Meeting other artistic spirits.

Edus and myself

I was looking forward to meeting and seeing the art by EDUS and made it to the reception yesterday evening with my friend Brittany.  

Edus' work is bright with color and filled with personal narratives and social statements.  The piece that I fell in love with was entitled Life is Like a Bicycle which tells the story of her missing the bus to school and her father taking her on his bicycle.  A very moving story and the piece has a minimal palette in blues and white portraying a face with bicycle wheels for eyes.  A small partial view is to our right in the picture.

There will be another reception next Saturday with live music.  It is at OPEN gallery at 2801 S. Floyd Street right across from UofL's stadium.

No Honeymoon for Uneena, She Has More Jewelry to Create!

The other event that added to the dynamics of my weekend was the Meet the Artist Reception at Kore for member Uneena Jackson.  It was Uneena's first exhibit showcasing jewelry she designed with "love" in mind for wedding parties.  She went all out with a wedding cake and her niece wore a wedding gown and modeled some of the necklaces during the evening and music teacher and student Chris Mudd played the keyboards setting a melodious backdrop. 

 

 

Spikes and Pearls Necklace by Uneena Jackson

I was kept pretty busy writing sales receipts and running the square which doesn't like me very much.  I had to keep asking Don or Uneena to run it as it seems to go the first or second time when they do it. 

Her exhibit will last through the end of February.  For the next week I'm certain she will be busy creating new pieces to replace what was sold, so if any Mellwoodians see her around gabbing...send her back to her studio...but I must admit, the woman does create well under pressure! Congrats Uneena!

Wall of fabrics

This is what you'll see if you walk by my studio window. Fabrics waiting to get it on with other fabrics and threads.

When I arrived, a local morning news show was here interviewing artists who will be set up at the art fair here this weekend. Justin and Nathan, owners of Baz and Bea boutique were among the artists. Their place is inside Mellwood but they will also have a booth.  They also work with dyes and love to experiment and we can get going on some real talk (my love for slang is showing up) about dyes.

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.

Hanging old and new art...

Yesterday Don, Uneena, and me rearranged the gallery walls.  Two days prior I pulled my art from it's storage (my closet here at home) to take to Brown-Foreman's Diversity Day (this company values creativity highly and it shows!).  So I took advantage of having the work out and breathing to hang it at the Kore along with the new paper quilts upon returning.

We're not finished as we will take it down on Monday to get good photographs. 

Below are the paper quilts coloured with dye.  There will be more of these in my future.  And I think they will be in a shadow box or framed.

Not sure how I feel about the shadow the shadow box casts on the quilt.  I protected these with a fixative, but now I'm thinking UV glass and/or UV protection spray needs to be applied.  And this will go back to being vertical, the original orientation.

 

 

Don wanted me to live with the vertical orientation of "Summer".  It hasn't grown on me.

The sunset is thread painted on canvas but not quilted and mounted on a 6"x12" stretched canvas. 

 

 

And this is Don's newest which I have fallen in love with.  All that deep aqua with the colour bursts exudes in me a feeling of hope and excitement.

 

 

 

 



 

The Art of Dating

Whew!!! so relieved that my mojo just took a short vacation!  Good actions breed good actions!  This mornring Peter and I headed to the Y (first time we're doing this together, say "ahhhhh"), then we left there and went to see the art work of G.C. Coxe at the Kentucky African American Heritage Museum.  There are only a dozen or so pieces from private collections but I'll be going back several times to study the work before it comes down in August.  It is such an honor to see his work hung together and I believe a first since his death in 1999.  This is my favorite piece, Totem Pole with Little People, (oil on canvas, 49"x64 5/8") because of the transparency and that the geometric figures in black represented "people" for Coxe in the same way the shape in the following photo represents people for me.  It made me feel in excellent company.

 

 

Below is the state of the dye session as I left it today...a screen with dried thickened dye and fabrics in reds and greens dye juice in plastic containers.

 

 

The other delightful treat was to go see Form Not Function exhibit!  I love every single piece in this year's show, but my vote for Best of Show would have gone to Units 27: Sunburst by Benedicte Caneill and my personal favorites were Letters to Myself-Page 2 by Denise Linet and Soliloquy I by Peggy Brown.  The exhibit doesn't allow photography but there is a catalog that accompanies this exhibit.  Will be making more trips to see this exhibit as well.

And she's off....

to the studio and readying for Derby Dye Fever!  Today I prepped for marbling, dye painting and screening, and will add painting on silk in my experimenting for the month of May.  I made 3 strengths of sodium alginate thickener, 1 for painting, 1 for screen printing, and another for breakdown printing should the weather outside get hot enough this month.  I also made up a batch of Alum and marbling size using metho-cyl.  Last year I used carrageen for the size and had a time with getting the paints to float and I used everything from fluid acrylics, inks, air brush paints, to prepared paints for marbling.  I did get some good results but still had a lot of loss of paint that sunk to the bottom of the tray.

I use a blender to mix my urea water and thickner.

3 strengths of thickener from sodium alginate (seaweed derivative)

 

Since my fabrics have been sitting for awhile, I decided to scour them again to remove dust,...a combination of various pfd (preferred for dyeing) silks and cottons.  The silks are washing as I type.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This past week I was at the studio and gallery for a combined total of 19 hours.  On Saturday I did a demo for my ART Going Postal(c) postcards while gallery sitting.  The visitors were few but I enjoyed the company and conversation of fellow artist Dennis Shaffner. 

 



 

 

I haven't made new postcards in years.  I used designer silk fabrics from a sample book.  I'm going to make these as warm-up exercises on a weekly basis until I exhaust the fabrics.

Poetic touch stones have filled by day...started last night with Proclamations of Forgiveness by Estella Majozo.  This morning Cherryl Floyd-Miller shared the link to this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. And the radio show On Being posted this poem on their FB status and I ended up listening to the podcast.  I'm still feeling strong and joyous...gonna ride this vibe as far as I can!  Peace!

Accountability Sunday

or should I say 'back on track'.  One fourth of the way through this year and I was thrown off track by the move of the studio, illness, and a busted laptop where I tracked my goals for the year in Excel.  I'm feeling well, studio is in place, laptop still busted.  Oh, and so far, the only casualty from the move is a misplaced iPod. 

I gallery sat for 10 hours and was in the studio for 9 hours sewing on bottom sleeves on some quilts for more stability in hanging.  Here are snapshots from my space...

comfy chair

curtain of shells

front room rearranged already

print/cutting table/ironing/shelves

stabilizers/wax papers/fusibles/freezer paper/ etc

misc.

Some of these quilts will eventually move over to the co-op gallery.  When I unrolled what I'm calling the doorway quilt, I realized it was too small and underwhelming.  I was able to catch the IQS-Cincinnati on Saturday and the SAQA exhibit Seasonal Palette wowed me.  For one, the impact of the size and the consistency of them hanging hit me!  They all were 32"x78".  For a passageway to have it's impact on the viewer, I want to offer the feeling that you can walk through it and unless it is a doorway for small children, of which it is not, its not working.  I'm going to complete it though and try to recreate something similar in the fall.  The doorway quilt in on the far right in the snap shot below.

This coming Friday is the Derby @  Mellwood and Schalfy Trolley Hop for FAT Friday.  Come out and park your car at Mellwood (plenty of free parking) and check out the Male High School trios and over 200 pieces of art throughout the Center. Chris Mudd will be playing light jazz on the keyboards inside the Kore Gallery and Jisun Mudd, his mother and one of the featured artists will be present also.  See the update here.

When May begins, I'm going to begin dyeing, marbling, printing and painting fabrics for the summer as my main focus.  The quilts that I'll make will be small ones that I'll wrap about a canvas frame.

Niddly Piddly and Willy Nilly, The Crazy Days of March

How has your March been?  Quite a few folks in my immediate surroundings have had crazy making days back to back to back, including myself. I have 1 week left to be out of the old studio which is for the most part empty except I need to pick up niddly piddly type stuff and sweep the floor.  The new space is crammed with boxes and today me and my men went to the storage unit to unload even more boxes which came to almost 1/2 of a nearly full 5'x15' unit.  It felt good though to see my fabrics which I haven't seen in nearly 2 years...and my art books as well.  For the rest, I'm done being the keeper of stuff out of sentimentality.  However, realizing that everything has value, I do not want to dispose of things willy nilly but would love for them to move on to another place of appreciation.  I need to exercise patience with the belief that the destiny of old stuff will find it's new place.

I did take time out to attend LAFTA on Thursday as I was needing the uplift the meetings provide.  Sarah Fredericks did a presentation of her handmade papers and books along with other book/paper makers...ooooo and ahhhhh.  Our grab bag had loads of wonderful fabrics from a woman who retired from making custom purses and a designer who donated sample books...I got some really good quality fabric!  But the exceptionally great affirmation for me was finding Sunshine Joe at the meeting.  All the while when my children, all 3 of them, ages 22-32, were in elementary school, they were exposed to the art embroidery of Sunshine Joe.  I had not thought about him much at all since then, but in the last 10 years of me being on this journey of visual art with textiles, he crosses my mind at times, especially when I am hand embroidering.  He is from Mississippi and tells the story that he became enamored with stitching at the hand of his great great grandmother who had been enslaved.  Sunshine Joe is much older than his youthful appearance suggests.   It was a jolt to hear someone in 2013 having contact with a person who was born in slavery.  But in thinking it over, I am 52 and knew my great great grandmother who had been born shortly after Emancipation.  

The quilt he shared at the meeting was 4 years in the making and documents news events.  The base of the quilt is made up of neckties.  The other gentleman in the picture is Robert Hartley who is known for color all the time everywhere all day long...this was a black and white challenge he participated in.

Purge, Pack, Prepare

Friday before last I put in a request to relocate my studio 2 doors down the hall and felt myself being anxious over the weekend and at the start of the week waiting to hear that the request was okay'ed.  Skipping the details, it wasn't until I took Richard Pryor's advice and just said "phuck it" let what come, may, that on Wednesday it was approved.  Lesson (re)learned...don't sweat the small stuff and keep company with integrity.

I somehow managed to finish binding the flowery quilt and the setting the layout for the Kore gallery website (hasn't gone live yet).  On Saturday, Don, one of the gallery members, showed up with the idea to paint my new space...and he even located free paint in a calming light green and he was ready to get it done.  He and I, mostly he, got the first coat on and he and Robin, his partner, applied the 2nd coat on Sunday!  I thank them with my whole heart for such a gracious gift!!!!!

On April 6th I am teaching a 4 hour workshop on Art Going Postal at The Little Loomhouse.  Between now and until then purging and packing and preparing for the class and the move will be most of my focus.

one of my favorite pieces by Donald A. Cartwright

Accountability Sunday on Monday

My caboose jumped onto another track last week.  Looking back over the goals I set for the week I managed just a few...gallery sitting, completed quilting on XX, read half way through camera manual, and the next deadline for entering an exhibit is March 29th.

Some additional time was given to understanding what goes into a press package and press release and plugging along on the Kore Gallery website and my own and snapping photos.  It was a full week with Saturday being a looooooonnnnnnnnngggggggg day that started off with running late for an 8am appointment with a hair-dresser and returning home to "prep" for a gala event that night for the National Kidney Foundation. Uneena, one of the co-op members works for a team of nephrology physicians and Kore donated 2 art pieces for the silent auction and currently have a quilt I owned and donated but was created by Juanita Yeager as a fundraiser for NKF.  I have a family members that have required kidney disease and transplants and moved that Kore will make this one of their charities to support.

I really had forgotten how much effort goes into "dressing up".  It has been nearly 10 years since I purchased pantyhose and I jumped back out with a pair of Sphanx...WTH? I thought the Women's Liberation Movement addressed the thing about oppressive clothing decades ago?!!!!  And I had to reach in the very back of the closet for "dressy" clothing and dust it off.  I'm glad I still had something to choose from but I did have to replenish my make-up which I had thrown most of it out years ago right after I stopped working.  I haven't been much of a shopper since the 80s and with each passing year I've become even less and less of having the stamina and patience for it.  Being inside the mall for me is like being at a carnival with the carousel music too loud and tent mc's barking and dangerous animal sounds and nauseating sugary smells and too close for comfort tactile experiences.  I took my 83 year old Mama along for comfort and stability who reveled me with stories of shopping enjoyment of her days gone by.

In between the hair appointment and gala, I had a co-op meeting and stayed in the gallery.  Being out and about is always interesting and fun but I'm just barely able to think clear today.  I'm working on using Epson StoryTeller a program that game with my printer some years ago.  I'm using it to tell a visual story of my art work.  Its an mental exercise that is a way of sliding some oil to the brain so I can ease on down, ease on down, ease on down the road this week. (I love the Wiz!)

So I'm just going to re-run the goals I didn't attend to last week with the added goal of getting the press release together for Kore Gallery and any other Mellwood artists who are interested in showing off for the Derby Trolley Hop.

Peace,