I’ve been alive for over half a century and have witnessed a great deal of beauty as well as tragedy, both personally and in the world. However the current political climate is unlike anything I have ever experienced. The take away from the past three months is that we Americans are as divided, if not more so, as we’ve ever been. Our planet and its people are in jeopardy and we Americans are in crisis. Even those who backed the current administration seem unable to accept that their man has won and leave it at that. There is a combative rage that masks the fear and despair of so many.
What I find most helpful in coping with my concern regarding the world and our place in it, is to take action, speak out, write letters and postcards, make phone calls, join protests, get involved and take at least a couple of daily, anonymous, kind, actions toward another human being. And then, with whatever time I can carve out, I create. Every day. I work on something, whether it is my Ode to Matisse Quilt, which I’m now free motion quilting (yay!) or working on a block of the month or throwing pots or painting or sketching out new ideas, I create. Every day. It’s the thing that has always saved me over these past 56 years. I create.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a fine artist. I loved pen and ink, but also acrylic paint. I studied with the great Nate Oliveira, who also happened to be a close friend of my parents. While at Parsons School of Design, one summer I took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. I painted, drew, designed, sewed, embroidered, knitted, wrote… I have explored many different artistic mediums, but in the end, I kept going back to designing, whether it was hand knits, fashion or jewelry, design was what I did, more often than not, to earn money. But fine art, is always there, somewhere in the background informing it all.
Last month I took out my paint brushes and began painting again. It’s been years, no decades! I’d forgotten how much I love it. The following images are all collages with acrylic paint and a variety of other things, such as pastel, ink, torn newspaper, cardboard, etc.
Red
On the Horizon
Dawn
Obscured
America
Wishing everyone a peaceful day filled with creativity and ART!
I began this blog a few years ago because I wanted a place where I could discuss creativity, art, inspiration and being an artist. Since life has always informed my art, I came up with the name – Where Art & Life Meet. Art has always been the thing that saves me. When I am creating I am completely present, focussed and I am most at peace. I’m in the zone, an almost trance-like state of being. I feel happy and serene. So when life gets turbulent, when I am scared, when the world feels chaotic and unpredictable, art is the thing that beckons me, soothing me, allowing me to appreciate life and it’s beauty, if only in that fleeting moment. However these last two weeks have been particularly difficult, so much so that for an entire day I couldn’t do any art at all. Nothing.
Thankfully, I had my online class, Dyeing to Design given by Elizabeth Barton, which I’ve written about ‘here‘ and ‘here‘ and we had another project due, so I forced myself to focus. We began with some basic shibori dyeing. Shibori is the Japanese art of wrinkling, creasing, folding and binding fabrics before dunking them into dye. One can get a great variety of patterns from Shibori. Here are some of mine.
But once the fabrics were dyed, I felt at a loss as to what to do with them. I am drawn to shapes and usually sketch out my ideas first, but these fabrics are so bold, even bossy, that I couldn’t figure out how to respond to them. Finally I had an idea that I began to play around with, but it was going to be far too complicated and I didn’t have enough time to create it…
So I refined and came up with this…
I plunged in and began cutting out shapes, putting them up on my design wall, pulling things down, putting other things up. Eventually I designed this.
In part this piece was in response to a comment about how things seemed dark, but the sun would shine again. That red was glaring and SO red, so I went back to my design wall and did this.
And here’s the back and the label.
In between working on this piece, I lost myself in the bliss of hand painting some of my pots that I threw over a month ago. They make me happy. I am calling them “Message Pots.” The next batch will feature a more diverse population, which I’m looking forward to creating. Did I mention that I haven’t been sleeping much? I think all these guys look sleepy.
To all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, have a happy one. To all who are feeling frightened and despondent, know that there are many feeling the same.
As for me, I will be losing myself in several days of cooking, another art form(!) before getting back to my painting, dyeing, quilts and designing.
I almost didn’t post this today as it’s Election Day and figured many of us would be out voting or thinking about voting or waiting in anxiety for the presidential election’s outcome and then I thought – a perfect time for some levity while waiting in line to vote or for those reading this from elsewhere… okay not sure where I’m going with this, so here it is…
“Dyeing to Design” is the title of the terrific five week online class I’m taking given by the talented artist Elizabeth Barton through the Academy of Quilting. I wrote about the first week ‘here‘ and promised to write about the second.
I started the second week by pretty much dyeing every bit of white cotton fabric I had. Seriously. I went through the ten yards that was suppose to last us the entire five weeks of the class. Restraint is not a strong suit. In addition I went through so much dye that I realized I was not going to have enough to get me through the rest of the course, which meant I had to order both fabric and dye. Waiting was excruciating. I was going to work in a pun using the word “dyeing”, but restrained myself. See. I try where and when I can. While I waited however, I had all these beautiful fabrics to look at and consider for my next design.
The design I decided to do used shapes I come back to again and again, long ago when I was a fashion designer, now still designing jewelry and again this past week while using my hand dyed fabrics. Let’s not spend any time analyzing this, yes?
R17 – 18 Kt Brushed Gold
I chose two colors to work with, red and, with Elizabeth’s suggestion, an olive color. Elizabeth encouraged me to play with the olive color using it’s various gradations, which of course required more fabric that I didn’t have. Not easily thwarted, I pulled out some muslin and dyed that. It was at this point that the faucet in the kitchen sink suddenly stopped working. It was a drought. Nothing, but the slightest trickle of water, a whisper, really. However, we have a slop sink in the pantry. It was one of my brilliant ideas when we gutted the place; I envisioned our loft as a veritable greenhouse with furniture. Think Max’s bedroom when he falls asleep in Where the Wild Things Are. This vision of mine never came to fruition and so the slop sink became a receptacle for rags, cleaning supplies and other items no one knew what else to do with. And to add insult to injury underneath the sink we keep the kitty litter box. As we live in NYC our “pantry,” while sounding grand and spacious, is actually the size of a very, very small closet, combined with the kitty litter under foot, a stacked washer and dryer, the slop sink overflowing with assorted cleaning supplies… Let’s face it, it’s really really cramped.
I was determined to make it work, and while this made for some interesting maneuvering on my part, I did fall in love with my slop sink, but not so much that I didn’t call the plumber. He came a few days later and fixed the kitchen faucet, but in the meantime I washed all my dyed fabrics in my now beloved slop sink inside our closet, I mean pantry. It was all very Alice in Wonderlandish.
Two days later, after the sink was working again I came home to the smell of smoke and asked FH (fabulous husband) what happened. “Well,” FH said, and then after a lengthy pause and with a pained expression he finally added, “I think our washing machine blew up.” I would have suspected wild exaggeration on his part had it not been for the lingering evidence of noxious smoke wafting through our home. Evidently he was doing a load of laundry and heard a loud bang. He went over to investigate to find smoke billowing out of our front loader. You have no idea how happy I am that I was not there to witness. So for the next few weeks we are without a washing machine. But I digress… Here is the preliminary piece on my design wall.
Slowly it began to take shape and as everything seemed to be falling apart, exploding, going dry and whatever else, my sewing machine, not wanting to be left out of all the fun, decided it was no longer going to play nice with my walking foot, perhaps it was taking a cue from our presidential race, requiring me to spend more than five hours watching various you tube videos, reading the instructions over and over again to troubleshoot. There were a LOT of late, late nights. Eventually I was able to convince my sewing machine it was in its own best interest to get along and all is well. In actuality I realized that my walking foot was causing the automatic threader to jam. When I thread it manually everything works.
After I did the quilting I decided to add some hand stitching, but couldn’t decide whether to do more or take it all out. So what does one do when you’re not sure? Ask Elizabeth and others in the class for feedback, of course!
Which led to this…
And here’s the back.
The third week of the class is well underway, my fabric arrived, the sink is running as is my walking foot (haha) and oh what fun I’m having! We are learning basic Shibori arashi dyeing. I still don’t have a washing machine, (and have two teenagers in the house) but these are luxury problems. I haven’t figured out what I’m doing with my beautiful dyed fabrics, but will come up with something in the next day or so. Here’s a sneak peak at this weeks dyeing and drying New York City style. And I didn’t make a single dye joke. The title doesn’t count because it’s Elizabeth’s name for her class. How can you not love that title? I may go back and edit a few in, just to amuse, or you can make a few in the comments!
Lest you, good readers, misread the above and think this is going to be about a metaphoric death resulting from an existential crisis, let me set you straight, it’s not. This is about dyes, dyeing fabric and design. Now if you’re like me, you might be thinking – oh who has time for all that? – but let me tell you, there’s so much more to dyeing than you think. Get it? Trying not to laugh, really, really trying… It’s impossible to write a post about dyeing and not keep thinking of all the puns one makes without even trying… This is just too easy. You might dye of laughing… hee-hee!
Ahem.
Okay.
Seriously.
I never thought I’d enjoy dyeing fabric. I always felt there’s so much great fabric out there, why would I want to dye my own? Well… it turns out, not only was I wrong, but what a beautiful world it is once you begin dyeing! Before I get ahead of myself, this all began because I was looking for blogs by quilters who are also artists. As I was looking around I found the extremely talented artist Elizabeth Barton, and her blog, Art and Quilts, Cogitations Thereon. What a find! I read this post, The Proliferation of Online Classes, which I then felt compelled to comment on, which in turn led me to investigate the classes Elizabeth teaches and in particular one that began a week ago Friday, which I promptly signed up for. Her five week online class, given through The Academy of Quilting, is titled – Dyeing to Design. Love that.
Dyeing has never called to me, but I enjoyed reading Elizabeth’s blog, really like her work, and this class had the most immediate starting date and I’m impatient, so I thought – Why not? This is one of the many wonderful things about being new to something, it never hurts to try something you’ve never done before and the worst that can happen is you discover it’s not for you and you move on. On the other hand, you might fall in love with whatever it is, become totally obsessed and that is a indescribable joy unlike any other. The latter pretty much describes my experience with quilting and fiber art. And so it was again, with dyeing and this class, now in its second week. What a fantastic class. I cannot recommend it, and Elizabeth Barton, more highly!!
It helps that Elizabeth is a terrific instructor, very responsive and thorough, has a great eye, and gives excellent feedback. She writes extensive instructions with good explanations and examples of her own work to illustrate what she’s talking about. The first week we dove right in mixing all our various dyes for the next five weeks and did this – gradations of black (photograph below.) You’ll notice the mottled effect, which I think is so beautiful and striking. As we were working with black and since there’s no such thing, the blues, pinks and greens can be seen in different areas. The organic look to the fabric also appeals to my sense of design and so I was hooked. Totally fell in love. Completely. Dramatically. In. Love. Designing a piece using these gradations was next. I had a couple ideas and with Elizabeth’s encouragement settled on this one, which also happened to be the first idea I came up with.
I decided I would cut the fabric into 2.5″ squares, which meant that after they’d been sewn together they would be 2″ squares, gradating from light to dark, but a little unevenly to keep things interesting. This is how it looked positioned on my design wall.
Emboldened by Elizabeth’s helpful suggestions, I made a few adjustments and began sewing all those squares together. That’s a whole lot of squares… After consulting Elizabeth (again), she suggested linear and horizontal stitching, I began quilting, but left the larger square alone as I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I wanted to do something, but couldn’t figure out what.
Back to Elizabeth who gave me more excellent feedback, suggesting a different color thread and syncopating the stitches so they didn’t meet with the other lines from the larger piece, and off I went to finish it. I decided against a binding, instead made a facing out of my lightest grey and backed it with a piece of red fabric I had. I made a label, again from one of the light greys and voila! This piece, entitled Living in the Grey, is 17″X 23.5″.
The thing about dyeing your own fabric is how utterly seductive it is. You can mix any color you want by tweaking the proportions of your primary colors. The mottled effect enhances the overall feel of the fabric, making it completely unique and like no other.
We are now in Week Two and are dyeing as many colors as we have the time, inclination and material for. Of course I went totally nuts with dyeing all the possibilities. I admit – I’ve now dyed every color including varying intensities and am eager to start experimenting with the subtler, more nuanced shades of each, but ran out of fabric, dye and other materials I need, so will have to wait until all the things I’ve ordered arrive. Here’s a sneak peak of a few of the colors I dyed over the weekend, (and stayed up until 3 or 4am, I can’t remember now, to do so!) getting ready for my next design using colors. Lots and lots of colors. You could even say… colors to dye for. Oh behave yourself!
I’m just dyeing to read your comments. Okay, okay, I’ll stop.
No, really.
I promise.
You have no idea how hard I’m restraining myself right now.
After I finished the QFM – Quilt For Mom – I felt at a loss. It’s the same feeling I experience after finishing a wonderful book. Elated, but also sad it’s over and wondering what’s next. I knew I wanted to design my own quilt, but am still so new to this form and didn’t want to be too ambitious. Things were in limbo.
My life is busy, I homeschool our daughter, as well as, like and need to, spend time with my eldest and then of course there’s FH (fabulous husband) and did I mention I have my own business? All of this means I have a full, albeit hectic, and at times, overwhelming life, and I desperately need time to design and create without worrying about how to promote it, the cost basis, manufacturing, orders, etc. When I don’t have the time or when other things make it impossible, I feel off, am more easily stressed, saddened and even depressed by things that happen in the world and in my life. I worry more. I feel more sensitive, raw and fragile. These same things don’t have as devastating an impact on me when I carve out time for my artistic pursuits. Because of all this, I knew I had to start a new project, and given all that is happening in the world and my life right now, the sooner, the better!
Out came my sketch book. I began doodling. From those doodles I found a few shapes I kept coming back to and slowly a design came into focus.
This is my Ode To Matisse.
The Sketch
After I finished the first sketch, I photocopied it several times and began mapping out the measurements. I knew the sketch was going to be skewed and out of proportion because I wanted the quilt to end up being 80″ by 105″, which is big enough to drape down on either side of a twin sized bed or even skimpily cover a queen sized bed and long enough to allow for folding over pillows. This will be the quilt I take with me to my retreat at Quilting by the Lake next summer where we stay in air-conditioned (last summer I was FREEZING) dorm rooms, which have twin-sized beds!
I needed to figure out how I was going to block it, in other words how I would divide it up as I envisioned several different background fabrics, all beiges. With colored pencils I marked out my blocks, with approximate measurements and numbered the blocks.
Blocking out the Sketch
I then went to my stash and began pulling background fabrics. After a trip to the fabric store, I decided on eight different fabrics, all beiges/cream of some kind.
Placing the Background Fabrics
Next up was working out the colors for the shapes. This process took over the floor of our bedroom for a couple days. I wanted bright, cheerful colors, that reminded me of spring and summer and I wanted them to stay close to the colors Matisse used when he created these kinds of organic shapes.
Deciding on Fabric for the shapes
Finally I was ready to cut out the shapes, using freezer paper first to lay them out, tweak when necessary and rearrange if needed. This is what I came up with… Still not convinced the three round shapes in the lower portion of the quilt are working as well as they could. I might need to move them all the way over to the left side and take the shapes on the left and put them to the right end of that block or maybe reduce the size of the skinny large circle on the left and make the flower shape at the edge larger…
Freezer Paper Matisse
Even though I have a few reservations with the design, I’m going ahead with it and will see how I feel as I go. I’m also not sure if I will add other fabrics and hand stitching as I did with the QFM or if I’ll just appliqué and then free motion quilt this one, giving it the versatility to be thrown in a washing machine and dryer, unlike the QFM, which must be dry cleaned because of all the beading, wool, velvet and hand stitching I did. Also I need this quilt to be finished no later than July, so I’ll see what I end up having time for.
An Ode To Matisse
I’ve started on the bottom block and am almost finished appliquéing all the shapes down.
I would have gotten more done by now, but got a little way laid as I also signed up for a five week online class with the talented artist Elizabeth Barton at Academy of Quilting. We are supposed to produce a small quilt each week. Yikes!!! More on that later…
And I didn’t make a single dye joke. The title doesn’t count because it’s Elizabeth’s name for her class. How can you not love that title? I may go back and edit a few in, just to amuse, or you can make a few in the comments!
Designing a piece using these gradations was next. I had a couple ideas and with Elizabeth’s encouragement settled on this one, which also happened to be the first idea I came up with. 
After consulting Elizabeth (again), she suggested linear and horizontal stitching, I began quilting, but left the larger square alone as I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I wanted to do something, but couldn’t figure out what.
The thing about dyeing your own fabric is how utterly seductive it is. You can mix any color you want by tweaking the proportions of your primary colors. The mottled effect enhances the overall feel of the fabric, making it completely unique and like no other.
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