Father's Day Ponderings

Saturday is my day to gallery sit and in between visitors I started reading Contemporary Quilt Art: An Introduction and Guide by Kate Lenkowsky.  I also worked on more paper quilts. 

 

 

I started the one below when I got back into my studio.  The writing is in 3-d paint which I left to completely dry before I fill in with more colour.

The paper I'm using is khadi paper, a rag paper made in India.  I've had it for at least a year and can't recall what intent I had in mind, but really, for me, no intent is needed to buy most art supplies.  I was reading on someone's blog, (can't recall which one), that she could pass up shoe stores without any problem, but an art supply store! well that is on a whole 'nother level.  I could stay in art supply stores for hours with my mind sparking with ideas and can't leave empty-handed even if I just come out with a single pastel crayon.

*****

I'm missing my father...he passed over 3 years ago.  I can still see him and hear his voice.  He was an only child of my grandmother who was the only daughter of three of my great grandparents.  My father was raised my great-grandmother.  When they left Milledgeville, Georgia for Kentucky, my grandmother was 15 and pregnant with my father who was born Middlesboro, Kentucky.  They left Georgia for the lure of working in a blue jean factory that was hiring Black people.  Some of my great-grandfather's brothers came also and one opened up a barbershop.  At some point, they all pulled up roots again and headed to Louisville, Kentucky.

My man and father of two of my three children was born in West Africa, Lagos specifically.  However, his roots are in Sierra Leone but do not go back beyond his great-great grandmother due to the slave trade.  When the exporting of slaves ended in West Africa people who had been captured and taken to the coastal regions where left there.  The land mass of the continent, the distance, the terrain, would make it near impossible to find one's way back home, even if in deed, home was still there and not burned out, or overtaken by another ethnic group.  His great-grandmother had four sets of twins, one of one set of twins made his way to Nigeria from Sierra Leone by the lure of employment for a Dutch company.  He was not yet 18 when he left home.  A very industrious young man.

My children, all three of them, have benefitted greatly from the journeys and hopes and achievements of their ancestors, but they do not understand it, even though it was something discussed in our home often.  The expectations that they would continue, in a conscientious manner, allow their foundation to inform their daily choices and decisions for long range effects, is a point of view that is absent.  Yesterday morning over coffee we discussed whether our children see themselves as part of a whole and understand how the decisions they make effect and connect to the lives that come before them as well as the lives that will come after them.  In tiny ways they seem to but sometimes in large ways they seem not to.  Peter and I, are still nurturing hope.

I am contemplating all of this while my man still sleeps and is snoring in the bed behind me.  When I first met him, we spent hours upon hours talking in the library about our families and our dreams.  I was impressed then with his consciousness, intellect, convictions, and integrity.  I was trying to re-gather myself after a un-wise decision to marry the father of my oldest son whom I had separated from and it was those conversations where I could hear myself out loud that I found courage. 

Here we are some 28 years later.  It is Father's Day and my heart if filled with gratitude for two of the men whose presence has added meaning to my life.

Here is an excerpt from a poem I wrote for him in 1995...

Ten

One season in ten years
I witnessed your tears twice.
First, at the beginning of the Harmattan
when the nine where executed.
Mora decay of my people;
It could have been ten
you whispered and swallowed

Second, in the middle of the Harmattan.
Christmas Day. The call went through.
The line clear. Your sister spoke.
Father passed away three hours ago.
Unexpected. Sudden. Distance.

From his bedroom window he was looking for you.
Stand at the gate of the compound he was looking for you.

Rare does death not bring regrets.

You manhood is not murky, your soul does not wane.
What you hold is what he has given you -- intense light.
I have see people unable to look you in the eyes,
who want your smile on your teeth instead of in your hear.
Benin masks of eternity reflects
your piercing gaze and sealed lips.
This of your father in you
needed to be here in Kentucky with me.

Happy Father's Day to the men who visit here.  Peace,

Passion, Enthusiasm, Coffee & Pie.

I'm sitting here this morning reading blogs on enthusiasm, drinking coffee from a Kimberly Moore design mug, and having a slice of derby-like pie for breakfast.

Thinking over what I'm enthused about as a 52 year old African American woman...and one of the things that makes me lose my sense of self in a good way, in a way that goes straight to "Spirit" is talking about the whats, whys, wherefores, hows of creating my art, your art, their art, our art, standing face to face, eyeball to eyeball with another person or group of people.  Another thing that jazzes me is to sit in wild long brainstorm sessions being creative. (This coffee is soooo good this morning) in a small group.  These are times when my spirit just lets loose and I can feel it instantly and it makes me feel immortal and free.  (does that sound dramatic?   but it is true and I love the feeling!).

I'm passionate about writing here, although my enthusiasm rises and falls.  Sometimes, I think I'll return to writing poetry...I've never left sitting on the edge looking at the poetic pens of others, but I can't figure out, no, maybe that isn't quite correct,...I'm a little unsettled by how absorbed I'd become with my passions and knowing how long my mind, spirit, body takes to travel from one to another and can't imagine a routine that wouldn't shut out family and friends and make me a true recluse or at best an introvert.  Let me explain further...when I'm at my studio, the idea of having a large warehouse live/art space is validated...when I'm looking at genealogy resources, it is an absorbing interest that one looses track of time (but can be made to be social able when doing oral interviews), writing poetry-a day can get lost drafting a line or stanza, etc., down time is spent reading books related to the aforementioned...and then one manages to squeeze in the physically sustaining needs and before I know it, I would be a happy recluse...although as a recluse I could skim on the physically sustaining needs, eh? Oh, and you know how time absorbing it is to learn some new software or technological hype (trying to figure out the rhythms of Google+). 

And in closing, I'll just share a small thing I'm really passionate about...comfortable shoes, shoes that love your feet...and my go to recommendation for the last 10 years or so has been Ecco shoes.

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.

 

 

 

 



 

Art therapy...

Slinging dye-paint around today felt so good!  Colour therapy at it's finest!  My only intent was to use up the last of the thickened dye.  I laid a piece of  wet soda-ash soaked cloth down and went at it until the cloth was pretty saturated then  I covered that piece with plastic and laid another piece of wet soda-ash soaked cloth down over the first one and slung dye-paint again. I did this 5 times and will leave them to batch at least til Saturday. 

When I got to the last of the dye-paint, the very last of it...I took a notion and brushed it on thick water colour paper.

Do you think I should roll it in newsprint and steam it? then give it a good rinse and hang to dry? The paper didn't receive any soda-ash but there is some residue of it in the dyes.  I left the paper hanging from the clothes pins like you see here.

I still have some more dye concentrate to use up and I think I'll just do low-water immersion and then get back to sewing for the month of June.

The Dead Do Talk

I started hunting around in junk stores/antique stores when I was in college and having a fairly rich personal legacy of family photos that my great grandmother taught me to value, it would pain me to see old photographs in these places...no one left to care for them, treasure them, or wonder about them.  When ever I came across old photos of African Americans I always felt a strong urge to rescue them.  My first encounter with this I've never forgotten.  I was a junior or sophomore in college and found a photo of 5 children, siblings, dated in the 1800's.  These African American children were born 1400 miles in the interior of West Africa.  They were children of African American missionaries.  The picture was 25 dollars which I had just gotten that morning from my mother to purchase a textbook.  I was really really torn.  I walked out of the store saddened but knowing I needed the textbook which I did purchase.  A few days later I had gotten paid and went back to the store only to be told that someone came in a few hours after I did that day and purchased the photo.  Although I've resisted buying most photos because I have wonderful old photos from my own family, that is the one that haunts me to this day. 

So a few days ago I see my favorite junk store posted some old photos on their fb page and I went with the intent of buying some old rusted bells and "looking" at the photo that I wanted...well after I saw it up close I knew she had to come home with me, but Tony, the store owner, was not willing to break up the set.  Everybody wants the Black woman he said but they go together, they were found together and you have to take the set for the full story, so I did.  And it did make sense and although I don't know yet if they will find themselves as part of my textile art or not, I did hang all 3 of them in the studio.  Take a look and overlook the shaky photography...

The one at the bottom has the last name "GRANT" and they were found by a mother and daughter in a family trunk with items over 100 years old.  They had not a clue as to who any of them were or even if they were family at all.

Fabrics of the Week

These are the 2 successes thus far...

this one is 2 sides of the same cloth

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.

Still Here

Today was my first day in the studio this week.  Since I couldn't recall from last week what my train of thought or intent I had for this dye session...I pulled out screens and printed. Me thinks today was my contribution to the slush pile.  I did learn that my thermofax screens need replacing.  Overall, I just could not gain control over the process today.

Fabrics from last week are in the washing machine as I type...hopefully when I dry and iron them, I'll recall what my intent for this round of fabric dyeing and hopefully will regain some sense of direction for tomorrow and Saturday.  I'll leave you with a poem by Langston Hughes...it speaks to how I'm feeling at this moment...

Still Here

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!

 

Marbled fabrics

The one on the left was taken with a camera phone, the image on the right is truer to colour....same with the 2nd image.  In the 2nd image is how it appeared on the right before I added another layer of marbling as seen on the left.

 

Colours are more intense then they appear...taken with phone camera.  These might possibly receive additional layers next time I marble.

High Steppin'

The last group of marbled fabrics are in the washing machine and today was devoted to cleaning up the marbling table and preparing to make it a dye table.  Dye concentrates were mixed and before I left today I sat out 2 quarts of print paste so when I return tomorrow I can roll right into it.  I did forget to wash my screens so I'll wait until next week to use them and will primarily stamp and make direct hand marks with the dyes.  I might even put my foot in it (African American colloquialism which translates to doing one's best, topping it off with one's best, taking the extra step, etc)

Mo will have 2 surgeries on her knee Wednesday...she inherited my father's knees, poor thing.  I don't think she has given thought to having/needing to give up her stiletto stomps...or at least the wisdom of doing so....my Mama always said you can wear cheap clothes but you can 't wear cheap shoes.  There is no substitute for a good shoe that supports your entire body and not just look good on you while you're standing still.  But mind you, when I was 23, I too loved my heels but I equally loved my earth shoes and Bass sandals.  At 52 I've totally given up the heels...yet, there is nothing like a solid, new and well worn earth shoe or "earthy" type shoe.  At 18 I was guilty of walking across campus in my my pointy toe stilettos but the more I studied feminism, the more self assured I became in walking (pun intended) away from anything designed to exploit my body in the name of pain.  Mo tries to convince me that today's mile high shoes do not hurt the feet when walking....yeah, if its to the mail box and back.

studio shoes

 



For the next few weeks, I'm going to suspend the weekly accountability and just "flow" with it.  We'll be pitching in to help Mo and the grand babies anyway we can after her surgery.  My time in the studio will be catch where catch can.

John 14:2

Celebrity sightings all over the city, but I am home after a long productive day.  The thought briefly rolled through my head to go out on Central Avenue (the main entrance for Churchill Downs) and hang a sign around my neck "buy my art"...you know I heard Langston Hughes sold his books from the trunk of his car at one time in his career.  Gotta love grass roots marketing eh?!  

But with that said, Archeology, (apologies for the poor photography)

is hanging in Churchill Down's new development, "The Mansion".  It can be seen on this video at the 40 second mark and again at a minute and a half in the background.  At the 42-3 second mark, another textile artist, Ramona Lindsey's work can be seen in the background on the right.  The pieces were selected from the walls of Kore Gallery and also included 10 pieces by resident artist Donald Cartwright.  The work will be there for 100 days.  Kudos to Churchill Downs for selecting art by local artists to enhance their space.

Today I was at the top of my game! I was up early before Peter left for work and decided to have him drop me off at the studio.  We are down to 1 car but I am giving praise and feeling grateful because the other car was totaled in a wreck 2 weeks ago and no injuries were reported.  He was coming home from work on a Friday and a mile from home when a young man ran into the back of a van and the van ran into the back of Peter and he had to slam his breaks to keep from ramming the car in front of him.  The young man was speeding and had a baby in the car but at the time of the accident no injuries of all involved were reported and for that our inconvenience is like water off a duck...no big deal.

But I was in the studio at 6:45 am, no, make that 6:45 AM!  take a peek at what I did inside my own mansion....

 

 

 

America

 I will take the above photo and draw some aspect of it 3-5 each week until I feel I can see enough to  begin it on cloth.  This is my first day and what I did was to outline shapes.  From here I'll add looking for changes in value.

I doodled feathers.  I finally have a quilt where I think feather quilting will be enhancing.  I've never quilted feathers other than practice.

And the below images are fabrics that I designed yesterday and today...

It is this last piece that it hit me why I love marbling...not just the process which is fickle but the out come...it achieves the same ethereal appearance that encaustic art has.  I've decided to let the notion of experimenting with encaustics go...(just not prudent) and let the marbling be my encaustics.