I needed some instant gratification of the fabric kind today. So before sitting down at the sewing machine, I took a big scrap of Kona Black Fabric from my current quilt project out to the picnic table in the back yard. I put on some rubber gloves. I put down a piece of plastic to protect the table.Then I went to town with a bottle of SoftScrub and a foam brush.

Yummy orange and reddish brown color in minutes.  (More reddish than these photos show.) When finished, I plunged the fabric into a bucket of vinegar water to neutralize the bleach. A quick bucket wash and ironed dry.

I think it took longer to photograph the fabric than to create it.

Conversational Composition Stage Six

You can read about my design contributions to Terry Jarrard-Dimond’s Compositional Conversation project over here on Terry’s blog today.  The photo above is the “final composition” I mailed off to Fulvia Luciano last Tuesday. Rather than pile-on some additional fabric figures, I ended up really thinking about the formal elements of the composition, and how I might use the existing elements to create support and structure for the eight artists to come.  I found it very difficult not to “resolve” the design, and thus made imperfection and lack of resolution one of my goals.  Not as easy as it sounds.  I hope at least I contributed some structure to the ground.  We’ll see if any of this remains eight weeks down the road.

My experience as an artist participant in the Compositional Conversation project has proven to be much richer than I had expected at the onset of the project.  The hands-on design part was fun of course.  But reading Terry’s blog with the artists’ excellent descriptions of their design processes, conversing with artists and readers via the comments, and having e-mail access to this talented group have given me so much to think about. Great food to bring into the studio and feed my art life.

We recently added a new cat to our household as a companion to our favorite tabby.  This full grown little girl is tiny, under six pounds.  She is seen here on a dozy afternoon with a freshly harvested GIANT garden zucchini.  (Photo taken by my spouse). The two cats seem to be getting along well, playing together with increasing frequency, and recently spotted sleeping on opposite sides of a king sized bed.  No doubt they sleep with one eye open.

My husband has a collection of names he collects for our cats.  Some of them have tracked my artistic journey and love of all things fiber.  Contenders include “Thrum” and “Heddle” from my days as a weaver.  But this little girl was christened with a reference to a more current obsession, “Bernina”.  Meet Bernina, here shown exploring my studio.

A nicely packaged bundle arrived in the mail for me yesterday containing something special. This week it is my turn in the fantastic group art project, Compositional Conversation.  Compositional Conversation is the brain-child of Terry Jarrard-Dimond, an award winning artist who creates moving and muscular textile constructions in her South Carolina studio. Terry blogs about her life as an artist here.

I met Terry a few years back in Ohio at Nancy Crow’s Art Barn.  Terry was downstairs doing a master class/independent study thing with Kathy Loomis under Nancy Crow’s brilliant and exacting eye.  Meanwhile I was upstairs with 19 other students trying to get my head wrapped around the notion of line, and shape and gesture in Nancy’s week long Curves and Circles class. Having the two master quilters working in the Barn was amazing.  And I think it had the effect of raising everybody’s game that week.  Some wonderful work was created in an extremely special environment.  I have stayed in touch with Terry and several of the other artists I met that week, and gleefully celebrate from afar their many artistic accomplishments since our first introduction. Several of these artists are taking part of Compositional Conversation.

The participating artists are: Rebecca Howdeshell, Beth Carney, Shelley Baird, Gayle Vickery Pritchard , Judi Hurwitt, Leslie Bixel, Fulvia Luciano, Marcia DeCamp, Marina Kamenskaya, Paula Swett, Valerie Goodwin, Kathy Loomis, Leslie Riley, and Terry Jarrard-Dimond.

Terry set some ground rules for the project, and started it off by choosing a background and adding an element to the composition.  The composition then goes to spend a week with each artist who will shape the composition in some way. Each week Terry documents the conversation between the artists, and posts photos of the current state of the work, thoughts and process notes from that week’s artist, along with a mini artist’s profile. We are on week 5 now, and I have too say it has been not only fun, but incredibly eye-opening to get a view into the design approaches of these working artists.  Read all about Compositional Conversation on its very own blog. The project will continue into November of this year.

Meet Bette.  Bette Bernina.  Otherwise known as my brand new Bernina 820 sewing machine computer.  I don’t usually name inanimate objects.  But this one seems to have a Bette Davis, take no prisoners sort of way about her.  Plus I watch a lot of old movies on TCM while sewing.

Did I mention I’m in love?   And that my dear spouse is off the hook for birthday and anniversary presents for quite some time? I met her at the California State Fair in Sacramento.  It was love at first sight. That long, lovely 12″ arm, that industrial hook, the super sized bobbin, the dual feed…..  How could I resist?

We are still getting to know each other, Bette and I.  But now that I have the threading/tension issues in check thanks to this helpful post, things are going very well.  It’s a fast machine, and I like that.  I’ve been doing a little piecing and experimenting with decorative stitches that I am unlikely to ever use again. Thought I would start slow. Next chance I get I plan to layer up one of the many finished quilt tops that I have hanging around the studio, and put some pedal to the metal.  Vroom.

Fire on the Mountain

The Wanderer. Success through smallness.
Perseverance brings good fortune
To the wanderer.

A week ago, we were lying outside trying to get our fill of a spectacular meteor shower, when our neighbor, Bill, phoned to say someone had reported seeing a fire on our mountain.  We ran around with flashlights in our fists and our noses in the air searching for a sign of smoke.  Eventually a handful of neighbors spontaneously gathered at the end of our long driveway, all noses pointed west.  Every once in a while there was a whiff of smoke. Nothing much, just a touch of autumn in the air.

We ventured up the hill to stand on yet another neighbor’s new wood deck and look out towards the ocean, to Bonny Doon, where a wildfire was shooting orange flames so high into the sky that you could almost feel the heat from 20 some miles away.  It was quite an image.

The fire on our mountain was a false alarm, but the fire on theirs was quite real.  That fire, known to the media as “The Lockheed Fire”, is still buring, one week later.  Though today was the first without the smell of smoke in the air, and tonight we can sleep with the windows wide open to the nightime forest sounds. Life returns to normal at our mountain top home.

“Fire on the Mountain”.  The phrase kept surfacing in moments of private thought. Then I remembered it the hexegram from “The I Ching: Book of changes”.  A book I explored decades ago when searching for some signposts to the path before me.

“Fire on the Mountain.  The Wanderer.  Success through smallness.  Perseverence brings success.”

I have a glimpse of the wisdom of this now.

It is the artists life.

A bit of inspiration, fire in the belly.  A bit of imagination, the mind wanders from idea to idea, color, content, form, function, concept.  The jumping off place. Then the work.  One step at a time. Line by line. Cut by cut. Stitch by stitch. The smallness of it.  The tedium.  The being present. The letting go.  Every moment leading to something.  Through perseverance.  Success.

Fire on the mountain.  A reminder to be grateful for what I have.  Fire on the Mountain.  A reminder that the journey of life is long, and that its course is completed with many, many small steps.