlds are secure with their autonomy

You can find that review HERE

Sharon Butler at Two Coats of Paint writes an update on a genre that she didn't invent, but did name "Casualism" and further explains why it's a valid form of art. A sample:

The casualist impulse has yielded compositionally awkward work that may seem humble and self-deprecating, and may employ ‘hobbyist’ pre-fab materials like pre-stretched canvases and canvas board. ..... The most compelling casualist work has an anti-heroic, offhand feel and ostensibly shows little attention to craft or detail. Perhaps unsurprisingly, galleries and collectors have been slow to embrace this type of work because it seems too easy...But casualist tendencies suffuse the established art world... Matisse’s casualist leanings were transparent. Picasso’s were more muted, ..."

I quite recommend this article (and the one that preceded it that she links to in her article) - it's very interesting, and educational (!) to read about the birth of a new genre in art.

You can find that essay HERE

And because you've been saying I've been including too many links - that's it, today!

Oh, except for this link to me! lol

It's my new online "book". You can find that HERE

Have a great weekend!

Today's WIP is the wippiest of wips that ever wipped. :)

But first, here's "Erosion" all framed up. (I'm hoping that bottom right edge will "fall" otherwise, I'll have to take it back to the framer!)

Along the same lines, I am considering:

The last time we looked at the Ephemera piece, I said I was going to add a little flora and fauna this quarter. This is the result of the first week of this quarter (week 14) - the words this week are from The Velveteen Rabbit: "When you are real, you don't mind being hurt."

And next up, we've got a couple of birds. I usually sketch directly on the fabric, after first giving it a go on my sketch patch; but this time I decided to try a different method.

I save all the backing paper from my fusible papers, using them to protect my iron when I'm fusing. But I decided I might try using them as transfer papers as their semi-slick sides sort of lend themselves to such a process. (Or so my thinking went).

So I sketched them on the papers using a graphite woodless pencil, and then flipped them over, and used my eraser as a rubbing implement, which I rubbed all over the back of the paper. And as you can see, it worked very well!

Hope you had a great weekend!

currently on my mini-design board...

It's Friday, so let's get to the links!

There's an interview with Heather Dubreuil at Textile Artist HERE. She is new to me, but I really love her work and the sort of watercolour effect she has managed to achieve: something I tried to do for years and sadly was never able to. lol She's managed it beautifully. :)

Over at the Wooster Collective, they point us in the direction of Jacob Hasimoto's latest installation at the Martha Otero Gallery in Los Angeles, called "Yellow Giant and Gas Studies". I would LOVE to see this show live and walk through it. It must be amazing! Check that out HERE

At TextileArtist once more, there's an interview with Jacqueline Treloar, about her "Theatrical" textile art. Her work is really quite amazing - she has a lot of breadth in her work, from narrative work, wearables, abstract wall hangings to ???? lol Mixed media 3D art, maybe? Whatever it is - it's wonderful! Check out the interview and the amazing photographs HERE

There's a new video series on you tube purporting to be the adventures of an "art dealer" named Baroness Von Kohn as she tries to sell work to "collectors". It's like America's Top Model meets art collecting, and Baroness Von Kohn is deliciously cray-cray.

I don't know if I could watch the whole series (she has two episodes out so far) - indeed, I haven't been able to make it through an entire episode (lol). But it's wacky fun. Tell me what you think! - you can find that HERE

With the release of his book "Your Everyday Art World", Lane Releya has been making the rounds. In this interview at The Brooklyn Rail, he discusses "the historical and future implications of DIY, contemporary post-studio practices and the M.F.A. as the 'rising art world institution". It's very interesting stuff and a meaty interview. You can check that out HERE

Over at Colossal, Heather Hanson combines dance and charcoal to make beautiful abstract large pieces (no, dance isn't her subject matter, she dances to create the art!). You can find that HERE

Then we have Altoon Sultan again, this time, discussing "The Primacy of Things" - the removal of the artist from their own work. Her posts are always a wealth of learning for me - her writing is both instructive and...I don't know what word to use besides "deep" and in there is a depth to it... anyway - I often have to read her posts several times to understand what she's saying, but I love them. :) Find this one HERE

And a new take on that ever-interesting argument, art vs. craft - this time Kathleen Loomis' take on it over at Ragged Cloth Cafe. You can find that HERE

If you're ready for it, after the Sultan article, there's another scholarly article HERE by Mira Shor - reflecting on Paul Klee's work. Again, instructive, and a bit difficult if, like me, you're new to art-speak; but I think well worth it. The preface is about the destruction of the quite new (!) American Folk Art Museum, which I mourned (but not as deeply as she does!) to make room for an addition to MoMA - but she gets to Klee (in depth!) soon enough. I only knew him as a Bauhaus artist, so, once again, I learned a lot about he and his work in this article. You can find that HERE

When you need a break from all that reading, you can pop over to Illustration Friday and look at the pretty pictures - in this case, the rather sweet work of mixed media artist, Johan Thornqvist's altered photographs, HERE

Then there's Aakash Nihalin's tape art for more pretty pictures: HERE

And a wonderful little video called "The Golden Age of Insect Aviation" over at Colossal, HERE.

There. Does your brain feel better now? Mine does! So, let's have a look at Jonathan Kamholt's review of Rob Anderson's show at Miami University (winner of the William and Dorothy Yeck Young Painters Award) HERE - the brushstrokes in that gigantic baby are amazing.

(a typo there - should be 3,000 petals, not 30,000 - although it felt like 30,000!)

Rob Anderson’s show coincides with his winning the Miami University Young Painters Competition for the $10,000 William and Dorothy Yeck Award for 2013. http://aeqai.com/main/2014/01/glass-houses-rob-andersons-a-place-in-time-at-the-hiestand-gallery-miami-university/

Then, over at Financial Times, Jackie Wullshlager has a review of Lucy Jones's show "Looking Out Looking In" - and a slideshow depicting Ms. Jones' wonderful use of colour. You can find that HERE

This Isn't Happiness has photos of Martin Vlach's surreal photographs, HERE

and as his work that reminded me a bit of the work of Parke-Harrison (a favourite photography duo) I thought I'd share some of their work too - you can find that HERE.

The link is to a section of their work on The Architect's Brother series, which is when I was introduced to their work (it was 1996 I think, when I went to a talk given by Robert at University of Toronto), and still my personal favourite, but check out the whole site while you're there.

As an aside - Parke-Harrison's work not only introduced me to the idea of photography as an "art" form (up until then, I thought photography was something anyone could do if they just learned how, and never thought of it as "art"); and in fact, taught me to appreciate art as a whole.

I had always appreciated art as a sort of cultural artifact, and understood and appreciated it from a social/cultural perspective; but never really valued it in and of itself, except as an abstract concept - "We should be exposed to art the same way we should have access to good music, and education, and healthy, natural food" - in other words, as part of the same social contract that middle class people make in exchange for being good citizens, if you know what I mean.

But Parke-Harrision opened my heart, AND my brain, made the little hairs stand up on the back of my neck, and I could quite literally feel my brain expanding as I looked at these MASSIVE photographs (the ones I saw were large enough that you could step into them and be quite dwarfed by subjects); it was almost literally an immersive experience.

BLAH BLAH BLAH. lol

And if you can take anymore, check out Robert Genn's stories of YELLOW and BLUE. Some interesting histories there, written in his inimitable accessible style.

And here you see what happens after you hand-cut nearly 6,000 little bits of fabric.

Phew!

I hope you have a super weekend! See you on Monday. :)

You may remember that back in November, I decided to begin a year-long stitching project, called "Ephemera", that would do nothing more than hold whatever stitches I felt like making that week, along with a sentence or phrase overheard in that week.

I can`t believe that it's already been a full quarter, but so it has!

I finally finished this little piece (10.5 x 13.5 inner 16 x 20 matted).

Last time you saw it, I said the only thing missing was a little creature. At the time, I had in mind that I would add a little hare, or perhaps a bunny; but the more I looked at it, the more I realized it needed something else.

Squirrels, I thought - or perhaps a lot of little insects...? And while I stitched my grasses I thought and thought about it, until I remembered...