Category Archives: Process

Potluck

The past several weeks have been a bit of a smorgasbord of projects. Through them all, I can’t help but think I’ve been subconsciously influenced by our reawakened garden which, especially during this glorious month of June, has visually been like a rich shot of espresso after months of presenting as the equivalent of a weak cup of chamomile tea.

©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye on silk A thank you gift for @gollyokate, whose Catch-and-Release Program contributed, via her art, to feeding hungry families, maintaining community safety nets and helping the planet.

Now that our show Tucked In: Resilience in Small Moments is closing at the Gruppe Gallery on the 19th (there’s still time to visit this weekend if you haven’t already!), I can move beyond the writing and back-end administrative duties associated with it to dip into a bit of artistic free-styling.

In process ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye and embroidery on silk This avian fellow was originally meant to be a chickadee, but took a turn toward a more vivid imaginary specimen after reading The Feather Thief and as color returned to our yard.

I look at our beloved perennials bursting back to life, each day’s view a bit different from the one before as they grow and bloom in a constant state of evolution, and I’m inspired. I think I’ll try to relax into that frame of mind in the studio for the next couple of months and see where it leads me.

Front Garden

Look Into the (Working) Mind of an Artist

First things first:
This week marks the opening of Transitions at Axel’s Gallery in Waterbury, VT. This show explores change – through both material and concept, as seen through the eyes and hands of members of the Vermont chapter of the Surface Design Association. It runs through the end of the month.

Ulysses’ Wave ©2014 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye, paint and embroidery on silk, 19″H x 38″W x 2.25″D. My piece in the show is a meditation on how so often life mimics nature. How we see change coming from a distance, feel we are prepared, but are somehow shocked when it arrives. Strips of raw silk, hand-dyed to gradually transition from bright green to a subdued neutral, abruptly end in blue. Over-dyed patterns, created via stitched-resist and further enhanced with embroidery and paint, reinforce a sense of continuity. They roil and swell, not unlike a massive wave that, despite seeing it coming, still takes your breath away as it crashes into you. Read more about the creation and concept behind this piece, in real time.

I’ll be at the Artist Reception Saturday, April 9th, 4-6pm. Please join us!

Transitions Post Card

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Now for our regularly scheduled programming…
I owe a debt of gratitude to the friend who mentioned last month that she was reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci. When the book first came out in 2017, I made a mental note to add it to my TBR list in anticipation of the time when demand at the library would calm down. But of course I forgot. Thanks to her recent reminder, I finally followed through.

It was a fascinating read.
While no one would ever question Leonardo’s genius, Isaacson uncovers just how far-reaching and fascinating his mind truly was as he balanced art with science. One reviewer of the book alluded to how fans of traditional biographies might take issue with the heavy emphasis on art history, Renaissance Italy and Isaacson’s focus on painting and other artistic techniques over a dissection of Leonardo’s personal life. But that criticism never occurred to me; I think the author had the proportion of one to the other exactly right.

It’s true, this book concentrates more on Leonardo’s creativity and his work than on the finer details of his personality. But even so, Isaacson includes more than enough information about Leonardo as an individual to give one a healthy sense of him as a person, what was important to him and how his personality affected his outlook and, in turn, his work.

A page from Leonardo’s notebooks, with illustrations and notations about the embryology of the human fetus.

In the final chapter, the reader is offered a compilation list of 20 “lessons” encapsulating Leonardo’s unparalleled creativity, with the suggestion that they are skills we too can access. I’m paraphrasing several below which struck me as particularly worth passing on.

Be relentlessly curious
Go down rabbit holes – drill down for the pure joy of geeking-out.
Procrastinate (gather facts and let them simmer) – creativity requires time for ideas to marinate and for intuitions to gel
Collaborate. Innovation is a team sport; creativity is a collaborative endeavor
Take notes on paper. Leonardo’s notebooks are still around to astonish us

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It is a huge bonus that Isaacson’s biography contains plenty of accompanying illustrations of Leonardo’s drawings, paintings and pages from his notebooks — all of which provide a fuller glimpse into the way he kept track of and teased out ideas. With that in mind, if you’re able, please make a trip to the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro to catch their current exhibition: Frank Woods Minor Works.

Three self-portraits ©Frank Woods

The appellation of “minor” is somewhat misleading; there is nothing minor about Frank’s work. I was thrilled and inspired to see an exhibit of working drawings and sketches that, while perhaps initially created as a platform upon which larger work would be built, have much to say in their own right. It’s always a privilege to get a feeling for an artist’s process and to have a bit of access into how s/he works through ideas. Having such a window into an artist’s mind – especially one whose work I respect as much as Frank’s – or Leonardo’s for that matter – is a gift indeed.

This image of developmental sketches, next to the final piece that evolved from them, shows my personal approach to working drawings. I, too, maintain a notebook/sketchbook to keep track of fleeting ideas as they occur to me and to record notes from all sorts of sources: meetings, reading, workshops, etc. It’s helpful to have everything in one place and I definitely prefer analog to digital. FYI: I’m a big fan of Dingbats Eco-Friendly Notebooks ; there are a variety of options available. Snow Moon, ©2021 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye and embroidery on silk with foraged branches, 18.5″H x 9″W x 7.5″D, Private Collection. Photo: Paul Rogers Photography

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Last, but not least – apologies for the repeat blog delivery a week ago. I definitely don’t want to gum up your inbox. Without straying too far into TMI territory, let’s just say MailChimp automatic delivery has been something of a challenge lately.

As I write this, my fingers are crossed that the issue is now fixed. But I won’t know for sure until after this post’s scheduled delivery time (Friday @ 4:00am ET). Meanwhile, your patience is and has been greatly appreciated.

Art Stew

A little of this and a little of that – in one big stew for you this week.
First, a story…

The first year my husband and I were married, we moved from one coast to the other and I took a drawing class at the local community college to get my bearings in a new state and town. In class, I became friends with a woman who was then probably about the age I am now. She was very warm and smart and, since she loved art as much as I did, we had much to talk about. She had a relatively thick accent and before long shared with me that when she was a child, she and her family had escaped from the Nazi invasion of Ukraine.

Aldona’s Amber

The school year ended and soon after so did my husband’s internship. As we prepared to move back across the country, Aldona gave me this amber necklace in parting. It was a special gesture of friendship and all the more meaningful as she said it had come from her homeland. It was a piece of her.

Over the last couple of weeks, as I’ve anxiously watched Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, her gift has taken on even deeper meaning. I look at the hardened gems of amber in this necklace and think what an apt and sadly beautiful metaphor it is for the strength, resilience and resolve the people of Ukraine are exhibiting in the face of Putin’s threat to their sovereignty and their lives. I never dreamt this necklace would carry such significance beyond the memory of a friend from a specific time and place, but it certainly does.

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On a less somber note:
Except for framing, the piece I’ve been working on for the past 8 weeks is now complete. Once the portrait was finished, I decided to add the “x” purely as a design solution, not with any particular meaning in mind. It grounds the head so that it doesn’t appear to be just floating in space — an effect that had been amplified by the shibori-dyed background. ‘Head in the clouds’ was my working title for much of the process as it described her translucence as she took form. But now, with the added element of the “x”, Rooted in Dreams seems more appropriate.

Shopping Tip:
I recently learned about Swanson’s Fabrics in Turners Falls, MA from artist Cari Clement. It’s the kind of place anyone who works with textiles should know about. The shop’s mission is to offer affordable materials and sewing supplies while simultaneously aiding/encouraging sewing enthusiasts to release (or at least reduce) their overflowing stashes. With the added bonus of keeping all that extra fabric out of the landfill, Swanson’s is the definition of a win-win-win enterprise.

And finally…
With Daylight Savings starting this weekend, along with the recent spate of sap-running days, Winter has begun the first verses of its swan song. But before it fully releases its grasp (another 8-15″ possible on Saturday!), immerse yourself in a final taste of snow and ice at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod’s online exhibit “Winter Magic”. My piece Floe is included.

Floe, detail ©2015 Elizabeth Fram, Dye, Paint and Embroidery on Silk, 12 x 12 inches. Inspired by the pared down beauty of the winter landscape, this and its companion piece ,”Crystallized”, were meant to portray the essence of the season rather than an actual place. Read about the genesis of their creation in the post February’s Self-Restraint.

The following haiku, from another long-ago post on these two wintery pieces, bears repeating

Seamstress
Long needles of ice
Stitch the open water up
On a winter pond.

The Secret Treasures of Pattern

I have been thinking a lot about the entity of pattern these past two weeks.
Mostly, that is because of this new piece I’m working on and my ongoing exploration of combining embroidery with an assortment of resist dye techniques, but it’s also due to a talk I listened to during the recent Surface Design Association online conference.

I left you last time having just completed the white-on-white embroidery of this piece. Look back to that post to refresh your memory as to where things stood at that point. It took me some time to decide how to dye this piece in the next step. Unfortunately, too many layers of material prevented the dye from seeping throughout as much as I had hoped, so the only answer was to take a second pass with a new layer of dye, creating an additional pattern. The blue grid you see here was drawn as a water-soluble guideline for the stitches that would be the basis for that design.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘pattern’ as something that is regular and repeated within the context of design, behavior, or the way in which something happens. It also pairs the idea of pattern/design with the word decorative, a much-too superficial viewpoint, if you ask me.

Once the stitches were in place and tightly drawn up, the whole piece was dipped in dye. You have to appreciate unexpected amusements along the way …doesn’t this look like a brain?

During the SDA panel discussion mentioned above, the artist Chandra D. Cox opened the door to thinking about pattern in different and more consequential terms: as a means for expressing identity.

Chandra D. Cox, Ashanti, 2003. Acrylic on wood, 72 x 18 x 5 inches. Photo: Michael Zirkle. Reference: Surfacedesign.org I find the pieces in this series incredibly moving. In her statement, Cox writes: “The concept behind these painted structures is meant to symbolize the end of one culture and the beginning of another…The forms are three dimensional, minimalist and ubiquitous. The silhouette recalls a “shotgun house,” a style of southern vernacular architecture with cultural roots tracing from Africa to the Caribbean and American soil…The portals placed on their sides suggest ships and allude to ‘the middle passage of human cargo’. The center is open representing a doorway. A narrow aperture recalls the arrow loops of a castle, through which, emaciated from starvation, newly enslaved Africans were forced into the belly of awaiting ships. This entryway becomes the site and repository of a history and memory, the threshold to a new beginning.” Excerpted from First Person: “I Remember Where I Come From”, by Chandra D. Cox, Surface Design Journal Winter 2021, pg 44 & 45.

In her series “The Doors of No Return – I Remember Where I Come From” Cox employs a variety of traditional African patterns to reference and pay homage to her ancestors. She writes: “The pattern designs (I use) serve as both aesthetic adornment and an emblem for African textiles as conveyers of identities and secret messages”. She goes on to note that “This ancient cultural practice of messaging through pattern (has) withstood centuries of enslavement by adapting and transmuting the encoding”. (Think of the quilts that were used to covertly point the way on the Underground Railroad). She further acknowledges adaptations of pattern as present-day signifiers of identity and territory in urban culture.

I’m much happier now that there is pattern covering the whole piece.

Considering that pattern is ubiquitous, I am fascinated by the deeper perspective of it existing beyond embellishment. I’d love to learn more about it as a marker of identity. If you are aware of any books, articles or links on the subject, please let me know. Examples that most readily come to mind include Scottish tartans and the knitted patterns worn by the fisherman of the Aran Islands, but there must be innumerable other instances.

Bringing the image to life. These very first steps are a chance to begin to play with color in tandem with the patterns of the background dye and the original embroidery.

Meanwhile, the Shibori patterns I use in my work are all adaptations and appropriations of the discoveries and artistry of Japanese masters. In that light, I’m interested to learn more about the patterns of my English ancestry, perhaps discovering a well to draw from in the future. What is there to uncover about the identities Anglo-Saxon designs portray beyond, say, the wealth (or lack thereof) expressed through the materials used to create them? Such an interesting subject.

White-on-White

It felt great this past week to get back to my embroidery frame and to begin a new stitched portrait. I had been casting around in the studio wondering who or what would be my next subject when, as so often happens, the answer appeared out of nowhere.

I start each piece by drawing the image directly on the silk. For those of you who are interested in such things, this is by far the best water soluble pen I have ever used. Other brands tend to dry out very quickly, but this one is going strong after almost a year. Part of this may be because the top snaps on quite tightly.

In an email from one of the many art organizations that regularly add to my inbox, I stumbled upon one artist’s brilliant observation in response to a general request for favorite art business lessons from 2021: what you create is “just the beginning”. On the surface that sounds so basic it’s almost silly, but when you stop to think about it, it’s pure gold.

This past week I have been making my way through the initial stage of the process: stitching the image with white silk thread on un-dyed raw silk. I tend to keep adding guidelines with the erasable pen as I go along. They act as a directional guide for the stitches, helping me to better describe the form I’m trying to represent.

She went on to clarify what a game-changer it was to realize that each piece she makes isn’t necessarily a one-off, merely to be archived, but rather just the first step in a continuum that builds upon itself.

In other words, pretty much everything we make creates a foothold for something else that will come later. In this instance, it was like a lightening bolt to realize that my quest for a subject was right here in my studio. I have a stack of pre-covid life drawings to pull from for this and maybe other portraits.

A variation in stitches distinguishes the hair from the facial features.

Whether sourcing drawings in my sketchbook, a particular stitch or dyeing technique used in the past, or some novel approach to layering various media together, every piece I make contributes something to my “toolbox” that I can reference in the future.

With the blue ink removed, the piece becomes a study in textures. The sheen of the silk thread is an important element that allows those textures to stand out. The next step will be to overlap the image with a dyed pattern. Come back in 2 weeks to see the progression.

The bottom line is none of the work we make exists in isolation, in fact, we just keep adding to our limitless creative bank accounts. And the beauty of that fact is they are always available to draw from when needed.

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Opening this week at Studio Place Arts: A world of portraits by 30 different artists, including yours truly.

Face It
January 26 – March 5, 2022
Studio Place Arts
201 N. Main Street
Barre, VT 05641

Gallery Hours: Wed – Fri: 11:30am – 5pm, Sat:11:30am – 4pm
Art Social: Saturday, February 19, 3:30 – 5pm (masks required) …..Hope to see you there!

Time for Regrouping

You gotta love a sense of completion!

For the past several weeks I’ve been chipping away at a watercolor group portrait commission that came out of the blue. Best done in steady, measured sessions, it has been the perfect mix of challenge and, in the end, satisfaction. Now that it is en route to its new owner, I’m relieved, excited and frankly a bit spent.
I’m sorry not to be able to share pictures with you here – at least for a while – as it’s meant to be a Christmas surprise.

But what I can share with you is the color test sheet I used along the way. It’s not exactly a thing of beauty but it still has a certain charm. If the paper hadn’t already had something on the back I would have squared it up and used it for the note I include when sending a piece off to its new owner. I guess that’s an idea I’ll have to remember for the future.

Now that the painting is out of the studio, I’ve been working around the edges of other business-y chores while getting back up to speed. And frankly, I’m glad for a bit of a break. For the most part I’ve been becoming reacquainted with my mat cutter, submitting to a couple of shows, and starting the planning process for 2022. Did you realize that there are only 6 weeks left this year?

©2021 Elizabeth Fram Walnut ink on paper, 5 x 8 inches While Quinn may be the one who’s actually logging the zzzz’s, taking some time with my sketchbook makes for a relaxing and satisfying mid-day break from the computer for me.

I know this is not the stuff of which inspiring posts are written, but I think it’s worth sharing all the same. There is much that goes on “behind-the-curtain” in any studio — necessary tasks that aren’t glamorous, but which need regular time and attention and are just as crucial as the drawing and the stitching. Plus, I think it’s important to recognize how necessary it can be to regroup before jumping back into the making again.

See this for more resources on artistic business practices.

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While I haven’t had much time to explore it yet, Sarah Homfray’s YouTube embroidery channel looks like a wonderful place to learn — whether you are a beginner or an expert.

Testing, 1-2-3

The thing about Shibori is it can be both mentally invigorating and relaxing, often at the same time. I’ve been looking forward to this week’s work, knowing I’d have the stimulation of a puzzle paired with the soothing calm of stitching row upon repetitive row of running stitches.

Quick notations capture possibilities and remind me of fleeting ideas

In teasing out an approach for the dyed background of my “letters from home”, I’ve thought of plenty of possibilities. The overall goal is to find an idea that is generally repeatable, yet with enough elbow room for variations that will allow each piece to hold its own among the others in the series.

I keep even the smallest amounts of dye on hand so that I can make mini-samples on the fly. For the process of Ori-nui, the cloth is folded and stitches are made parallel and close to the fold. It’s a good way to achieve definition. I felt the stitches I’d made in this sample were too far from the fold, so I adjusted that distance in my final, full-scale sample.

I also have to keep in mind how the embroidery-to-be will fit, so that it doesn’t become lost against the color and pattern of its dyed background.

Once I get to the stage of sewing the resist stitching, I can settle in and relax. Where to stitch, what direction those stitches will take, and where the knots will be placed have all been decided. So there’s nothing to do at this point but listen to a book or podcast and get to work.

It’s all well and good to jot down options in a sketchbook, but it isn’t until the needle actually pierces the cloth that reality sets in and decisions/questions begin to crop up in earnest. Should the striations of pattern all go in the same direction – or perhaps oppose each other? How best to keep a crisp line between areas of pattern and open spaces of dye? Can I balance those two while keeping in mind that the third crucial element of the embroidered imagery will be added later?

With the stitching complete, the fabric is ready to soak and then all the threads will have to be drawn up tightly and knotted before beginning the dye process.

An example of the many things to think about: an often overlooked characteristic of Mokume stitching is that even the point where one chooses to begin a row of stitching can impact the final appearance. I am quite fond of the little white dots left un-dyed by the knots at the end of my stitching thread, so I try to work out ways to incorporate them that will enhance the piece without distraction. It’s worth noting that beyond contributing added visual “zip” for those who look closely, those tiny spots are also a reminder that this process is very much hand-made.

Admittedly they are very subtle, but I think the marks left by the knots at the end of my thread elevate the pattern as a whole, so I try not to hide them if possible.

Last but not least, at this early stage everything must be worked within a pre-determined finished size to accommodate framing.
So yes, lots to think about and I have my work cut out for me. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

And there you have it – the finished, dyed piece. The dye came out a bit like the Northern Lights, don’t you think?

If I go with a 12 x 12 inch final dimension as originally planned, this is about where it’ll end up.

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Most of our fall yard chores are now complete, crowned, as always, by the all-important planting and securing of the garlic under its snug winter cover of leaves and burlap.
Time to get ready for garden dreaming in hibernation season by turning to books. After reading the article I mentioned in my last post, I picked up David Culp’s The Layered Garden from the library for his ideas on how to bridge the seasons in your garden. My favorite example of this idea is Jack Lenor Larsen’s Red Garden at the Longhouse Reserve.

I have a beautiful red twig dogwood and tend to leave areas of echinacea and bee balm for visual interest against the snow (and any late foraging birds). But I wonder what other ideas Culp might have. I was rewarded this morning, waking up to a frosted landscape that reminded me just how lovely every season can be.

Frost

Small Plates

To me, the half the fun of tapas – or a pre-Covid cocktail party with lots of different appetizers – is the variety of small plates one can sample. Most weeks, my time in the studio mirrors that approach – a little bit of this and a little bit of that filling up the hours. In that spirit, here are a few so-called “tastes” of what’s been swimming in my head these past couple of weeks.

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First, my big news is that the Fall Issue of the Surface Design Journal is now out. Every autumn SDA publishes an International Exhibition in Print. This year’s show, “From Confrontation to Catharsis,” feels both relatable and personal. The diverse scope of work exhibited addresses many of the overwhelming challenges of 2020. As I read each artist’s statement, the word that often comes to mind is “fragile”. So much of the work is a commentary on fragility: of our systems, our planet, our connections, our history, and even our human-ness.

SDA Journal Page

However, in viewing the show, one can’t help but also be reminded that there is empowerment and strength in expression, and as such there is an underlying sense of hope that resides with these works.
I am gratified and honored that “Until the Bitterness Passes”, one of my shibori houses from last year, was selected to be included.

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It’s Inktober!
While I haven’t followed every prompt set out this year, I have enjoyed interpreting of a handful of them. Here are just a few.

Another perk of the project is it’s great for filling up those last few straggling pages in one’s sketchbooks.

I have 4 different colors of ink on hand and Inktober has been an opportunity to experiment with them — supplementing with a tiny bit of watercolor when a different color is needed.

It also gave me an excuse to go ahead and purchase my new favorite under-$10 art supply (does one really need an excuse to buy art supplies?): a porcelain petal palette. It’s a great tool for mixing numerous values of ink all at once.

Porcelain Petal Palette

Oh, and speaking of cheap supplies, check out my new water jug! It’s a creamer that I found and snapped up this summer for just this purpose – also less than $10. The spout is brilliant for wiping the extra water off one’s brush before dipping it back into the ink. Now I wish that I’d also gotten the creamer from the black set since I usually have two water containers going at once, one for dirty and one for (relatively) clean water.

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Meanwhile, I’ve been puzzling my way through the shibori/embroidered “letter from home” I showed you last time. Surprisingly, the mussel shell was a snap to realize, but figuring out what to do with the envelope has been an unexpected challenge (lots of stitches sewn and then picked out). Next post I’ll write more about my discoveries and process along the way, but in the meantime I have some experimenting to do in order to figure out how to approach the dyed pattern in relation to the central shape – as well as what overall finished size/shape to use.

©2021 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye and embroidery on silk, approx. 12 x 16 inches I think I’m going frame this one like this. Allowing the area without pattern to show provides a much needed sense of balance to the piece as a whole.

Framing will be part of that consideration. Unlike in this piece, which I dove into without finished dimensions in mind, I need to plan ahead so I don’t back myself into a corner.

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I get a lot out of James Cleary’s 3-2-1 Newsletter; it’s a short and sweet shot in the arm each Thursday. The list below was particularly resonate. Maybe for you too?

How to Build a Career in 7 Steps:
1. Do great work
2. Share it publicly
3. Cold email people 2 steps ahead of you
4. Talk about your work and trade ideas
5. Host events and meet in-person
6. Become friends
7. Rise together

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I get just as much of a lift from the beauty of my garden in fall as I do in spring and summer. While the colors are a bit more nuanced, they’re just as striking. Did you happen to read the NYTimes article “Take a Walk in the Garden Before It’s Too Late“?

With that in mind, my Instagram recommendation this time is @pottersarms, whose images of flowers, often in various states of decay, are quite lovely and somehow momentous.

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And finally, to bring you full circle, the next time you’re in Asheville, NC consider a meal at Cúrate – a tapas bar that will satisfy any yen for delicious variety.

Breathing Deeply

Working on the stitched watercolor garden pieces this summer has been just the break I had hoped for while simultaneously opening the door to new explorations. It’s been like taking a deep breath. There’s nothing quite as fun (or as good a stretch for the brain) as pushing toward some sort of new evolution and seeing where those explorations might lead.

Rounding the Bend ©2021 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and stitching on paper, 5 x 5 inches. I haven’t posted new pieces from this series since the beginning of July. Time to catch you up! You can revisit all the pieces on my website.

Coincidentally, in catching up on older podcasts, I recently listened to Alice Sheridan and Louise Fletcher of Art Juice talk about “Kickstarting Creativity by Taking a Break”. That doesn’t necessarily mean taking a rest from making art altogether (although it could), but rather creating an interruption by switching gears to something different.

Having now returned from their month-long respite, it’s worth listening to their follow-up episode, “A Time for Reflection”, as they discuss some of their realizations from their time away.

It’s an honest conversation about an artist’s life, dipping into elements and responses that are familiar to all of us.

For my part, I’m grateful for the sense of camaraderie that comes when others share about issues we may have in common. At the end of the day we’re all just trying to make a go of a creative life – why not travel together?

In considering my own, shall we say, intermission from the work of last year, not only has the painting itself been equal parts challenging and rewarding, but the incorporation of the embroidered houses has provided a welcome sense of grounding and continuity while still allowing me to find new ways to play around with the idea of something “hidden in plain sight”.

I’ve completed a dozen of these little stitched paintings to date and expect to keep going in some form or another. I took a first stab at what moving beyond the “safety” of the houses might look like in this little close-up of my daughter’s Maranta leuconeura. The question that is floating around in the back of my head now is how might I let the stitching on paper branch into portraits.

Basically, texture is at the root of my interest. It’s the textural effects of the stitching, together with the visual texture of the paint on paper, that most intrigues me.
Meanwhile, I’ve begun a new shibori piece and expect to be back at my frame embroidering on cloth in earnest, just as soon as the dyeing is complete.

Sidestepping Into New Territory

After a busy several months, I’m yearning for a break from routine. My solution is to change things up a bit in the studio in lieu of a get-away. I have a couple of new pieces in the pipeline, but I’m not going to rush them. Instead, I’m giving myself the gift of taking a side-step and am devoting some time and energy to experimentation — tweaking familiar processes in new ways, and exploring with completely new materials.

While I generally like the colors and some passages of pattern in this stitched-resist swatch, overall it’s too much of a mish-mash. Next time I’ll try to harness effects that bear repeating, yet with more control and organization.

It’s been something of a happy coincidence that, on a lark, I just happened to check-out Every Tool’s a Hammer by Adam Savage from the library. Riffing on the nuts and bolts and many facets of his life as a maker, Savage (of Mythbusters fame) outlines and affirms the approaches that have contributed to his successes — and just as importantly, to the failures that have eventually led to that success.

Using the same dyes as for the first cloth, this test has a better sense of rhythm and more coherent pattern.

He addresses a variety of techniques that he’s come to rely upon. And speaking directly to the benefits gleaned through periods of methodical exploration and discovery, he acknowledges the inherent and longterm advantages to be found there. More anecdotal than didactic, the wisdom shared is applicable across the board — whether you are a seasoned artist or a young person just starting to find your way.

Inspired by Emma Carlisle, I asked for & received a set of Tombow Dual Brush Pens for Christmas; they’re perfect for this period of stretching. As Savage writes, new tools are a way to explore the space of possibility. Apparently these pens are used quite a bit for calligraphy, but the brush-like tip on one end, which provides a calligrapher with a thick/thin line, allows me to lay in broad swaths of color in a moment or to squeeze into small spaces with its tip. For my purposes it’s both a drawing and a painting tool in one. Some colors are affected by other colors drawn on top, and some aren’t. Adding black and white charcoal pencil extends the possibilities for mark-making and visual texture.

Many of the tenets and discoveries Savage outlines, I (and you too, no doubt) have painstakingly made for myself over the years, so there’s a sense of reassurance in the shared epiphanies. Even so, it turns out to be the perfect companion to my current explorations which are serving up an inevitable share of frustration as I slog through unfamiliar terrain. With that in mind, if you know a young maker, it’s a book that would make an excellent gift for the beginning of their journey.

Because I’m always fighting my natural tendency to work tightly, I love the looseness of this drawing. The Tombow pens make it almost impossible to get too detailed. I have a small 5.5 x 5.5″ Global Art Handbook sketchbook that takes the ink well, without bleeding through the paper or causing it to ripple. It’s a concise size for practicing faces. My set of pens is limited to 10 colors and I find myself reaching for hues I don’t have. Even though I’m trying to be imaginative and play into the limitation, I couldn’t resist ordering some more to fill in the gaps.

Elaborating on the messy reality of making, Savage acknowledges there will be plenty of mistakes along the way, and where you end up will most likely not be the place you’d envisioned when you first began. But he rightly points out that that is why we love making — if we knew exactly how things would turn out, what would be the point? Accommodating and welcoming the inevitable wrong turns and side tangents opens the door to something much greater than initially imagined.

This sketch has ventured into the “overworked danger zone”, but there is something to be said about the depth of color that comes through. Learning by doing is the only answer.

He illustrates this theory with a quote from painter Francis Bacon: “One has intention, but what really happens comes about in working.” And that is the notion I’m hanging onto as I delve into new territory.

❖

Instagram of the Week

Speaking of Emma Carlisle, take a look at her Instagram. There’s something about her use of color and line that conveys a sense of place and of immediacy that I find both soothing and exciting at the same time.