2nd Annual African American Women's Exhibit @ the Kentucky African American Heritage Center.

Flyer for upcoming exhibit and reception! <----click

Throwback to 2009.

pages from an journal from 2009-10.  I made a slide show which you can see here on YouTube.

Some of these ideas were used to create at least 3 quilts.

Creating with Intent

Last night I cleaned up this image and tweeked it a bit.  This is not the cleaned up copy.

I'm going to attempt to blog the development of this piece and my thought processes around how it will come to fruition.  The notes I made in the margins are as follows:

• skin tones: raw umber/burnt sienna or paynes grey.
• consider the decayed urban church screened in the background or as the background
• bottom 1/3 in diamonds or hexagons-pieced-consider blue/white commercial fabrics, all different
• consider yellow-orange heart behind them, engulfing them which could give the opportunity to play with highlights, but I liked the flat appearance of the study.
• heart would have some metallic in it and/or reflective bead embellishment
• blackbirds/sparrows present one season in the town Sula and Nel lived in
• figure/male with bell, rope tied around waist connected to bell, if used, subdue image as not to compete.
• ear smaller, heads larger.
• could attempt a more complicated background in collage Romare Bearden style to suggest a village of people, if used, images fused in cubism....people combined with birds and masks and houses
• take a look at the sketch for Milkman's Journey and consider the layout for the background or merge the 2 images into one quilt....really want a quilt for each novel but the 2 sketches work well together, but could be too busy for my personal aesthetics as would the collaged background.

These are thoughts I contemplated as I looked at the outline and asked myself "where do I go next with this?". 

I was going to use a projector but I remembered the glass got broken last Spring.  So, my next step is to take the image to Kinko's and enlarge it.  I know I could do it on my printer but I do not want to tape the pages together.  

The Fruits of My Labor

Yesterday I woke energized which made it easy to get down to the studio.  I spent 4 hours, 3 of which I was dedicated to practicing drawing using the book Mixed Media Portraits by Pam Carricker.  My goal was to work on proportions and shading.  Today I spent 2 more hours.  Here are the process images I snapped.

I reworked the nose/mouth alignment at least five times.  I started out trying to give her a double chin, but couldn't render it.  (note: examine more closely my own chin for help)  The last image I warmed up in Picasa. The ear on the left needs to be darker and the highlights in the eyes do not satisfy me but I am mostly content with the shading.  

I posted this study on my blog before, I think.  It is loosely inspired by the novel Sula by Toni Morrison and the title is We Were Girls Together.  It was painted, quilted and mounted on a wood frame.  The finished size was around 18"x12".  I did another outline for what will be a larger quilt which is what you see above the quilt.  Not sure if I will drawn the image again directly on cloth or clean this outline up and use a projector to get the image on cloth.  I will paint it but the background will be partially pieced like a traditional quilt.

This morning while I was gulping, (sip, me, really??) my coffee and eating an orange I recalled me telling my granddaughter when she was a year younger, (she is 5 now) that an apple tree was going to grow in her stomach because she had swallowed a seed.  She immediately teared up and was building up to hysterics and I had to convince her that I was kiddling....she was uncertain and looked at me like "why would my Nana play about a thing like that".  When I was young and was told the same about swallowing orange seeds I thought it would be fun to have a tree growing in my stomach and kept eating them.  That is the kind of family I come from where Grandparents and Uncles convince a child that it is really possible to grow trees in your stomach by eating the seeds of fruit.

Color Group Therapy

Happy 2016!  We made it!  I am looking forward to a year of self discovery.  How about you?

Today I felt  like some color therapy and headed to the basement only to be joined by my grandchildren some minutes later.  So it was a group color session.

On my birthday I had a glass of champagne...my first taste of alcohol in over a year.  I turned double nickels, but sadly to report, that one glass made me drowsy and I went to bed shortly after.  I'm working up to a bourbon on the rocks...or at least that is what I'm telling myself.  I feel anew and I'm getting to know myself once again.  Maybe the new me will forego alcohol all together.  But I'm going to try the bourbon sometime soon before I decide.