It has been a long summer with lots of settling in, house repairs, and getting to know new people and a whole new area. My blog has suffered. I am celebrating the approach of fall with a renewed resolution to blog more consistently and I began by accepting an invitation to a Blog Hop from a new friend and fellow member of the Abstract Artists Group of New England, Ethel Hills. This hop requires that I answer four questions today and then nominate three more artists who will continue the process next Saturday by answering the questions on their blogs and nominating another three artists. And so the questions. . . .
1. What am I working on/writing?
Currently I am spending
much of my time on two series. I have always been intrigued by texture in art
and when I began to dye my own fabrics I increasingly chose techniques that produce
texture by manipulating the color values of the dyes or by printing on the dyed
fabric. And then I added a tactile element—texture produced by a combination of
scrunching and hand stitching, and I have been spending some time seeing where
this technique leads me.
I am also experimenting
with raw-edge applique sewn to the background with visible stitches using a
heavy thread like perle cotton. Although
the edges may fray, I like the way the fabric lies flat against the background
without the stiffness caused by a turned-under edge or a layer of fusing.
2. How does my work/writing differ from others in this genre?
As I was writing the
answer to the first question I realized that my two series were breaking with
quilting tradition that emphasizes avoiding wrinkles and frayed edges when
joining fabric. I am actively embracing both at the moment because I want to
let the fabric be fabric and see what happens. I find myself drawn to the wabi-sabi
point of view—one that delights in the beauty of the imperfect, the simple, the
natural, the ordinary. I am definitely
not alone in this preference but it does seem to set me apart from a great
number of textile artists. And my work
probably differs from others, no matter what technique or series I am pursuing, because
I am combining my own hand-dyed and/or printed fabric with my unique and
ever-changing vision of the world.
3. Why do I do what I do?
I grew up wandering the
back hills of Kentucky and the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River in
Iowa, spent a good chunk of my adulthood in the northcentral mountains of
Pennsylvania and now find myself in a city in New England with a five-acre pond
outside my studio window and the ocean ten minutes away. And the colors,
textures, shapes, and movement of the trees, water, animals, and skies that I
have known in all these areas influence my work and its recurring themes of
interconnectedness and change.
A number of years ago I
came across a quotation from Harold Thurman Whitman: ”Do not ask yourself what the world needs. Ask
yourself what makes you come alive and go and do that because the world needs
people who have come alive.” When I make art, I come alive.
4. How does my writing/working process work?
I sometimes begin by
putting an intriguing piece of fabric on a corner of my design wall and
leaving it there for a week or a month or more until I come up with a vision of
what to do with it. At that point I may
do a rough sketch or I may begin to build a composition with bits of trial
fabric that will ultimately be replaced with more carefully cut shapes.
But I also sometimes begin
with a sketch that may be totally abstract but more often is inspired by a natural
shape or pattern, a plant or an animal, or by a word (not a surprise, given my
English literature background) that I keep in my head as I work. The sketch
becomes a guide rather than a template as I make minor and major adjustments as
the piece takes shape.
Sometimes I will dye fabric
for a specific project but more often I will choose already dyed fabrics,
auditioning various hues and shades, always aware that the thread I use will
add more color, texture, and even line.
Thank you, Ethel, for inviting me to participate in this project and for giving my an excuse to think about what I am doing and why I am doing it and for giving me a way to learn more about some very talented artists. You may read her post here.
I’m an abstract landscape painter living and working in Hampton, NH. My studio is in an old factory building a couple of miles from the ocean. I came to art late in life, learning to draw so that I could make the simple line drawings necessary for traditional rug hooking. In that moment when I decided to learn how to draw, my life shifted. I fell in love with drawing and then painting and haven’t looked back since.
And now let me introduce you to two people worth knowing. I will announce the third artist later.
Frauke Schramm
Frauke Schramm has been my friend for a number of years and I am still amazed at what she can create with needle and thread. Her work has been in exhibits all over Europe.
I’m Frauke Schramm (also known as quilthexle). I live close to Stuttgart,
Germany. By day, I work as a teamleader (customer services) in a
book-distributing company. By night, I’m a textile artist (and sometimes, I try
to get some sleep !).
When I was a kid, I used to collect the scraps of my
mother's sewing projects (she sewed most of our clothes herself). I did
not know why I did this - but I loved cuddling them. During my studies I
was an avid knitter, but that came to an end while I wrote my Masters
Thesis. After I finished my education (I'm a trained bookseller and I
hold an M.A. in Political and Educational Sciences), I joined corporate
world. And I realized - I need something to balance all this brainwork.
So, I took a patchwork class - a LoneStar class, to be precise ;-))
That quilt ended in the bin, but my husband rescued it (it's still in my
house). Anyway, I was hooked. For quite a while, I was happy just to
play with fabrics and learning traditional techniques. Artsy elements
slowly turned up in my quilts. Around 2009 art quilting took over, at
least mostly. I enjoy working with my own hand-dyed fabrics as well as
with purchased fabric; recently, I stepped
away from the "cotton only" rule, and the variety of all the material
now available to me really excites me.
My central theme right now are opposites / contrasts - I love exploring them, and I have only scratched the surface so far !
Frauke Schramm's blog: http://www.quilthexle.blogspot.com/
Janis Doucette
Janis Doucette is a friend and fellow member of We Are Six, a group of art quilters living near Boston. She loves to play with surface design and I love to see what she comes up with. She currently has a piece in the Whistler Gallery in Lowell, MA.
I’m lucky – at this point in my life, I get to
work on whatever my heart desires! Most often, that means I'm working on some
form of textile art. Often, I’m printmaking or taking photographs, which are
frequently incorporated into fabric, literally or figuratively. I may also add paint to, or dye my own
fabric. I may add beads or various odd tidbits to a piece. Today, we have an
alluring array of commercial fabrics available and I also use them without
restraint.
Every day is an ongoing experiment in life where
I continue to observe, learn and grow.
Janis Doucette's blog: http://turtlemoonimpressions.wordpress.com/
Look for their posts next Saturday!
