A New Muse

How did it get to be almost the middle of January? I guess I've been too busy to notice the time whizzing by. The last week of the year is always a favorite for me: celebration season coming to an end and everything calming down, exercise classes on hiatus. Fewer social expectations means time to clean up the house and clean up my to-do pile in a more relaxed way, and always, make plans for a new season of learning and excitement.

As the light of day materializes, I contemplate my creative life.

This year the Strathmore workshops aren't scheduled to begin until March, but I had an alternate New Year's Day creative jolt: after starting the day with a very "rah! rah!" Weight Watchers meeting I came home to begin, in earnest, "2013, The Year of the Giraffe, An Experiment in Creativity" with the most excellent of creative cheerleaders, Carla Sonheim. I have taken numerous online workshops with Carla over the last two years, as have others of the giraffe class, and we were so ready for this new concept. Rather than being an actual drawing class, we are expanding our vision about the meaning of creativity by having one basic muse, the giraffe, and twelve monthly assignments in various forms of creative expression. We will design assignments of our own choosing, we will communicate through word and image, we will talk on the phone, we will create a group e-zine, we will make friends around the world, and best of all, we will share an understanding of what it is to be a person who needs to, who must, create as a part and parcel of daily life. Rather than have a goal of finished product, the goal is to be present for the process.

January's assignment is to draw the giraffe, in any manner, as few or as many as we choose, largely from life or from photo reference, and then some from imagination. I began with three "realistic" portraits in conte crayon, and have moved on to ink and warm-up exercise type drawing. This week I hope to go back to portraits in pencil and maybe charcoal. I am not adding color yet. I want to study features and lines for a while.

A classmate's husband took the photo reference for this drawing while on safari.

This is a new baby and mom who live at Chicago's Brookfield zoo (drawn from a photo.)

Inaugurating my new journal with three versions of each animal (drawn while looking at the reference photo, but not the journal page.)

These "cool dudes" were the happy accident of drawing with water soluble marker with my eyes closed entirely, then adding water to spread the ink with my eyes open.

It occurs to me, faithful readers, that for a bit of a while now, even though I have been quite busy with classes and learning and trying many new things, what I have been sharing with you are photos and tales of my recent travels (still more installments to come!), and that I have quite a backup of this and that to show you. After two and a half years with my very first artist's journal, more of a practice book, plus some coffeehouse doodling, some travel drawing and a few "good" pages, I have come to the end of it, and chosen two others in my possession with which to move forward. One I bought as a lovely souvenir of Spain, which will suffice for my year of the giraffe, and for mixed media I am finally committing myself to my first Moleskine from Melanie Testa's class in 2012, and I think I will need to buy a new "everyday" book for scratching in.

This is one of my proudest doodle sketches in the old journal because I did an interesting piece based on a real art drawing strictly from memory. The two drawings are very different, but related, and I like how one begot the other. (I don't think I ever showed you the more formal one, and I will try to do that next time.)

This highlights my love of lettering and trying to develop ways to fill space with meaningful texture that is not a standardized doodle.

Many times in this short journey, partly due to excitement with learning, and partly due to the reality of the scheduling of online offerings, I have had to take classes at less than optimal times or overlapping with others, so that I may not have finished all the assignments or lessons. I have decided that the exposure to what I do have time for is better than not taking them at all. In most cases there is printed material to return to later, or even archived video lessons to use at my leisure. Such was the case these last six months, too much, too complex, but what would I be willing to lose? None, really. In some cases, I will return to finish these classes on my own, in others just the exposure to new ideas is welcome and will carry over to other activities.

In November, I had the opportunity to take a six week introductory class in the use of a FREE digital editing and drawing program called GIMP. It is something like Photoshop, quite complex, and will take much more study and practice, but it was a revelation to begin to understand "layers" and "brushes," and other tools of the trade.

I enjoy photographing the flowers in my summer garden, so it was fun to work a little color magic on this clematis, and the iris below.

My favorite garden ornament becomes ethereal with a color punch.

I started to learn about the ability to "capture" areas of the image (here a part of a garden pot,) and then layer them on interesting backgrounds.

Capturing areas, adding filters, emphasising parts. The artistic choices are endless.

Learning to "cut" a piece of a photo and make a frame for it.

Drawing by creating shaped areas to fill will color gradations, using brushes to make patterned lines (or stamp with) to add or erase color.

These are basically doodles with brushes drawn or stamped through defined areas. So much fun, and you can create your own from any cropped bit of a photo or drawing.

 I continued my Alabama Chanin wardrobe with a long sleeve bolero with bead and sequin embellished cuffs. Although I am generally not a "sparkly" kind of dresser, this piece works well with jeans, and will be a versatile cover up for cool times or just for adding a little special kick to a simple outfit.

This is my fabric and bead choice showing the instructions page in the book  "Alabama Studio Sewing and Design."

The finished cuffs, and the garment below. (Of course, there are pants involved when I wear it!)

 I had to try a pair of the hand warmers. They were a bit difficult to sew with the two layers creating eight in the flat felled seams in tight places. Not sure if I'll make them again.

My first journal page spread of the new year summed up the completion of my biggest goal for 2012: being able to have clothes shopping be a fun experience again, and giving me a reason to put all that time and effort into making artistic handsewn garments.

My favorite blogging artist at "Smallest Forrest" gave me a wonderful idea for capturing creative ideas before they flee in a small (this is really small) journal called a "Seed Book", named for the seeds of ideas.

 And finally, after months of it sitting idle on a shelf, I decided to get out my hand-me-down iPad and use it for:

       1. a Weight Watchers online cookbook source,

       2. a (Pandora) radio on my kitchen island, and

       3. an electronic sketchpad from the inspiration of another favorite blogging artist, Pat, at "Reclinerart's Posterous".

Here I am playing with brushes for the first time (in a controlled manner.)

Here I am playing with brushes like a kid (or someone who doesn't mind calling the giraffe her muse.)

And here I am actually attempting to draw with it . (The program is "Sketch Club".) Let's just say there is going to be room for improvement, but I do expect to have some fun trying.

When Losing is Winning

(Just a reminder to new blog readers, or if you just forgot: clicking on the colored words (links) will take you to more info, and clicking on the photos will take you to an enlarged image, the better to view details.)

Sometime last winter, while enmeshed in endless preparations for a quilt show, a large and complex embroidery project, and another embroidery challenge,  I dreamed of having the free time to return to a bit of creative clothing construction. Clothing sewing had been my main type of artistic self expression for most of  my life. I had wanted for many years to go to art school and become a clothing or textile designer. Unfortunately the dream of a professional life as such had been thwarted, but in recent years I had returned to a selective set of projects that might be called "art clothing." Generally these involved using articles of clothing as a base for textile surface design explorations, and the body as the gallery for displaying them.

While I loved the idea of being able to show off my "art" wherever I went (I now can do that by whipping out my phone and pulling up my Flikr photo steam), there was the small issue of middle age spread making me an unsuitable longterm gallery for these pieces. I gradually decided it was a better use of time and money to shop for clothing that fit me now and make art that always would. The funny part about that idea is that as I have matured into my "be here now" living style, the longevity of the interest I need to have in my finished pieces of creativity has diminished no matter what the medium. I get the pleasure in the moment of creation, and generally have less interest in long term ownership. Also, the concept of digital storage of images has made it easier to catalogue, revisit and reuse the art when desired.

So when I recently decided it was time to go back to making my mark on interesting portable art, I didn't feel the pieces had to be mine forever. I did decide, however, that I needed to provide them a great looking gallery. I finally bit the bullet, rejoined the new and improved Weight Watchers (mostly improved because the online tools make tracking everything a breeze), and now I'm watching the daily shrinking me show, where I'm weighing, measuring, trying on older, smaller sizes until by the power of will they finally fit, and waiting for the time I deem the mannequin "just right." But while this has become my major summer project in the category of "just do it!", I am beginning work on a fabulous new wardrobe of someone else's inspiration, but my joy.

For once, I decided I didn't have to reinvent the wheel, that I would give myself permission to use patterns and ideas from another designer. That would be Natalie Chanin and her fantastic layered mix and match wardrobe of totally hand sewn, surface designed and embellished pieces made entirely from comfy cotton knits. Bam! The perfect combo of simplicity and excess! Any piece in the basics wardrobe can be made totally and utterly plain, or encrusted to the point of body armor. Your choice. And for your own satisfaction (aside from having a wonderful piece of clothing to complement your lifestyle), when people complement you and say "what a lot of work you did" or "how much do you think that is worth?", you can point them to the retail sales side of her company and say: this little poncho would set you back $1,235, but I made it for a yard of material and the joy of stitching.

Before I move on to my summer of show and tell stitchery, I thought I would share with you the rest of the projects from my five week course, Flower Crazy, with Carla Sonheim. I was so captivated by the techniques she taught us that for once I completed every assignment, including the "extra credit"! 

In addition to an overall inventive, personalized floral theme, the course centered on the creative combination of gesso and watercolor as the media on a variety of substrates. This is watercolor paper with gesso "last".

Here we created a textured painting with gesso "first" then watercolor and Carla's "patented" rub and buff technique.

The idea for these pod flowers came to me in a waking sort of dream. Here the same texture first, then color, but on birch plywood.

These next two pieces are my pride and joy from the class, and involved birch plywood base with wet on wet paint (and many layers more). And yet there was almost no planning involved and the two pieces took under two hours to do.

This piece and the next are the surprising base layers for the two painting to follow. Surprise for me, because I had never worked with collage before as a first layer, especially when the notion is that you will cover most of it up.

This is what the orange, green and blue papers inspired in me after adding layers of gesso, watercolor, charcoal and white acrylic ink.

And the wild black and white polka dots (left over from making journal covers for a previous class) served to give punch to this fun graphic celebration of petal power.

The "final exam" of sorts was to take a children's board book, remove most of the paper from the pages and convert them into a smorgasbord of our favorite flowers and techniques from the class. I used a great deal of collage as the base for these designs, and added water-soluble markers as well as colored pencil and water-soluble ink pencil for punch. There are a total of ten paintings in this book. Check them out here.

One of the "extra credit" assignments was to make more flowers on watercolor paper that could be cut out and arranged as a wall installation.

This collection is above my television on the main living room wall.

These are on the closet doors above my sewing machine. All of them made from scrap paper, cardboard and tape, but the key ingredients are whimsy and color.

In addition to starting the Alabama Chanin designs, I am currently a member of  Jude Hill's class, Contemporary Boro 2, in which we are exploring a variety of philosophies related to clothing ownership, use, repair, and design. It is, as always, as much a community as a class, and populated by a fascinating circle of caring individuals. I showed you the dress below back in the May 7 blog entry. The reason it is here again is to share the label. One of the first projects suggested in Jude's class was to think about the alternate uses of clothing labels and how they can become part of the story of the mended or redesigned (or newly created) pieces we are making. This label is a miniature print of a quilt block from a very special group piece I did with my Designing Women friends a few years back. The image is the first "creative" portrait I ever drew of myself, and the sentiment, "I Am One of a Kind", speaks of both the dress and me.

Here is another label I made using an old stamp that was that has been the symbol for years of my sometime craft business, "Hippo Productions". This garment has been "Infused With Hippo Love," the label printed on tea dyed muslin.

A very simple but fun style from the "Alabama Stitch Book" that makes use of recycled logo t-shirts. The brown one was a prize from an Oregon hops grower for photos submitted of hops plants growing in my garden. And no, I don't brew my own beer. Not yet, anyway. I'm too busy trying to decide which  stitchery project is calling me the loudest this week. Can't wait to show you what's on the worktable now. But hopefully, hanging from my "new" body.

No Time to Talk!

Excuse me! Pardon me! Comin' through! I know I haven't been around for a while, but who has time to sit and write it all down when the tables are piled high with projects and the mind is overflowing with visions of color and stitch. I know I'm supposed to be documenting my journey, but I've never been that good with keeping a diary. I'm not by nature a verbal person, more a visual one. This writing stuff takes too much effort. I totally love and admire those who can rant beautifully about the things that cross their paths. For example: Rice Freeman-Zachery at her blog "Notes From the Voodoo Cafe" comes  to mind. I love to read her rambling take on things both trivial and important. She is always insightful and amusing. But most of the time when I come to the end of a read (hers or others), I find it hard to muster the energy to leave a comment.  I follow Jude Hill's blog, Spirit Cloth, and her ongoing design whispering classes, and even though I am a known part of that community of textile lovers, I must think too hard and edit myself too much before finally leaving a bit of me on the page.

My TAST sampler pages for the five January stitches.

Learning to form shapes and fill spaces with common stitches

February has been more difficult to free form, but also more rewarding as I learn to improvise and take stitches to new places.

So the very best diary for me and the one I use almost every day is my flikr photostream. Just like a diary with stream of consciousness writing, it records where I've been and what it means to me at the moment: good and bad art, trivial and important observations about the inspiration or methods involved. A place mark to revisit my own growth, but just as importantly, to share growing steps with like minded artists of all mediums and levels of experience. Images connect with others in ways that words can't, especially when the audience is international, and that too is an amazing benefit. To meet and see the work of so many influences and feel the cultural similarities and differences. This visual diary is the real me: on the paper, the cloth, and the screen.

The portrait quilt is finally done, and I must say it came out better than expected (there was no plan, just moment by moment improv.)

Purple and green Dave is my favorite.

I have been taking a class with Sharon Boggon on the use of an artist's visual journal as both a creative diary and a workbook of ideas for future art. I have never consistently kept one before, and I am trying to learn the benefits and the habit. Since I resist writing, the studio journal is a place to tuck snippets of inspiration: photos, sketches on napkins, labels, lists, sources: whatever may be of use (or not!) down the line. There is no commitment to use anything you keep, but taking what you keep and developing it a bit further  by annotating or trying an idea in a quick study will leave behind more of what inspired the artist on later inspection. These bits of color, texture, inspirational quotes, faithfully glued and inked to the pages are left to age like fine wine. When thirsty for ideas, just uncork! I have barely begun to make this a habit, but like the art itself, I can see how meaningful it will be.

Arlee Barr's FrankenStitch class has taught me new textural additions to surface design beyond the stitches. This is a fabric "geode."

A second geode grows on this panel as the concept develops from 2D source art to part of a "Shrinebook" screen.

Buttonhole lace, stuffed, becomes a "nodule." 

Sourced from the painting, "We Drank All the Limoncino, " another panel comes to life with "nodules."

I had a recent revelation on my art journey. Something I knew inside but didn't quite acknowledge as acceptable until I recently heard Jude Hill repeat it in one of her cloth whispering sessions. That it is not necessary to have the whole concept or design the whole piece of art when you sit down to begin the making of it. I have long felt that "pre-designing" is akin to making yourself a kit, and when you begin working the kit, your mind and creativity have been left at the door. Not much different from working a kit by another artist. Granted, many of you may enjoy this sort of thing, and I don't mean to cast a broad net and say all use of other's designs is bad. But for most of us, doing that sort of work means we are not seeing all the good ideas we have inside. We decide ahead of time it is too hard to do, or that we are not good enough. What is really happening is that no one ever told us how to get the ideas out, how to make a medium our own: that we are all creative beings.

From a new sketchbook series: Starbucks Saturdays,
playing with Inktense pencils and a waterbrush to find new joy in doodling (while drinking soy lattes) on my weekly date with David.

Inspired by waterbottles in the cold case. The drips were from my new fountain pen (more about that another day.)

Trying to loosen up and draw freely feels good,
 and sometimes results in funny drawings.

I couldn't attend Carnivale in Brazil (although I know someone who did), so I just  drew with abandon.

After scanning the image, I found this samba dancer on a parade float, so I turned on a Zumba DVD and danced along!

This week in the studio journal class we are exploring design inspiration through cutouts and kaleidoscopes. I made this classic study of positive and negative spacial imagery using a photo of my own face, then inserted it into a kaleidoscope app to produce the designs on the right. How much more personal can you get than a motif created from your own profile?

I am coming to realize that the best way to find your creative voice is to start somewhere, with something that inspires, to begin the work and not worry where it will go, and just see what happens. What's the worst that could happen? You won't like it and you will start over. But from my recent class projects, I am seeing that quite often it isn't a matter of starting again, but continuing. Continuing to add, subtract, turn it around, see it with new eyes, be open to what is going on, both on the surface of the paper or cloth, and what is going on beneath, in you heart and mind. Keep on doing, everything is ultimately connected to the "you" inside. Finding your own voice is easy when you turn down the volume on what others say and do, and listen to what really inspires you.