I STILL wonder about the people across the street. Do you?

Do you still carry with you – as in your pocket - images from childhood?

Thinking  about one of my earliest art quilts, “Wondering About the People Across the Street,” I discovered this wonderful quotation from Robert Penn Warren about the strength of childhood memories:

“When you are nine years old, what you remember seems forever; for you remember everything and everything is important and stands big and full and fills up Time.”

I can still remember houses on the street where I lived. I remember walking past them in the evening and looking in the windows. I believe it was part of the process of sorting out my place in the world.

Was my family the same as other families?
What would it be like living in somebody else’s house?
How did I feel about my own home and my place in it?

I created “Wondering about the People Across the Street” in 2014.  I had not begun the current series about home, but certainly the memory of childhood was in my mind and urging me to create something. I was drawn to bold coloring book colors to emphasize the childlike quality of the memory. And I wanted the figure on the porch to be a simple silhouette. She is both my childhood self and every other child.

Today, I am still interested in what’s behind windows and inside homes. As Robert Penn Warren wrote, “What you remember seems forever.”
 

Here’s a detail of a work in progress in my studio now that reveals my ongoing wondering  about life beyond the windows.

Here’s the completed work form 2014, "Wondering about the People Across the Street.” It’s in the journeys and stories gallery of my website, HERE

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A Back-and-Forth Dance – Between Painting and Quilting

Almost finished this one! (Pause for a celebratory sigh of accomplishment.)

As I’m working on my 2018 series, “Home is What you Remember,” I’ve been doing a lot of process experimentation. And it seems to fit what I’m after in the meaning of the works.

“Home” is a rich, deep, resonant, layered, emotional word. Everyone feels something about their home. In this series, I’m intentionally turning the word over and over to discover new ways to address the concept, new ways to get to the memories and meaning. So, playing with different methods has felt like a natural way to go.

Some of the works I’ve created so far are heavy on collage and applique. They tend to be thicker, with lots of texture. Some have been more painterly, flatter, working on gessoed muslin or sheer fabric.

This one turned out to be more painter-like. I did not work in sections – but on whole cloth. (A little more challenging for me because I have a small-throat regular sewing machine.) I used some wet-wash paint layers, some stencils, and some direct painting.

I kept the camera handy to record progress. I hope you enjoy.

(In case of any technical difficulties with loading or seeing the video, you can follow this link to see it on You Tube.)   https://youtu.be/19DzsTFFtPE

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A chicken or the egg kind of question… and does it make a difference?

If the order of making gets changed around… does it make a difference?

As an experiment in artmaking with textiles, I recently tried reversing the order of the whole process. It's been  revealing and interesting

My textile works have some of the characteristics of a painting and some of the characteristics of an art quilt.  I always start with blank fabric, creating my own fabrics with acrylic paints. I monotyope print, stencil, stamp, use relief printing and paint directly. But, generally, I am making batches of fabric, then cutting them up and incorporating them into a collaged and stitched composition.

There’s a lot I like about this way of creating. But sometimes, by starting with individual pieces, I feel like I lose sight of the overall composition, especially big shapes and values. If there are things I need to correct, I don’t always see it till I’m pretty far along.

So, with a piece that’s still a work in progress, I started with the big picture first. I cut a large piece of muslin a little bigger than the finished size, (about 36"H x 48"W) then ripped it into five random sections. I taped them back together (on the back) so that I again had one large piece. I gessoed the fabric to stiffen it up then treated it like a painting canvas. Using hand-cut stencils in the shape of houses, I painted with a roller to get the overall composition roughed in.  It felt quite different – working more like a painter and less like a quilter. At this point, I could see the finished composition. I knew what was successful ad what was not right from the beginning.

THEN I untaped the sections and worked on them individually. I added some texture with paint, collaged in some new fabrics, and added stitching for texture over the whole piece.

THEN I sewed the sections back together again to recreate the whole. Now, I felt more like a quilter.

For me, this has been like adding a new language to my studio vocabulary. I will continue to work in the reverse order on some pieces, and sometimes combine the two procedures.

My studio “note-to-self” this week says “Creativity demands experimentation.” Yes.

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Half awake… and what was revealed.

Half awake, half asleep, I was thinking of tangled tree limbs seen through broken windows. I knew they were waiting to be revealed.

And so in this morning’s quiet I began the process of removing and revealing. There are gentle sounds associated with this studio work. The spray of water from the hose onto outside concrete wetting the paper. A gentle breaking of the surface of the vinegar- soap solution with the dipping of my cloth. And the rhythmic rubbing. Rubbing. Peeling away the paper to reveal the image on the muslin below.

Discovering the images as they emerge is itself a new way of seeing. Before I transferred, the paper copy was a mirror image of what will finally be revealed. Rubbing away the paper film is a discovering of the shapes that interested me from the onset, but now reversed, patterned in a new way.

As I rubbed, discovered, revealed I remembered the experience of shooting the photographs. We were in rural South Carolina, and an abandoned, roofless, vine-filled house was waiting for me. The walk to the house was through a thick bed of pine needles. Wind whispered in the pine trees. The photos I recorded capture that feeling of stillness and loss.

Who lived there? How did the house become abandoned? How long has it been decomposing? Does anyone visit this place? What memories might it hold?

Once the images are assembled as part of a large quilted work, I want the composition to invite the viewer in by conjuring up questions. The questions will become another layer. Memory layer. Captured photo layer. Composed layer. Fabric layer. Dream layer. All held within the tangled tree limbs and broken windows.

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What’s the same… What’s Changing? Seeing Ideas Evolve

I spent some time today looking through collected images of my own work. It’s a good exercise – much like looking back through my sketchbook at ideas I had cooking for awhile. But, when I review completed work, I begin to see patterns.

First of all – just to get past this – it’s very humbling. There are a fair amount of things I just don’t like anymore, about which I wonder, “What was I thinking?” OK. The only way never to fail is never to make anything. So I try to accept the ones that don’t much please me.

But “What was I thinking?” may be the exact right question. What impulses have I seen re-emerging throughout my artmaking? I have been working consistently In textiles since about 2010, experimenting with printing and construction techniques and subject matter. With so much variety, is there some common element?

I think so. And it helps to find it. In some way, an interest in surface vs inner has been what interests me. Sometimes, it’s taken the form of landscape explorations, where I’ve tried to see above ground and below ground at one time. Sometimes it’s been in the form of memory pieces, where I have scratched the surface of my own life, digging into issues of outer appearances compared to inner realities.

For 2018, I am focusing on a body of work developing images of little houses. I will fill them with patterns and windows into the inner life, with the shape of the house indicating what’s seen from the outside. I am very excited as I look at the new sketches and mockups, and interested to see how this all evolves.