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.

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.

• EggNog with a knob of bourbon. (check)
• Persimmon cookies.  (check)
• Fabulous bottle of wine (Burrell School Pinot). (check)
• Yummy Mexican Posole served up by good friends. (check)
• Good Friends. (!!!! check)

This year also featured the irresistible and seemingly ubiquitous Noro striped scarf I knit as a gift.  

We had a grand time doing just as we pleased.

We’ve renamed the occasion to reflect our non-traditional approach, and now raise our glasses with smiles on our faces, and our most sincere wishes for health and happiness. 

 Happy Humbug everyone.

The most pedestrian plant emerges with a snowy white crown.

A birdhouse becomes a fairy castle or a monk’s high mountain sanctuary.

And a pile of stones aspires to be a work of modern art.

PS.  I fixed the photo links.  Sadly it meant reverting to an older version of Wordpress.  I’ll wait for 2.7 to right itself with a dot release.