Embroidered Collage

I am giving myself permission to create non-objective abstract works that have no direct relationship to the vision I've laid out in my artist's statement. 

I have been struggling against my own expectations and desires for my finished work.  I discovered my vision almost a year ago now and have attempted to live up to it, trying to capture a small slice of the layered and interrelated imagery and media that I imagine.  But when I went through my materials and sketches looking for the next piece to follow Kambaba Jasper I didn't really think about any of that. I just wanted to build up texture with small bits and develop patterning.

I am going to stop fighting this desire, which has been present in my art from the beginning.  Part of my objections have come from outside myself.  I remember reading somewhere that in the seventies fiber artists just explored the possibilites of their media and only in the nineties began to create art with meaning.  I know there is a continual discussion about how for art quilts to become more accepted as art they need to move away from being quilts made based on art principles and become art that happens to be in quilt form.  The idea in my head is that if art is based on an idea or an interpretation of an image, whether presented in an abstract, representational, or realistic format, that it means more than a piece of art that is based only on the materials.  I know that there are artists who paint about painting and paint about paint and so forth and do so successfully in terms of both acclaim and sales.  A good portion of that type of work appeals to me personally.  But I still struggle with the idea that it is something I can do without cheating somehow.

So I am adopting a self-help technique and giving myself permission.  I don't know if my work will change immediately or at all.  Ultimately, play with materials is still a step towards my overall goal.  Just the idea of allowing myself to make and market this type of art as legitimate relaxes me immensely. 

P.S.  I went to link to my artist's statement and found that I'd already modified it so that working with the interaction of materials was my current goal.  I started laughing.  I guess it just hadn't sunk into my subconscious yet.  I considered rewriting this post, but decided it has more value in this edited form.

I will be travelling until the 10th of February.  A little business and a little family with one day home in between.  I have enough to talk about stored up that there will still be regular posts on auto-publish, but I won't be able to check my email as regularly as usual.  I hope to have some sketches of North Carolina and of Las Vegas to show off when I return, plus some hand-stitching.  Sometimes I think I spend more time figuring out what artistic projects to pack than what clothes to pack!

During the January meeting of the Fiber Alliance we exchanged materials for a grab bag challenge.  Each of us had placed some fabrics and such into a gallon-sized food storage bag.  Our challenge is to make a piece of art from the materials and two thirds of its surface should be from the bag.  Most people will be making quilts.  I will be making a footstep.  The picture shows the contents of the bag that I received.

I am in love with the large piece of fabric.  The color gradation goes from one selvedge to the other and also has some variations across the length of the yard.  I'm also tempted by the Solvy, as water soluble stabilizers are not anything I've ever tried before.  I would have to go rev up my sewing machine to play with that material though.  I need to complete at least one more piece for exhibit and sale before I tackle the challenge, as those goals are more important to me, but I have time as this piece will not be due to its new owner until June 3. 

I added variations of cretan stitch to my sampler for the Take a Stitch Challenge, but I can't really claim I played with it.  I'm still stuck on what format I want to use for some looser explorations, a subject which is playing into some other things on my mind right now. 

The more unusual variations on my sampler are actually from the book Creative Stitches by Edith John published in the late sixties.  She did some pretty interesting things with stitch structure.  For example, in one cretan variation diagram she pulled the thread back and wrapped it around the previous three stitches and, in another she alternated three stitches horizontal, then three vertical, with a smooth transition between them.  I have another interesting book by her called New Stitches for Needlecraft, which focuses on fewer stitches in even more unusual variations.  Both are Dover Editions.

I checked this book out of the library on a whim to see what types of things were going into this contemporary introduction.  I enjoyed it overall, but I was glad that I hadn't purchased it, as it didn't add anything to my shelves of needlework books, but it might be a good fit for someone else.  I was pleasantly surprised by how comprehensive it was for such a slim volume.    It meets both its goals of introducing embroidery to the beginner and introducing a different approach to the more experienced stitcher.  The projects are rather quirky.

The book is full of text, which carefully details the steps for each project and a substantial amount of information about the technique or side-bar subject.  These were all well-written, but a bit of a departure from many other recent needlework books that I've seen that rely heavily on color photographs.  There were both descriptive and decorative pictures, certainly, but to get the most out of the book you need to read each word of the text.

The author, Melinda Barta, is also the assistant editor of Piecework magazine, which I've been enjoying reading for the last few years.  It focuses primarily on articles about historic and ethnic needlework and fiber crafts but also includes patterns that update those techniques into something a modern stitcher or knitter or such can follow and use.

It's still a thrill to see my art hanging on the wall as part of an exhibit.  I imagine it always will be.  I went to the opening reception for the MCGOPA "World of the Professional Artist" show yesterday evening.  It was less well attended than the Mixed Media Show had been last year, but apparently that's normal.  I chatted with a number of other artists that attended, mostly about technique and "I like your work."  Name tags are wonderfully useful.  So it was a nice way to pass an hour or so.

But the primary thing I brought away from the show was frustration!  I want my work to look better, to be better.  I want to be able to reach what I imagine in my head.  I'm not quite sure why this event triggered this wave of feeling, it certainly didn't come from anybody outside of me, but I spent the ride home thinking furiously about mostly nothing.  I know that it's time and practice and experiment and that I have the tools in place to make this journey.  But it's still frustrating.