What's Going On?

I have been neglecting this blog and neglecting my studio.  I have maintained patience with myself but not I think it is time I openly explore why.  It is not as if I'm given up on "making"...oh no!  I have turned into an obsessed crochet (again) but this time it is even more compelling than in 2014.  When I first started buying yarn way back when, it was with the intent of couching it on my quilts because I love me some visual texture and that process.  I also thought I would use it to machine felt which I haven't done much of.  All my yarn fit into an over the door shoe holder and it has been sufficient...until now.  My favorite yarn to use is lace weight and I love making shawls and am ready to dive into making sweaters which calls for tons and tons of yarn per sweater.  My yarn is just beginning to spill over and I'm having to think about "organization".  I want a full blown stash...I can't afford to do it, but I want one...like a wall of yarn...but I'm in the basement (my dining room does remain empty however) and I wonder if my yarn would me a nice warm spot for spiders.

Have I given up on fabric and mixed media quilting?  Heck no!  Other than the collaborative piece (see a few posts down) I have not done much or really enough to say I'm doing anything at all.  I started making a piece I had done a study of and wanted to enlarge and designed it with fussy cut diamonds on the bottom....when I say they are a PAIN IN MY ASS! to sew, I can't get closer to the truth!  I have about nine put together of a nearly 30 something total.  I've consulted other folks, YouTube, books...it just isn't clicking how to sew them right the first time without getting them uneven...I'm sewing on the bias too! Good lord!  The thought of changing the design has entered my mind, but I can't just now as I still feel it is the right design for the overall quilt.  Soooo, I've done nothing.  Nothing.

I was drawing faces...and I just stopped going downstairs to do it.  My 500 coloured pencils where coming off the wall so I took them all down and not sure where to "organize" them so they are all just thrown in box until I can figure something out.  I didn't want to permanently attach the pencil holders in place so I used double sided tape...they held up for a long while before they began to drop off the wall.  It always happened overnight...so I'd go downstairs the next day and have to find and pick up at least 25 pencils off the floor.  Then my drawer on my drawing desk broke completely off the desk...then looking at the drawer I was getting ideas of how it could be used in an assemblage...that overwhelmed me and I have not been back to the basement since...about 2 weeks ago at least.  And I've already mentioned it was cold even with running space heaters...and the lighting is poor...I have 4 Ott lights, 1 overhead shop light, and 3 spot lights...and the iron doesn't even have to be on to trip the breakers.  I have been thinking I'll do some mono-printing on cloth, but it will be outside.  I wish I could chalk it up to remnant effect of winter leaving me cranky and irritable, and maybe that is some part of my avoidance...who knows....

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I always have at least 2 projects going on the hooks.  I'm on a mission.  No, really...I am on a mission and each piece is an intended gift for someone.  I have a list, a fairly long list that I want to tackle so I can go on to make pieces for myself.  I wake up to crochet and before I know it the day has filled itself with hooks and yarns.  If I can't sleep in the middle of the night, I crochet.  I mentally project if I'm going to begin to create my own patterns; sometimes I ask the question of how can crochet and quilting be married; I'm considering getting customized labels for my finished projects; I wonder if I should make enough items to set up booths at local craft shows; and then I tell myself, "lets keep this purely a hobby".   If you're on Ravelry, I'm Karoda2, look me up!

My next several posts will probably involve continued exploration of why I'm avoiding my studio.  Feel free to share your own issues with studio avoidance and how you resolved it.

2nd Biennial Exhibit of African American Women Artist, 2016

Me at opening night at the 2nd Biennial Exhibit of African American Women Artist.  I"m standing by one of the two pieces I have in the show.

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

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.

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.

Once Again with Joy!

YES! YES! YES!  The new studio setup is functional!

I'm not even sure what to say here...life...life...shaking my head.  We began moving into this house back in January.  Life hasn't been typical, but what is typical really?  Living is process and this year has been devoted to the process of healing fro cancer; two rounds of chemo, at least 5 hospital stays for lung inections, lumpectomy, and now I'm winding it to a close with radiation.

I encircled myself with a few close friends on and off line and family.  I had some mighty prayer warriors and continue to have on both sides of the ocean.  My focus has solely been keeping my joy and my concentration has been limited, unable to read for long or process deeply beyond what was immediately before me.  Here is my  reading lists:  Butterfly Blessings by E. Conwill-Majozo; Cell-Level Healing: The Bridge from Soul to Cell by J. Whiteley Hawkes; Holy Bible; God Bless the Child by T. Morrison; and a scattering of poems.  My hands go up in surrender and praise to God.

Creating anything has only come to me in dreams.  I've done NOTHING all year until a few days ago.  I started methodically working through Mixed Media Potraits by P. Carriker

Today I got as far as turning on Yahnome (a new nickname for my sewing machine, Yah Know Me which is also a Janome.)  Working on my nerves to actually get started.  In closing, (imagine Don Cornelius as me)  Peace, Love, and Joy (Soul is a given, winking at ya!)

Home based studio

It took a long while for the water proofing and walls to be restored on the basement but last week it was finished. Now all that is left is for me to get the studio out of storage. The first available I can rent a truck and get someone to help Ade to move it all is the first Saturday in May....I live in Louisville and that is a major party weekend (week) due to Derby, so if that is not possible, I'm looking at mid-May. So we shall see, we shall see.  Oh, the name change to my blog represents the new arrangement and set-up.  Hopefully Facebook will cooperate and eventually let me change the name to my page.