This is Whats Up...

I am in my space this morning to start a shawl I had counting difficulty with last night and unfrogged. The softness in the air and the quiet while everyone remains sleep I am hoping will allow me to concentrate more.  I am using a foundation single stitch which is one I haven't used often.  My plan is to also do a little piece work from Piecing by Ruth McDowell.  Once I work through a book as part of my Karoda School of Art I am also deciding if the book will remain a part of my arsenal.  I want to streamline, reel in, what I create over a long swatch of time.  I want to have more command over what my resources are and should be in order to do what I do.  You know  there is that tendency to be a grasshopper, jumping all over the place and trying out every knew tool and trend that comes out.  And that is all cool for awhile, but I'm longing for a more distinct look in all that I select to keep, whether it is encaustics or quilts.

Yesterday I spent some time working on a Mojo.  I usually do these in painted papers stitched and embellished, I do them in down time to relax my mind.  This one is fabric and has been hanging around for two years. I plucked it off the board and began adding hand stitching.  I love everything going on so far with this small piece. Here I am auditioning the porcupine quill.

This study below I did previously last year...I want to revisit it in a larger quilt.  I made a small adapted version of it that was part of a collaboration.  It is about commanding spiritual transformation.

Every Friday Mo and I have lunch.  It is her day off.  Last Friday was our next to last Friday lunch date.  She will be going to a different shift at her job so we will have to come up with another way to connect.  Maybe she can be persuaded to take up a knitting class with me in the evenings.  Here we are at Long John Silver's.  Summer means we are a foursome instead of a twosome.

I hear footsteps upstairs, so I'm going to get this shawl started.  Peace.

Collaboration and Co-signing

I've read articles about women who began their artistic life past their 40s, 50s, and well into the Crone years.  Although I began way before those decades of my age, I am thinking over how my creative life has changed and wondering if it's post-cancer, over 55, or living with illnesses or some combination of all three.

Unlike some cancer patients, I couldn't engage in my own artistic endeavors and once again found crochet, following patterns created by others, as a way of staying calm and relaxed.  My own art is on-going decisions and questions and physically engages my whole body and being.  I gave myself a pass last year and was alright with that....but kinda imagined myself going gung-ho (I wonder where that term originated from) in my basement studio.  My days creating remain hit and miss as the basement is colder than I anticipated, even with a heater, and the lighting, even with supplements,  is sub-standard.  But I've been getting a little something done and thankful for an opportunity of a collaboration, I completed my first art quilt of 2016.  

THE COLLABORATION 

This collaboration really highlights the beauty of the internet and social media.  Some years ago I was interested in doing a group art project with a few girlfriends and was looking for short term art retreat spaces and contacted the owner of A.I.R. Studio Paducah.  The retreat didn't pan out but he became a reader of this blog and we became friends on Facebook.  Hi Alonzo Davis!  He was invited to create a piece with The Smith Center for Healing and the Arts...a Center he was familiar with...after we had a phone convo and looking over the call for the exhibit we knew this was something we could create as a team instead of the invited artist interviewing someone and then creating a piece based on the interview.  The medium that all the artists were given to work with was a wooden cigar type box.   Alonzo had the outside and I did the inside.

My process was first to flip through my sketchbooks.  I found this image based on a poem I wrote in the late 90s or early 2000s and the poem was based on an African folktale I read back in the 80s. Getting in my groove, I adapted the sketch several times, played with different ways to transfer the image onto cloth....

and the weather was unseasonably warm during this time too!  

The poem and the drawing illustrate the ability to change, adapt, camouflage if necessary for survival and growth ...my great-grandmother would say "if you don't change, life will sho' change you" and this was always co-signed by my grandmother and my mother.  My very good sistah-friend, Estella Majozo, use to say in reference to writing (and life) "it's all process, all process"  Living with chronic illness and then coming out of cancer has me co-signing with "Lord, yes!" to both of them.

After I mailed my small 8 in square piece to Alonzo and he mailed me back the photos of the finished piece, all I could think to say was I want to buy it now..:)

It was a beautiful experience with a beautiful outcome.

If you live in the D.C area, you should consider attending the opening and acquiring this piece....it is the only one that was the collaboration of work by two artists!

ALCHEMICAL VESSELS 2016

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.

Update...

Radiation has ended!  I had 3 intense weeks of and was left with severe burns.  A wound care specialist was called in.  I guess it goes without saying, but my studio time was delayed. But like I said, IT HAS ENDED and I'm moving on!  I marked my time of returning to "artist" by setting up a booth at the Good Folk Festival the weekend of November 20-22.

I shared the booth with 2 other artists.  I wasn't prepared but I displayed what I had and enjoyed the responses I received and the variety of art work from across the region by other artists.   Also, I met face to face with some local art buds that I'm connected with on Facebook.

I am back in the studio but not creating art...Moriah, my daughter, wanted to make bird ornaments to hang on the Christmas tree.  I pulled out the baby Janome and turned it on and sewed!  She gave me the incentive (or shove) and we are having a good time.  She doesn't really sew so she needed some help.

going around those curves is tricky

She selected all the fabrics and going through them with her had me giddy.  

These two pieces above where dropped off for an exhibit coming up in January at The Kentucky African American Heritage Center.  The day I dropped these off I also picked up 3 other pieces from A Day of the Dead Art Exhibit.  So, "slow but sure" is and has been my motto for a long while.

Still Here

I had to put thought into how to even write a blog entry.  I'm a month out from this blog's anniversary.  I'll be here even when no one comes...sort like the woman living alone in the woods, but I'm not that nature friendly to be living in the woods...maybe like the woman living in the basement apartment.

Mama, age 85 and her Great Granddaughter, age 4

My creative making has experienced a boat load of interruptions this year.  Considering how it grounds me and centers me, there has been a lot of groping through the light and the dark this year.  I feel it on my skin.  I've done my best to be adaptable, nurture and hold on to faith, and just be without over thinking which I've have a tendency to do...and by God's Grace, I'm standing and holding my own.

view into the studio window

We were anticipating moving by the end of October, which included my studio as well.  So far, nothing has fit our needs.  The plan is (God stop laughing), as I was saying, the plan is for this to be a last move.  So it needs to "fit", otherwise whats the point.  My studio is in disarray and my strong inclination is to let go of household "stuff" and simplify simplify simplify.  But Peter and I cannot see eye to eye on what is or is not "practical".  Like beauty, its all in the eye of the beholder.  But this is the least of my concerns.

An exhibit deadline is fast approaching making me aware of just how little I have completed this year.  I'm not going to meet it. The photos below were taken by Mr. Bud Dorsey, The Urban Photographer here in the city.  This was the opening reception and panel discussion held in September at the Kentucky African American Heritage Center for a group exhibit.  I have 4 pieces in the show.  It is one of the hallmarks for this year.

Still Here by Langston Hughes

Been scared and battered.

My hopes the wind done scattered.

Snow has friz me,

Sun has baked me,

Looks like between 'em they done

Tried to make me

Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'--

But I don't care!

I'm still here! 

We Rise, again and again and again and again.....

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.   ---excerpt from Still I Rise By Maya Angelou


Let me just say this blog break was unexpected.  Not to bog the blog down with details, I'll summarize the important stuff, the highlights thus far of the late spring and early summer:  

Mo and I have been 2nd hand shopping for furniture and just short of dumpster diving we've been out nearly every day scouting furniture for her new apartment for a new phase in her life.  (God be with us.) The furniture finds filled my studio and we ventured with her leading the way into painting with chalk paint.  

We'd go at nights to paint so we could  pull the furniture out in the hallway...(and the AC was out in the building, luckily enough, the nights were cooler and somewhat tolerable).  The other furniture pieces are still in storage.  A couple of dressers, a headboard, and a buffet left to go.

Mo's car completely died leaving 4 adults to depend on 1, ONE car (feels really retro, but we've adjusted quite well given the circumstances).  And she is now without a job related to her continued knee issues and asthma.  But being the hard-headed determined woman she is, she is rising.

The hub-man and I decided to house hunt for a rental and after weeks of looking we were 2, TWO, days late given notice to our complex and the best the apartment manager would do was to give us a 3 month lease because missing the date BY TWO days automatically locked us into a year lease.  And we came close to deciding on 1 of the 4 we had viewed...a 3BR, 2BA ranch, wood floors with a basement.  After five years of having a studio at Mellwood, I'm ready to bring it home and am envisioning a basement studio  So you see, looking for another place is the key. But as it stands now, October will be our deadline to move.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, I had 2 bouts with pneumonia but didn't require a hospital stay, but did do time home-bound with rest.  Also, several significant people in my life made their transition and passed on, a good friend who was my best friend in junior high; a neighbor, one of "the mothers" on the block I grew up on; and my God Mother who was my Mother's oldest, dearest friend, Ms Trudie Mae Wickliffe.  She was 98 and in her right mind.  (Thank you God for the blessings)

Ms Trudie and my Mother arrived in Louisville around the same time, sometime in the late 40's and worked at the Brown Hotel together while staying with a cousin of my Mother's who lived by the racetrack whose husband was a horse trainer.  They eventually moved out together and shared apartments sometimes with another friend, Grace.  But it was Ms Trudie, 14 years older than my Mother, who remained a staple in her life and later in my life growing up.  One of the most important affirmations I received from her when I as a young woman who left a marriage after just 1 year...she got me without me having to over-explain or apologize to what appeared as irrational to others.  She later gave her understanding of me wanting to live outside of marriage with my now husband (of the 28 years we've been together, we've only been married this last year).  It may not sound like much now, but back in the 80s, in my family, it was still a dramatic thing to do and cause for too much talk.  

Maya Angelou's passing was a moment...to have one so significant in my culturally relevant formative years leave this plane jolted my eyes to open to examine how i'm living and how I've used my talents and re-evaluate how to move forward.  I love this photo of her dancing with poet Amiri Baraka taken by photographer, Chester Higgins dancing on top of Langston Hughes' ashes buried under Rivers: African Cosmogram created by Houston Conwill (a native Louisvillian).  Now, the photo itself says JOY, but when I let all of the above just marinate for a minute or so, that JOY just intensifies and I start laughing out loud!  Living is a beautiful thing!

The last of May ended my time with the co-op gallery.  More of a financial move for me since my lower priced work is depleted and my direction is not to make more right now.  It is what has sold.  I do not want to devote my efforts to "what is selling" right now.  

The piece that had been in Form Not Function 2007, Negotiating Territory, was donated to an auction at Spalding University to help with establishing a scholarship for African American students.  But then a month later, I turn around and miss a deadline for a group exhibit of African American Women Artists at a local gallery.  Even though I have a tinge of regret, I have to believe that all things work toward good in my life and its okay.  

I'm still crocheting, but not as with much gusto since I'm no longer on steroids, and I missed a friend's birthday for which this shawl I have on my hook is for...but there is always Kwanzaa, Christmass, Valentine's Day, or any other day to celebrate just being.

Reading. I've been reading a lot and I simply must tell you about 1 of 2 books by Estella Conwill Majozo (sister to Houston, see above).  First, Sister,  Please, Can You Stand A Little Honesty.  A collection of sermons that Majozo has presented over the last 10 years or so to various faith-based audiences. Each chapter is a offering of faith-based and culturally relevant steps we can take to keep our souls intact and not just as individual women but in a community of women.  I don't know about you, but I require certain thoughts and feelings, as oxygen, that speak to me, my soul, in order to ward off the numbness that grows as a result of stress.  The offerings in the book, helped and will help me to facing forward, nurture the desire to spring high and rise.  I've been carrying the book with me when I go out and re-read parts at night before going to sleep.  The 2nd book I'll talk about in my next blog post.  It also holds personal meaning for me and my family.

And finally to ward off the melancholy that occurs when I'm unable to be in my studio space creating something, I've picked sketching back up...specifically sketching faces.  A face a day is what I'm doing and then I upload to my personal FB page.  

Until next time, peace....

Because She Can

I'm aware that something is going on with me physically that I cannot quite name...at first I contributed it to the never-ending winter coupled with the extended care of my grandchildren and my mother paired with a couple of bouts with bronchitis. I've not been able to quite snap out of the lethargy and am riding the wave of up and downs.  I'm keeping my docs in the loop and there have been some changes to my meds, but thus far, I feel like I'm still pushing boulders up hill with some spurts of energy and enthusiasm along the way.  I'm happy to say I think my Mother is doing so much better and my daughter's schedule has changed and now I get to go back to be fun loving Nana.  My 4 year old granddaughter called me "boring" 2 days ago.  When I asked her what boring meant she said "its when you don't want to go anywhere".  That was said in reference to me not being ready to leave the bookstore.

Yesterday, my spurt of energy came from a visit from two friends; one, Mary, is walking across the 31 states east of the Mississippi River...she is taking a reprieve here in Louisville.  I will not seize to be amazed that I know someone who is so bold to undertake such a venture!  She started October of last year in Boston and has 19 more states to walk through before she returns home to Boston.  Over lunch I sat asking questions and listening to her tell stories in that Bostonian patois about the people she has met and her experiences.  Mary has a facebook page called Because I Can where you can follow along and read about her positive experiences on the road.

I used the spurt of energy to further progress on #2 in the series of Morrison quilts.  Here is the progress thus far on Fallen Through the Crack (working title) based on The Bluest Eye.

Quilting should begin on this piece sometime next week and the next quilt in line will be based on Tar Baby but I'm still working on composition.  I see 2 shared elements in the first one I did and this one...before I name them I'm going to see if they will continue to show up in the quilts to come.  There will be more encaustic pieces in between.

Peace,

Honey, I Love*

okay, So in my crazy mad crocheting, I thought I was ready for a sophisticated Interweave or Vogue pattern...(never underestimate my delusions)  I'm not quite there yet, but I could create a yarn bomb explosion...on you if you stand still long enough.

Also, I told myself a lie...because I'm going to have a small yarn stash, nothing massive or anything like collecting fabric (although I've noticed this could become competitive between yarn vs. fabric). 

I started another scarf tonight.  This is my 6th project in less than a month.  I'm going to block these made with this fine microfiber yarn just to see what that will do.  What I can gleam so far, there is a debate among the yarn heads, to block or not to block.

wave pattern



window pane pattern

 



Also, at the moment, as in the last few weeks of moments, I'm leaning toward blowing all the creative goal setting.  I'm going to walk into the ethereal realm creatively speaking and see what I leave behind on the trail of time. 

What I want to do hasn't changed...it is the pace in which I will do it that will.  In the slow re-read of Beloved I have been so struck by how LOVE is a force, energy, power, action that it has reminded me and shifted me...in the midst of this is the almost daily care and life with 2 small children (I thought this was all behind me) and the experience with my mother (early dementia) is showing me that at any age, all ages, change is truly inevitable, change that you can sometimes control and change you have no control over at all and at the end of the day none of it matters but that which is in LOVE, that force, energy, power, and action of existence.  This is what I'm choosing.  (remind me down the road lest I forget). 

So I think from here on out on my blog, among the artistic pursuits, I'm going to wax off my tongue and just talk about whatever I'm led to say.

*title is a reference to a poem and book by Eloise Greenfield.

Keep Swinging

Here it is the first week into February and I've not committed to goals for 2014 for the Chitlin' Circuit Studio. I've ruled out taking any major workshops this year even though Dorothy Caldwell and Jane Dunnewold will be giving workshops here locally.  I know, I know.  How fabulous...but it is not showing up cowrie shells, or tea leaves.

My focus is getting through winter and I must recognize that I'm doing better than previous winters.  My granddaughter is back in the hospital and has been there this time since Monday of last week.  She is 3 and quite spirited and mature for what she is experiencing.  The medical team is quite encouraged by her energy for the pulmonary diagnosis she has.  I'm encouraged and can't wait til she is well.  In March we're, well she, will start ballet.

Back to this goal-setting.  The first quilt study inspired by the novel Sula is prepared for quilting -

the heads have since been painted in.

I'm not sure I will do a study for each one...the next one up is The Bluest Eye.  What I'm hoping for this series is to teach myself to narrow the focus of the techniques I use.  But to recognize my own growth to this point, the idea to do these quilts came to me way back, like in '06 or '07, but didn't feel at that time I had the skill and confidence to go beyond just thinking about it.  I'm now at the point where my confidence is not intimidated by attempting it and I hope to learn something about myself at the end of this year.  My goal is to have 3 or 4 finished.

I will continue with this series as my main focus for "making" but will have other works going on between these quilts.

For my learning curve, my focus is doing Zentangles.  I've been looking at the zentangles and quilt lines of Nysha Nelson for awhile now and thought I've finally get down to trying them myself for the purpose of broadening my free-motion quilting ideas.

this is Day 1, working through the book One Zentangle A Day (6 weeks total)

My reading material will be continuing to read and re-read books on art and marketing to assist with the co-op gallery (current book is New Market for Artists which focuses on online markets) and do 1 day a week for gallery coverage.  I'm also, re-reading the novels of Morrison (Beloved is the current book) and will begin reading through the books that I have from the David Driskell Series (started the one on Keith Morrison last week).

And lastly, in light of missing a recent deadline for a juried exhibit, I want to submit to 4 shows (yet to be identified) this year.

In the words of Hank Aaron, I'm going to "just keep swinging".

Peace,

Breakdown printing

Carter, GS, has learned to do the duck dance from school and is very entertained by it as i am watching him while I dadadadada the music to it.  We told Papa to watch and learn.  I put him on the bus this morning and slid into the studio where I am piddling as a form of self care. 
I have some dried screens, very old dyes, and some print paste going bad so I am seeing what sticks with Breakdown Screen Printing. 

I don't expect much from this but while doing it I kept wanting that ethereal appearance like with encaustic paintings. It is sopping wet in this picture and with the materials being old the depth of color will be no way near this.

Looking back over August.

The exhibits at our state fair do rock!  I know Dennis Shaffner and the troupe of volunteers deserve much kudos for putting it together year in and year out!  Thanks Dennis!

Here are some of the pieces that struck my fancy...

3 cakes

tie quilt made by the daughter of the man who hired Peter at his company 20 years ago.  The man is now retired and these were his ties.

vintage dress

 

altered phone in the floral arrangement exhibit

 

children's art

 

sorry for the poor photo, but his is a batik print by LAFTA member Judy Banks!

 

 what do you do with your garbage? 

 

this is a fountain made from dishes and a sink! 

 

another piece by Judy Banks that is also an award winner!

 

high school sculpture from cardboard!

 

ghostly elegant art!

 

this might have been a high school student art. the layering is beautiful as well as the urban feel and calm of the human figure

I'm still sketching America Shannon. 

 

and the prayer wheels have received blue...

I really love this picture of Anaya and I.  Thinking about putting it on a canvas frame via a photo service.