Hello Old Friend
Today I revisited an old friend.
She is a quilt I created in 2017.
And she is the-inner-me in an earlier stage of life.
I presented an art talk to a textile art group in North Florida today and I took a number of quilts with me to share. That’s how I happened to look again at “Neither Here Nor There.”
I remember the process of creating this work. My neighbor was a teenager at the time, and she posed for me sitting in a ladderback chair. I worked from my reference photos. It is primarily a whole cloth painting with collaged layers on the form of the girl, and then the collaged addition of the tree form and the leaves and the bird.
I was very involved in the life of this girl as I created the work. I collaged the layered fabric over her face and body to build up the skin tones. I drew in the features and the outline with oil pastel. And I stitched her form both to hold it all together and to add texture.
Preparing to speak to the group today, I tried to think of what it is we strive for as artmakers. What will make us feel complete in the work we do. And what we recognize in the work of others when it speaks to us.
It’s having a strong concept of what the work is about – and then an execution that realizes that concept in the finished piece.
This work did that for me. I remember very clearly times in my own journey when I felt neither here nor there – between places – between life stages. That experience can involve dreaming and wondering, which I what I strove to depict in this quilt. It can also involve pain and indecision. That is not depicted in this work specifically, but it was part of what I thought about as I worked on the piece.
So, it was nice to visit this old friend again today.
(If you would like to learn more about “Neither Here Nor There”, it is on my website HERE)
. . . . . .
The next stage of “The Artist’s Question: Exhibit. I am proud to have a piece of work in the traveling exhibit featuring work by SAQA artists in Florida and other gulf states. Its next opening is Eastern Shore Art Center in Fairhope Alabama. Details below. If that’s close to where you are, I hope you’ll have a chance to see the exhibit. (My work is shown: “Nor Could Our Hands Catch Them.”)
For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating
Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
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