sunshine, and warmer temps (it hit the low 60's today!!!!) makes keeping the faith a whole lot easier!
These dyed silk scraps came from wearable artist Laverne Zielbelski from Lexington, Kentucky. Laverne had a booth set up this weekend at the Kentucky Crafted Market which I attended for a few hours on Saturday. I met Laverne over 20 years ago when she lead writing circles and reconnected after discovering last year that she is also doing textile work for creating her poetic line of clothing. Laverne is also doing Nuno felting and using the FeltLOOM created by the owner of Lan Mark Farms near Lexington. It is a machine that takes the rolling out of Nuno felting. The University of Kentucky Art dept. is looking into purchasing one of the machines...I wonder if UofL's Fiber Art dept. would get one???? Slim chance I think due to budget cuts in the last few years but one never knows, right?!
I worked about 2 hours today at The Basement. I spent about 30 minutes cutting shapes as an exercise from Finding Your Own Visual Language and will work some tonight with mark making on paper using a variety of inks and pens and brushes. I spent about an hour working on the quilt in honor of Crows and thinking about James Audubon. Many times an idea will hit me and I can see it and I think "how brilliant that will be if I can pull it off!" and then weeks later I think the design has morphed into something "too simple" to reflect my ideas and I'm heading for the path of least resistance. The conflict comes in when I create a focal point...when I create an image, in this case Crows, I loose the emotion for a piece. I really like my backgrounds so much better which I describe as emotional abstractions. The questions I posed today are: Should I go for narrative? Should I make the Crows larger? Should I make the background smaller? Should I make the Crows out of felt and sculptural? What if I wanted to return to a total abstraction about Crows...what would it look like? What are Crows attracted to? Should I make the background reflect an urban setting? A practice I took from the Benn and Morgan Workshop back in '08 is to write the answsers to the questions down when I'm stuck...this is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
Peace,
I have that same book waiting for me to cut shapes and make marks. I keep not getting to it.
ReplyDeleteI use my sketchbook to answer questions like your Crow ones. I think it's a great thing to do when starting a project as well as when one is stuck. Have a great Wednesday!
I agree with Kristin: sketchbooks really do help. I love your crow idea. I did not realize until last week that we have both the American and Fish crows residing here in our area. When I hear the Fish Crow call, it automatically puts me at the beach...I can almost hear the waves crashing on the shore!
ReplyDeleteTake it slow and easy....you've been through a lot and it takes time to get back up to speed.
xo
I think the tension between what we WANT to create and what we ACTUALLY make is frustrating but also why we drive ourselves forward... provocative post and I look forward to connecting to some of your sited sources.
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