Envision a summer evening. You are a kid in the back yard playing badminton just before it turns dark. There are fireflies. It is hot. Other kids are there too. A great visual story.

Memories such as these are rich material for artmaking. Our memories of the details will grow as we create the work, and our attachment to the scene can be strong. This image could become a great artwork.

But what if your goal was not to depict the scene itself but the feeling of it? Were you happily in the embrace of the people there? Were you an outsider? Was anything about the scene disappointing? Frightening?

That kind of memory – not so much a visual depiction, but the capturing of a memory shadow, is also interesting. As I have created a series of work focused on the journey of a young girl, that’s where I am drawn.

I rediscovered two of my quilts from the journey series this week. (They were on a shelf in a stack of quilts. I needed to get to one at the bottom of the stack.  Which entailed taking all the ones above it off and then back on to the shelf. That’s how I rediscovered these two.)

It’s been a wonderful re-immersion into the experience of creating them. In each case, the work was first created several years ago then set aside. Each quilt was important to me and contained a lot that pleased me. And each had one or more elements that just did not fulfill my hope for the work and I considered it unsuccessful.

So, I have been bringing them back to life. (I’ll write about one quilt this week and the second one next week.)

This is a detail of Neither Up Nor Down.

This is one part of the quilt that pleased me. Faces are always a challenge. And, creating a face that does not have distinct features, but just the suggestion of a person and an emotion, is just as challenging as rendering a likeness. I wanted this girl to be depicted off to the edge of the quilt, in the shadows. It’s the fact that I still feel connected to this little girl that’s inspiring me to recreate the work.

To fix what had not been successful, I had to cover up some elements. Then I had to bring other elements forward. And then integrate them back together. The surface of this quilt is created with collage, painting and drawing. I used those techniques to accomplish the changes.

The girl is in a dream setting – not an actual place – with just the suggestion of a stairway behind her. She wears her Sunday School dress and Mary Jane shoes. I remembered being young, sitting on the steps from our living room to the bedrooms upstairs, and listening to the sounds of the house.  It sometimes felt like floating – being neither up nor down.

I ended up adding a lot of stitching to the new version of this quilt. This is not easy for me to do on a work this large that’s already assembled. But I made it.

This work is now 95% done – just a little stitching and drawing left to do. I’ll post the a good photo of the finished quilt here next week when I also write about the second quilt recreated.

Meanwhile… Just a word about series. I first created Neither Up Nor Down as part of a series of works following the journey of a young girl. At about the same time, I created a work depicting the in-between stage of a girl who is older;  I perceive her to be in  her young teens. This is Neither Here Nor There

If you are interested in seeing this one evolve, you can watch a video I created about it and posted on YouTube. (It’s less than 2 minutes.) It focuses on my involvement with the work as I created it, and I think captures the dreaminess of the experience.

WATCH HERE

See you next week.

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating 

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

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