For a while, this project has existed only in my head, in some PhotoShop mockup files, and in component transfers.
This is one of the photos that inspired my current project.. You can see it transformed on the worktable below.
Today is the first time I have actually laid the transferred photos out on my worktable to begin to get the big picture. I can see right away things I like, and also right away things that probably will not work the way my mockups had suggested.
Mostly, this is very exciting and motivating to me. Seeing and touching the work at its full size always opens up my mind to the possibilities of the final project.
This will be a large quilt, about 42”H x about 60”W. I am creating it for a call-for-artists with a January deadline.
Inspired by some photos of abandoned homes in rural South Carolina, I want to create a nostalgic sense of what has been lost.
Another of the photos for the project. I converted it to a burnt umber tone in PhotoShop. This one has been transferred to fabric.
The photographic images are just part of it. For the sections that are not the photos, I hope to create patterned fabric that suggests faded floral wallpaper, as these homes might have had in the foyer in a former time. (I haven’t settled yet n a method to create these images. That’s probably next.)
In the largest photo, on the back step, I want to introduce a character – probably a grandmother figure, as part of the memory of the home.
I may introduce some maps into the background texture of the photos and the wallpaper, to emphasize that this is a real place. A real loss.
I have also used photos from abandoned rural places in other works. Those, however, have been used in a different way.
In “This is the Way to Get In,” (above) I used photos I shot of an abandoned place to suggest an imaginative story. It wasn’t my intent to depict it as an actual, specific place. (You can see more about this work on my website, HERE)
My hope in the new work is to focus on what is real. What was real. That somebody actually lived in these homes and that somebody loved this place. I want to honor the place and the memory.
I’m looking forward to the process!
Meanwhile…
I’ll be exhibiting in two more shows this fall. If you are nearby, I hope you’ll visit.
Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
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