People Ask...

People ask a LOT of very good and interesting questions when they look at my textile collage art.

But.. first — I just have to say some love about my own hometown. I exhibited this past weekend in DeLand Fall Festival of the Arts in downtown DeLand. (That’s where I heard the questions.) What a great weekend! I was grateful for a well-organized, artist-centered event, and perfect weather, and good crowds, and good sales, and  — especially nice —  an award of recognition. It was an amazing group of artwork in all mediums. I’m honored to be among them. And my art neighbors were funny, talented, interesting people, making for a weekend of enjoyable camaraderie.

So… questions.

Q: I’d love to hang a quilt on my wall, but how do I take care of it?
A: Just like you’d take care of any acrylic painting. No artwork should be placed where it will be hit by strong, direct sunlight. Otherwise, just hang it, dust it now and then, and enjoy. When an acrylic painter creates work, it’s paint and mediums on canvas. My works are paint and mediums on other kinds of fabric, along with some cutting and stitching. But, once it’s completed, as far as content and structure it’s not really so different from any acrylic work.

Q: How long does it take to make a large quilt?
A: Excellent question. I’d probably make myself crazy if I actually tracked the hours, so I don’t. I will work on a large quilt over a period of months. I have multiple works in progress at any given time. I can just say there are lots of parts: the thinking and designing stage, the printing of yardage stage, the cutting and assembly stage, and the textured quilting stage. After it’s all assembled, I usually add more collage and painting on the surface. It’s a good thing I enjoy all the stages!

This detail of “Because That’s Where it All Begins” shows several processes: photo transfer to muslin (the nest,) hand-printed fabric patterns, machine-stitched quilting for texture, and joining seams to construct the quilt.

This is the completed work – “Because That’s Where It All Begins”

Q: How do artists get into Festivals? Do they get paid? Are tents provided?
A: No. Artists make an investment to show in outdoor Festivals. Juried shows require artists to go through a selection process. Submitted images are juried by a panel of people knowledgeable in the art field to determine who will be able to exhibit. It costs to apply to a show – even if you are not accepted – and there is a booth fee to exhibit. (Depending on the show, generally $300-$500 per weekend.) This is how the Festival generates its income. Artists invest in a tent and display panels in addition to some way to store them and transport them to a show. In DeLand, set-up started at 5:30 am. The street was alive with the sound of clanking metal pent poles. By about 9am the show was set to go

Here’s part of my exhibit at the DeLand Festival

I’ve completed my three shows for Fall 2019. I’m ready for a time-off week and Thanksgiving and beginning the design work on some large projects for 2020.

Last week in my blog I was showing a collage-in-progress. Here it is. I was so happy that this one SOLD at the DeLand Festival.

“When You Hear the Song of Memory”

Missed the Festival? Feel like shopping?
I created a number of collaged works matted to fit a 20” x 24” frame. They were well-received, but some nice ones are still available on my website, HERE

Thank you for reading.
I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbibaughart@gmail.com

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1 - 2 - 3 - 4 Collage-in-progress

Time for a little collage!

This is a festival-prep week for me. I will be in DeLand’s Fall Festival of the Arts this weekend. At my last Festival I was very happy to have a good response to the small, matted collaged pieces I was showing. So, I need more. (What a wonderful problem to have!) Since I will be showing a few large storytelling quilts in DeLand, I want the smaller works I show to be compatible, to look like part of a unified body of work. I have already created some photo transfers that I like. Now it’s time to put them together.

Starting with two elements

The window will be the dominant element in this work. It takes up a good deal of the space. So, the image will actually be about the window. Everything else is to accent the window and tie things together. Here, I’m collaging the window onto watercolor paper with matte medium. The blue transparent fabric on the left softens the image and implies water.

I use a brayer to get a good bond. The background piece is 140# watercolor paper.

I am weighting the composition with some heavier fabrics at the bottom. These two pieces are muslin that I created with acrylic paints, using stencils and resist.

I especially like this piece. Even though it’s a very simple pattern, when I painted the stencil I was working wet-into-wet, creating nice fluid edges on the shapes. I like the way this pattern can connote either rock-like forms or bubbles.

Now I want to add some transparent texture over the window to soften the edges and tie it in to the rest of the composition.

That’s as far as I got today. I will be adding some painted textures over parts of the surface, and possibly another recognizable object or two. I need to let thing s dry and look at it fresh tomorrow.

Stay tuned.  Next week I’ll post a picture of the finished work.

If you would like to see some of the larger quilts
I have created that use similar imagery,
I invite you to look through the gallery
 “Home is What You Remember”
On my website HERE

If you are near central Florida, please visit the DeLand Fall Festival of the Art this weekend. (Nov 23-24, 2019) It’s my hometown and I am very proud to be in this event. Downtown DeLand is a great place to visit, and there is an impressive group of artists exhibiting. See you there!

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
bobbibaughart@gmail.com

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GRASSY INTRICACIES

In my studio this week, I’ve been looking a lot at close-ups of intricate grass patterns.

I use natural forms – roots of grass pulled from my lawn, small twigs and tall grasses – to print my monotypes on rice paper and fabric. This is one of the first images I discovered when I began printing monotypes by hand around 2011. I still enjoy the infinite variety of the patterns. And, along the way, I feel like I’ve learned to use the characteristics of the printing plate – positive, negative, wet, dry – to enhance the images I create.

Here are a few from works-in-progress in the studio now.

These grass shapes are in shades of deep-blue to gray. I like the way they suggest being underwater.

This grass-in-shadow pattern was printed on a satin-like fabric to achieve more intensity.

Printing bright green on sheer fabric so the white behind makes the color “pop,” and over-collaging with some sun-dappling shapes.

Collaging sheer grass pattern over a blush of sky color.

One of the first large collage-on-board works I created is “Living Deeply.” I was inspired by the vertical pattern of grass shapes. I created an underground environment of rocks to suggest a sense that these roots were reaching down deeply underground for… Water? Life?

“Living Deeply” textile collage (Detail)

In 2018, as part of my series “Home is What You Remember,” I created the art quilt “And All that’s Gone Before.” I was, again, inspired by the root-like patterns I had created with natural forms. The blue patterns all around, underground, dig into the depths of memories, and the roots reach to that. I enjoyed contrasting this with the photographic images of branches and twigs inside the house.

“And All That’s Gone Before” art quilt

A recent quilt that incorporates grass patterns is “What the Waterlilies Sing.” In this one, the grass-printed monotypes are black and purple, working as a pattern to pull all of the imagery together.

“What the Waterlilies Sing” art quilt (Detail)

The rest of this week is Festival-prep work. I look forward to exhibiting at the Maitland Festival Under the Stars November 8-10. If you are nearby, please visit and say “Hi.” I’m in space #168. (I’ll have some of my new matted monotype collages with me, as well as some larger pieces.)

If you’d like  more information about the works I’ve detailed, you can find them on my website:

Living Deeply
And All That’s Gone Before
What the Waterlilies Sing.

Thanks for reading!
I always appreciate questions and comments.
Bobbi

bobbibaughart@gmail.com

Grey, Grey, Soft Grey, Grey

Grey, grey, grey. That’s been my mantra this week In the studio as I’ve been working on a new abstract landscape.

I did some other work lately with very vibrant colors. I felt compelled to stay in a soft grey palette. But, I admit it’s hard for me because I’m often drawn to more color.

I started with an above-and-below composition, a blank space along the horizon line. I used grey-grey in the sky and grey with a slight green hue below. I liked the wash look and I was happy with the overall color. Not much composition yet.

I added a block of squares, introducing a little grey-blue. My thought had been that this would function as window. But it stayed on my easel for a number of days without suggesting what to do next. I made some paper sketches and some Photoshop sketches and didn’t like anything I came up with. And then I thought of my tree stencils, and ideas began to come together.

I blocked out an area to stencil a tree shape with the tree as a resist. I let the grey background show through the tree form and added a darker value to the background. Then I added in some looser tree forms with stencils and wetter sponge work.

Just a word about wonderful grey hues.

I almost never use grey from the jar, and almost never create grey by mixing black and white. The best studio resource I own is my detailed color wheel, which I learned to make a number of years ago as an exercise in an oil painting class. (I hated oils, so I did mine in acrylics.) The most wonderful greys and neutral tones occur when you mix across the compliments (in this work, blue plus orange) and then add either umber to deepen it, or white to go to grey tones. So much richness in the colors! And, since other parts of this work will contain blue, I know that when I mix the greys with a blue base, all the parts will speak well to each other.

I’m adding a little line work to this piece for visual texture. Almost done with the composition.

NOW IT’S TIME TO WORK ON FESTIVAL PREP!! I loaded up my car with my tent and display panels from the place I store them, and started today with washing tent parts and organizing all the “stuff” associated with an outdoor art festival. I’ll be exhibiting in three festivals October and November. This weekend is Winter Park. If you are near, I hope you’ll stop by and see the work I’ll have on display.

Thanks for reading.
I always enjoy questions and comments.
Bobbi

bobbibaughart@gmail.com


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Returning to the Burned House… Depicting What is Not There

I’ve posted a few times about this work along the way. (See August 16 and August 31) This past week I pulled all the pieces together and finished the quilt.

Here’s the emotional tone I want to capture: The burned house… portraying what is not there. A place that exists and does not. Ambiguity and dream-like memory.

This is my inspiration:

   In the burned house I am eating breakfast.

   You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,

   Yet here I am.

the opening lines of the poem “Morning in the Burned House” by Margaret Atwood. Because I love this poem, I worked to give myself time to let it develop, to honor the poem that inspired me.

There were times along the way that I was really discouraged. I liked individual parts, but I didn’t feel it had “clicked.” I returned again to the poem, re-reading and absorbing. Then I noticed the illustration on the cover of the book. It depicts a bird cage, in a dream-like environment. That was the image I needed to complete the work. There is no bird or cage described in this poem. But the whole sense of it is about being tied to a place while having moved away from it. The bird and the cage seem the perfect metaphor.

A few details:

The table and breakfast utensils are physically described in the poem.

Everything in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl, including my own body,
Including the body I had then,
Including the body I have now,
As I sit at the morning table, alone and happy.

I depicted the bowl floating, not tied to the table surface. This is a way to invite the viewer to see this as a memory or dream.

Making the window a prominent part of the composition is my own addition. This window photo has appeared in several of the quilted pieces. (It has been transferred to muslin from a laser copy print-out of my digital original.) I like this photo a lot, mostly because of its emotional quality. To me, in this composition it suggests emptiness. From the poem:

Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
Mother and father? Off along the shore,
Perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,
Their dishes piled beside  the sink,

Here’s the completed quilt.

A nice serendipity of fabric: Earlier this summer, I experimented with printing fabric with rust. I love the deep and unpredictable results. Most of that fabric went into another work. But, I had some scraps left, and I like they way they evoke the presence of fire in this work.

One of the great pleasure of being a collage artist is this: There is the chance to discover scraps, created for some other purpose, and finding a place for them to have a purpose again.

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

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Working backwards as a creative process

I am almost always a sketchbook-kinda-gal. I record ideas. I re-work them all different ways. I go back through the sketchbook. Then, when I am finally ready to put together a textile artwork, I create the pieces I’ll need for the work and create the piece based on my sketches.

Yes – surprise and serendipity happen along the way. But, for the most part, I’m following a plan.

But not in the new body of work that’s been occupying me in the studio recently.

To create abstract landscapes, I’ve created yards of fabric and rice paper, just going with what happens in the surface design and working for a rich mix of colors. Then – (which is the stage where I am now) – I gather the fabrics and let them tell me where to go.

I recognize and admire many other artists who work this way all the time. But for me it’s a new path – and a feeling of working backwards. And I like it!

Work-in-progress on my easel, stretched and taped flat to a plywood board

A little prep work first: I prepare my muslin base by “gessoing” it with exterior house paint primer both sides and stretching it out on plywood panels.  I’ve also glued a sturdy interfacing to the back. These panels serve as movable easels around the studio when multiple pieces are in the works. My goal is for these finished pieces to have a certain amount of rigidity when they hang. (Though they will be backed and have a pocket like any art quilt.)

Here’s how things have looked in the studio lately.

I’m going through the stash of my recently printed pieces to find ones that suggest a loose  landscape composition.

Fabric is adhered to the stretched muslin with matte medium, brayered to get a good bond.

Fabrics on my worktable. I just get lost in the soft washes of monotype printing created wet-on-sheer. And I love the way it contrasts with more intense muslin pieces.

The work on my easel (above) is further along. It also has some drawn elements. I’ll be adding a little bit of stitching to this.

So far—lots in the works. I should have some finished ones soon.-

_____________

WOOF – just for fun, I’m exhibiting in a summer group exhibition of dog-themed artwork at Wendy Tatter’s Gallery on St. Augustine Beach. The opening is this Sunday, July 28, 4-8 PM. Drop in.

TRAVELIN’ – I have work in a few other juried group shows around the country. If you are near any of these exhibits, I hope you’ll take a look. (And send me some pictures!)

Endless Summer – Arts on Douglas Gallery in New Smyrna Beach, Florida
Exhibiting August 3 – 31, 2019.
Opening Reception  Saturday, August 3  4-7 PM

“America Is… “ - Touchstone Gallery, Washington DC
An all-media show of juried artwork
August 2 – 29, 2019”

“Perspectives” – An exhibit of work by members of SAQA Florida region
Exhibiting July 19 – August 31, 2019
LeMoyne Arts, Tallahassee Florida

“Fiber Fusions” – at the Whistler House Museum
August 24 – October 26, 2019
Lowell, MA

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

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Step-by-step: Watch a Florida river scene come to life

There’s a lot I enjoy about creating collaged artworks.

I enjoy the process of discovery – looking through the color-sorted bins of fabric and paper I’ve created to find interesting colors and patterns to put together.

I enjoy the variety of materials, and how they interact with each other. Rice paper, sheer fabric and opaque fabric all take acrylic paint images a little differently, so they are pleasing to combine.

I enjoy the ability to compose by moving things around. Collage work is very tactile.

And, once the parts are created, the actual process of putting a work together goes pretty quickly. I enjoy seeing a blank page turn into a finished work.

I took some step-by step studio photos this past week of a collage as it progressed. This is a Florida Wildlife piece, “A Morning for Reflection.”  It is 16” x 20”, sized to go in a mat that fits a 20” x 24” frame.

If you’d like more information about this work, and other similar collages, you can visit my website HERE.

If you’d like to watch step-by-step as it is created, here is a 2 – ½ minute video that shows the work in progress. I hope you’ll enjoy watching it come together:

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

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In honor of Women’s History Month… Thinking about Expectations

What else was there beyond the alley, beyond the neighborhood?

What else was there to be?

I was not taught to ask.

I was not taught to wonder.

I was not taught to dream.

I was taught to soldier on, to be good, and —apparently — not to expect too much

And so, asking, wondering, dreaming, and taking steps to follow my own path came to me late in life. But, hurray! I made it.

I volunteer in a first grade classroom twice a week, and I look with wonder at each little child in my class. They are shining gems, little treasures of possibilities. I don’t know what kinds of homes or families they go home to each day. I can easily imagine the obstacles, hardships and inequities each of them will face as they grow. For each of them my hope is wider expectations, the ability to look, hope and dream beyond whatever smallness may define where they are now.

A few years ago I created “Small Expectations.” I’ll just go ahead and admit that it’s one of my favorite works. I created the image of the two girls in the center, dressed in their go-to-Sunday-School dresses, from a family photo of myself and my sister.  

Behind the girls, I have created a background suggesting their diminished expectations. The words from a mid-twentieth century etiquette book fill the fabric behind them. The symbols of birds indicate the innocence of the girls. The alphabet border and ABC blocks give the work a feel of simplicity and elementary school lessons. Yet, these real and implied life instructions were serious business.

For you, little girls… GREAT expectations!

(Small Expectations is 33” x 24”, mounted on a birch panel and framed from the back so the work appears to float 2” from the wall. It is available, on my website HERE.)

In 1987, Congress declared March as National Women's History Month in perpetuity. A special Presidential Proclamation is issued every year which honors the extraordinary achievements of American women. President Jimmy Carter's Message to the nation designated March 2-8, 1980 as National Women's History Week.

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Thanks for reading. I always enjoy receiving questions and comments.

— Bobbi

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Rain-soaked sculpture… and 3 art tips we learned

Today is studio Monday. I’m working on a new large collage of transparent colors

But yesterday was a day for sculpture and learning.

Two things impressed me Sunday morning. First: Eleven people were motivated to show up in rainy weather to walk around downtown DeLand to learn about our public sculptures. (I was the tour guide. But I will give more credit to the motivation of the after-tour brunch that was planned.)

Second: that we actually have a well-established and interesting public sculpture program in DeLand, Florida to visit — a tribute to our City government’s support, an active museum committee and lots of volunteers and supporters.

As we walked from sculpture to sculpture, I hoped to fill the rainy adventure with a few art take-aways. When you walk up to a sculpture, or any artwork, and it doesn’t immediately resonate or speak to you, how do you respond? I believe people sometimes feel intimidated by viewing work in a Museum. If it’s there you figure it must have some value. But what if you don’t get it – or don’t like it?  Out on a sidewalk art feels more accessible.

So, at each step, our group talked through a 3-step process.

Step 1: Just react with your gut. Some works are an immediate “Yes! I love this!” Some are works are a “Hmmmm, I’m just not getting anything from this.” And some are a “No. I have an immediate negative reaction to this work.” Any of those initial gut responses is acceptable and permissible.

One of the sculptures in downtown DeLand: “Continuacion” by Jiminez Deredia. Its massive form is evident next to a City worker during the installation.

Step 2: Try naming the elements. Elements of design are found in varying degrees in all artwork. Color. Line. Shape. Volume. Positive-and-negative space. Values. Direction. Rhythm. Pattern.  Working your way through an artwork, looking for these things and identifying them, is a way to become more involved with the work beyond the initial response.

A few times on our walk there were some “Aha” moments. “Look at that line, how it goes up on a curve. I wonder why the artist did that?” Asking the questions and wondering about the answers can help a work start to make more sense.

Step 3: Find out what you can from the artist’s statement or other resources. Even the title of a work can add insight. Knowing that an artist was once a biology teacher, for example, might explain a work’s relationship with nature. Descriptions of materials and methods help too. Imagine the experience of carving marble. Or imagine the process of welding steel pieces. All this background information can deepen the understanding of a work.

On our tour we had a few “Hmmm I’m not sure” reactions go up to a “Yes!” after reacting more with the work. (We didn’t get much change on the “No” reaction.)  All OK. I enjoy living in a City where our downtown allows the chance to interact with art.

Now it’s back to the studio for me.

This is Bobbi with another sculpture from downtown DeLand: Three Point One” by Alex Mendez. This photo was taken on a nice sunny evening during the opening event, when the work had just been installed.

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Original. Or not.

An exhibit of works by Robert Indiana has left me thinking about originality. What’s original? What’s not?

Indiana is best-known for his iconic LOVE sculpture and graphic design, which was featured on a US postage stamp. The exhibit I visited in the Tampa Museum of Art featured his 3-D assemblages, largely wood plus found metal and machine parts. It’s part of his body of work I had not experienced before.

Throughout the exhibit, there were “identical”sculptures side-by-side. (Like the steer skulls shown above, which were full size and mounted atop a large wooden tree-like column.) The teaching materials explained that he created cast bronze duplicates of some of his sculptural assemblages then painted them to match the original. Seeing the two side-by-side was fascinating.  Technically fascinating. Artistically intriguing.

The whole idea of a cast bronze is the opportunity to have more than one of a work created. But, I generally think of sculpture of that type as something created for the purpose of being replicated, created originally as clay or stone and then molded and cast in hot metal. Indiana’s replicated assemblages were far more complex.

Artists who create two-dimensional work for sale, I believe, struggle with decisions about creating reproductions. Of course, it’s just flat-out unethical to pass off a reproduction (generally a digital print) as an original work. But, if the artist clearly marks the reproduction as such, and the collector knows what he is purchasing, all OK?

I surely can’t fault any artist who creates reproductions as a way to mix price points and to create a sellable range of artwork. Artists have to make a living. But, I do think every artist has to think the issue through. Cranking out too many reproductions can diminish the value of the original image.

One of the things I enjoy about creating my textile collaged works and art quilts is that I do not feel tempted to reproduce them as giclees. A flat canvas, even one reproduced well, would be clearly completely different from the original. Seeing the layers, textures and stitches is part of the experience. So, I only create and only sell one-of-a-kind-works.

My struggles and decisions about originality are more internal. Am I creating a work that is authentic? Am I expressing thought or emotional content that is born from my own unique life experience?

Those are the things that reproduction technology can’t duplicate. It’s what makes art: art.

Here’s a detail of “Sometimes You Can’t See In,” a collaged art quilt from 2018. It incorporates my own photos hand-transferred to fabric: a kind of reproduction. My hope is that I have incorporated them into a work that is unique and personally expressive.

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It’s the Little Things – Some Studio Printing Tips

I had a great morning session of hand printmaking this morning. I realized as I looked at the completed images how the rhythm of printing and having a successful session depend on some  little things. These become like familiar friends. As I set up I get in printing mode

Acrylics on my worktable: I set out the colors I plan to use for the prints. I love these quart jars of acrylic paints with the nice wide, easy-access lids. Several years ago an artist  friend told me about Nova Color paints from California. I have been using them since, and they are also my primary source for matte medium and gel medium. (I buy these by the gallon.)  I limit my palette of colors kept on-hand and mix all my printing colors from these basics.

My favorite mixing palette: I tape down a sheet of white paper to the worktable and tape a sheet of waxed paper over that. I mix on the waxed paper. It’s economical and disposable. (And I can also monotype print from the colors on the palette at the end of a session!)

Printing plate: I print by hand from a soft gelatin plate. The plate I am using currently is in a commercial size cookie sheet about 18” x 22”. I mix my own, and use a recipe with glycerin so it does not have to be refrigerated. I have been using this one nearly a year. I also have a commercial gelatin plate I use when I want to have two going at once. Each has its own quirks, and you have to experiment with amount of liquid needed and amount of pressure.

Materials: Generally, I print on muslin, sheer polyester fabric (shown) and rice paper. The more delicate printing materials (the polyester and the rice paper) pick up more nuance and delicate image from the plate. The muslin will print with a more opaque appearance.

Hands on! I use my hands to press stencils and relief materials on the plate and then press my printing surface into the paint. Yes, my hands get pretty messy. But I’ve tried gloves and just don’t like working that way.

Here are a few of the images I created this morning. I’ll be incorporating these into a new art quilt.

While I incorporate monotype printed pieces into all of my large textile collages and art quilts, I’ve also been creating some smaller paper-mounted monotype collage pieces this year. A sample is below, and you can see them on my website HERE    

“Beyond the Thunder” 16 x 20 Framed Collage 2018

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Thanks for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.

—Bobbi

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ART. NOT ART. Does it matter?

I had a wonderful opportunity to be the presenter this weekend for a SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) group in Melbourne, Florida. We spent time thinking through the difference between — 1. ART, and 2. NOT ART. Is there a difference, and does it matter?

This is an image from a cave painting at Lascaux, France, which may have been created as early as 20,000  BC.  This is ART. No question. And not because it evidences a lot of technical mastery or sophisticated materials. It is art because it has a specific expressive, communicative intent. This MEANS something. When I read descriptions of how hard it was to get down into the caves, how small the space, and I imagine a prehistoric person intentionally doing so for whatever ritualistic purpose this represented, I am in awe. It may have been considered magic. Or it may have been a rite of passage. But these were not created lightly or haphazardly. They have a meaning.

Sample decorative accessories from a major merchandiser.

These images represent mass-produced decorating accessories shoppers can find almost anywhere. They are NOT ART. That does not necessarily mean they are ugly, or that one might not enjoy using them for decor in a home. But even the original illustration that was done in order to manufacture these did not hold personal meaning in any way like the paintings on the cave wall. This is graphic design on-assignment.

I spent many years in my professional career working in commercial printing. I have created graphic design on-assignment. I have been involved in its production. It is not an evil or demeaning endeavor. But it is also not art.

In our time together this weekend, the group of textile artists gathered worked to think through the importance of original intent. And the process of developing a voice that is singular. And what techniques we can use to get beyond the creative traps that make us produce work that’s less than what we had hoped to create. We discussed the importance of all that happens before a specific work is even started.

We concluded that there is ART. There is NOT ART. They are not the same. And it matters which you are creating.

“Something Else Will Grow There” Textile Collage 2018 bobbibaughstudio.com

When I create my own artwork, it is my hope that I’ve done enough up-front work to make the piece meaningful. I want to have worked through what it is I am trying to communicate, and then use the studio time and the techniques at my disposal to accomplish the vision.

When a collector brings a work into a home, it is my hope that there is enough that’s interesting, personal and layered to provide new things to discover for a long time. For me, that’s the fulfillment of the time, thought and emotion that I put into my work.

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Speaking of Mary Poppins…

Thinking about my art talk tomorrow at Arts on Douglas Gallery, I remembered today the movie “Saving Mr. Banks,” a wonderful on-screen portrayal of P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books. It is providing a vision.

In the screen version, one of the opening scenes shows Travers as a girl, a close-up shot of her lying in a field of grass constructing a tiny house out of twigs and grass. She was making a little home. The unfolding of the plot revealed how much she needed a make-believe home, because her real home life was so full of hurt and sadness.

Emma Stone portrays P.L. Travers as an adult during the transformation of her Mary Poppins books into Disney’s well-know musical movie version. It was a heart-wrenching journey for Travers, as her story became everything she did not want it to be. In one poignant scene, she leaves a stressful meeting and retreats to a place outdoors, sits on the grass, and begins to construct a tiny home. A refuge. I was sobbing and sniffling!

The Mary Poppins stories are not autobiographical. But their essence was informed by the author’s life. She took what she had experienced and translated it into her art: children’s stories. A few details were specific. An Aunt who came to visit and take care of her family was a non-nonsense umbrella-carrying woman. Mary Poppins? But, for the most part, the author’s works are a combination of dreams, memories, emotions and her artist’s craft to create a new reality.

This has been my experience in creating the series “Home is What You Remember.” It’s about home. And my experience of home, with an intentional memory of a child’s way of looking at things, has informed the images and the process. While not strictly autobiographical, it reveals realities I know to be true:

Outside and Inside do not always match.

It may or may not be possible to know what’s inside by looking from without.

Homes can be fragile.

Things change.

People experience home in time: as experiences unfold, and later in memory.

We carry our homes inside us.

The lives of the people in homes are varied, colorful, richly textured.

And, in all of this, I hope to use my artmaking methods and abilities to create realities that are interesting, pleasing to look at and discover, and offer new discoveries over time.

All the works in the series “Home is What You Remember” are on my web site, HERE.

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A Journey into Memory. Then Waffles. And an Exhibition.

This evening I’ll be standing in a beautiful gallery with my artwork filling the walls, watching visitors and patrons and engaging in conversation abut the work. It’s what artists work for, and it represents a year of creating this particular body of work.  So we started the day with waffles. Blueberry. And bacon.

I am thinking of the many stages in the process. I loved the side-of-the-road inspiration in rural South Carolina where I stopped, stood in the quiet of pines and looked into the heart of a small abandoned house. Its insides were filled with vines and saplings. The roof was gone. The door was rusted and peeling. It provided a strong inspiration for me for the body of work about HOME. I took photos. Those photos are actually transferred into the fabric that I used in several works.

I am thinking of the memories of my own childhood homes, and what it took to look deliberately at those memories and to make sense of the stories. Every artist draws on their own story, and I have drawn deeply from my own. But, I am not a fiction writer nor am I creating an autobiography. I have worked to translate personal story into interesting and thought-provoking images that will speak to patrons with all kinds of backgrounds. When a piece of my art is invited into someone’s home, I hope for it to provide new meaning and something new to see for a long time.

Art Quilt Every One Has a Different Story (Detail) inspired by my childhood row house home

I am thinking about all the logistics and practical aspects of creating a body of work. I started twelve months ago with a schedule and a series of sketches. I have addressed storage, transportation and shipping issues, and all the hands-on work of creating the pieces.

Now it’s there, on the walls. The waffles are gone, but I still have an invitation to offer. Please visit Arts on Douglas Gallery in New Smyrna Beach to view “HOME is What You Remember.” If you are not in Central Florida, I hope you will enjoy a visit to the gallery of these works on my web site, HERE.

Some in-the-works and sneak peeks below. I’m ready.

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Monotype Printing on Rice Paper and Fabric… What a great Sunday morning of printmaking!

All week I’ve had some monotype concepts cooking on the creativity back burner. Today was the day to jump into some spontaneous monotype printing — mostly on rice paper, some on fabrics, and all with acrylic paints. Among the many things I like about printing monotypes is that the results are just about always useful, even when they don’t fulfill the vision with which I begin. I can incorporate rice paper into abstract collaged paper or textile works and art quilts. This freedom means I begin a several-hour printmaking session with a nice feeling of enthusiasm.

Today I am inspired by a grey-yellow-white palette. Two pieces I recently created in fabric for my “Home is What you Remember” series used this palette. It’s not a combination I have focused on much before, but I really enjoy it. Mixing yellow and black yields some wonderful olive tones. Adding the white brings them into a subtle range of celery to gold to cream. And the delicacy of monotype printing lets those colors hold detailed textures.

Another thing I like about hand printmaking: it’s very low tech, but not limiting. It is possible to make work that’s gaudy and un-artful printing by hand. It’s also possible to create work that’s interesting and well executed printing by hand. It’s never really about the method.  The same is true, I believe, regarding oil painting, acrylic painting, quilting or drawing with crayons. It’s not the medium alone that dictates the value or content of the outcome.

This morning I ripped to size 8 sheets of rice paper. I am experimenting with creating more of the overall composition through multiple hits of a sheet on differently inked plates. Acrylics dry so fast! It’s not hard to put a sheet back down for a second hit almost right after printing the first.

At the end of my morning I had created a nice stack of images. Now I think I”ll let these simmer for a few days in the creativity cooker to see what mark-making, collaging, sewing — or something else? — comes next.

And here’s a little gift: I am counting down the days till my solo exhibition at Arts on Douglas. It represents a year of concerted thought and artmaking. To celebrate, I’ve created printable note cards using images of some of the quilts in the exhibit. They are FREE and the download is easy. I hope you enjoy using them. Just click HERE.

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Morning in the studio… and thoughts about the process

This morning I found my way to the studio early. I’m most productive early mornings and I enjoy the quiet of working before there are house sounds, the news, and interruptions.

I was stitching some house shapes to incorporate into a new “Home” piece – lots of photo transferred windows next to monotype printed muslin. As I watched the pieces come together, it was something magical. Before the stitching, the pieces I had loosely collaged in place looked random. The edges did not lay flat. Nothing was cohesive. But, line by line, the stitching pulled this loose assortment of shapes into a meaningful image. Each piece began to have its own elements of interest. A plain blue rectangle came to life with criss-crossed stitched lines.

As I watched the story take shape, I thought of the pleasure of process in creating textile artwork.

Other steps had preceded my morning sewing session. I create the surface designs on all my fabrics, transforming blank yardage with acrylic paint: monotype printing, direct painting, relief prints, resists  and stencils.  And I had already handled the photo transfers through multiple stages: shooting the image, the computer work of sizing and selecting, and the manual process of making the transfer onto muslin.

Outdoor sessions creating fabrics. Pouring wheat paste to create resist prints and some completed fabric painted with hand-cut stencils.

And more steps will follow my morning sewing session. Once I have created the parts, I will combine them together on a large backing. At this point I will begin to feel more accomplished and will begin to see the whole picture.

Finally I’ll get to the stage of backing and binding. This handwork is more tedious, and not my favorite part of the process. But I approach it with deliberation, put on some music, and find a sense of closure as the work is completed.

For today, I am still creating and assembling parts. Parts of this particular quilt – parts of the process – parts of the journey of making.

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Working through the ugly stage… a work in progress

Maybe ugly is too strong a word.

I’ll go with “isn’t-working-for-me.” Yet.

There’s a lot I like about this work-in-progress. I think the sketch and composition are strong. I was inspired by a photo I had seen from a bird watching group. A single song bird among an intricate thicket of twigs and branches created a strong silhouette. I envisioned those twigs creating an abstract, linear background in which to discover the bird. I flipped the bird mirror-image to add another one. I like the addition of the leaves as solid abstract shapes. Here’s the sketch at full size on my easel (about 36”H x 45”W)

I also like the palette a lot. The background teal-violet of the washed-in trees was painted wet-into-wet on sheer fabric. I like the patterns and colors.

And to accompany the background fabric, I have printed new fabrics to put into the composition. The monotype roots pattern in shades of blue is especially pleasing to me.

Here’s what I have assembled so far (collaged and stitched) on my easel.

I am going to complete the stenciled images of the two birds and the balance of the twigs as I have sketched.

Then I think I will have to sit back and ponder this awhile. My hunch is that the branch and twig shapes I liked in the sketch don’t recreate sufficiently the complexity of what I loved in the photo. I can add more, finer twigs and increase the abstraction. I may also be able to relief print some organic twig shapes from the same bundle of roots I used to monotype print the two-tone roots at the bottom. (Those were done as stencils in multiple passes on a gelatin plate.)

And, somewhere, I’ll need at least a splash of something that’s not blue so this is not so monochromatic.

This is going to work. I am telling myself that, believing in what I see already working.

I’m just not sure how to do it yet!

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Alone – with a lot going on around her…

I had not looked at this work in awhile. But today I travelled through all the details of it again and remembered why it speaks to me, and why I especially enjoyed the process of creating it.

A writer contacted me asking for permission to use this work as a poetry book cover. (How great is that!) It’s an honor to know that she has discovered the work, has taken time to respond to its content and felt drawn to it.

So, that’s how I came to look again at “Once She Could.” (I’ll be sure to post information about the book when it’s published.)

My hope in creating this textile collage was that it would combine a sense of innocence and possibility in the little girl with a complex environment, one that has a lot of layers.

To create the complexity of the girl’s world, I combined printed and painted fabrics with original photos that I transferred onto fabric. There are three photo transfer sections, and they all worked differently.

Beneath the girl’s feet is a section of complex, overlapping twigs. I am intrigued with the way they seem to suggest underground roots. I used a lot of transparent acrylic wash in this section to define and deepen the root shapes.

The watery reflections at the lower right came from a photo I took of a pond in Georgia. I did almost nothing to the transfer after getting it on the fabric. The picture came out clearly and I love the sense of mixed reality – trees, but upside down, and rippling, as reflected in the water.

The branches at the top right are a third photo transfer. I ended up doing a lot of opaque painting on this part. The white blossom-like shapes are suggested in the photo , and enhanced by direct painting. These white shapes are related to the white circle the girl is drawing. Are they her thoughts that have taken flight?

This work has a landscape composition with a strong center horizon line and a clear above-and-below. In the below-ground section, the photo transfers mix with other rich colors and textures.

She’s all by herself there on that limb.

All around her there’s a lot going on. Just like life.

This work is available, and posted on my website HERE.

And, if you’d like to watch a video I created of this work
which includes some original poetry, it’s on YouTube, HERE.

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Three Simple Houses. And More.

Three simple little houses.  Child-like in their form.

But there’s a lot going on in these houses, and I want it all to be an invitation to enter the story and to bring to it your own memories and dreams of home.

What’s inside the windows? Some reveal the interior, some reflect back the outside world.

Look inside the houses. Trees and growth. How would they be a part of the narrative?

The background is filled with the colors of forest shadows, with a horizon line that’s askew.

Two houses are broken open. One is not.

Yet the houses themselves are filled with crayon-box cheerful colors and lively, dancing patterns and shapes.

Like real homes, these three structures reveal that inside and outside don’t always match and that stories are usually not simple.

The video shows my process of creating this art quilt. I constructed each house from fabric -- printing, collaging and stitching -- and then placed them in the background. As I worked it felt very much like creating a play: constructing characters, building a set, and then placing them together onstage.

I hope you enjoy seeing the process.

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Water + Home… putting together two powerful images

In my studio this week I have begun a series of smaller art quilts that are simple compositions combining images of home with images of water, and tree silhouettes connecting the two.

This feels completely natural to me. As I construct the house sections, piecing in reflecting waterlilies or photo transfers of rippling water intuitively seems just right.

And yet – logically – water and a home are not a good mix. Nobody wants to find water seeping in from a wall or roof. The term “underwater” regarding a home is not desirable. And severe weather can damage or destroy a home with water.

So, I’ve been thinking through what this is about. I think that what I like about water is its quality of hidden life. I find it mesmerizing to sit by a body of water and just look down into the surface. Below there is another world. Sometimes life forms are visible: fish, moving plants. Much of the life is microscopic and invisible. But it’s there.

At the same time that it is mysterious, water is soothing. Imagine the sound of moving water. Waves against a beach. Ripples and splashes over rocks. People are just drawn to the sound of water.

The series of art pieces I’m creating about home invites viewers to enter their memories and dreams of home. It is not intended to be a logical journey, but an emotional one.

The water forms inside are a vehicle to enter that emotional place of remembering.

Detail - Art quilt in progress

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