Category Archives: Process

Decisions, Decisions…

After posting the photos of the the first cup and saucer piece, one of you asked if I would talk more about the decisions I made when “framing” it with its Shibori border. What follows are some of the things I was thinking about — and continue to think about as I work on this series.

Two points to keep in mind: a) my goal is to find a way to bring my daily drawing practice and textile work together while celebrating and remaining true to the qualities of each, and b)I never know exactly what will happen until I dive in. Especially in the beginning stages everything is an experiment. I start with an idea, take a shot, see what happens, then go on from there with what I’ve learned.

Composition is my number one consideration, regardless of whether an artwork is abstract or representational. I have written before about my inclination to organize my drawings where the image hugs the perimeter of a piece and the subject often moves outside the field of vision. I am also partial to creating breathing room within the overall framework, enhancing a sense of balance and space. My preference is to walk a fine line between presenting a recognizable object while simultaneously pushing toward an abstracted view of shapes and values.

I like to keep in mind that when the subject lies beyond the boundaries of an image, it leaves room for a viewer’s imagination to envision what happens in that unseen space, deepening the “story” by encouraging participation. As a counterbalance, negative space provides a visual rest, an area where subtle stitching can supply interest by dividing the space without overwhelming the image.

Figuring out how to frame a composition is just as important as how to crop it. It has to enhance the image, furthering what it has to say without merely becoming an edging on all four sides. Surrounding a stitched image with pattern created via stitched-resist Shibori forges a harmonious blend where both elements work in tandem, rather than one overpowering the other.

For many years my pieces were made with irregular edges, a quality I still find intriguing yet which poses a dilemma when the work will be stretched and framed within a traditional floating frame. Because the Shibori pattern is created by stitching, I have flexibility to manipulate where the pattern will appear, the direction of its flow, where to squeeze in narrow gaps (essentially creating an area of escape from the small rectangular enclosure the cup and saucer fills) and where to open up wider expanses via a color field that pushes toward the outer edge, making a statement of its own.

Therefore, what may first appear as a “frame” is actually an essential element of the piece as a whole, serving to ground and engage the stitched image of the cup and saucer within a fully integrated exchange, rather than solely being a vehicle for separating and confining it. In fact, it’s important to remember that the Shibori patterning in these pieces was created first, making it a crucial consideration of the overall composition from the very beginning.

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Many thanks to the reader who asked this question. Writing is a wonderful opportunity to give thought and substance to the ideas that float in the back of one’s mind, but which benefit immeasurably from being articulated. I encourage you to try it with your own work, and please, feel free to ask more questions any time.

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For an intriguing take on presentation/framing, check out the work of Sondra Sherman, a jewelry maker who displays her pieces in the carved-out pages of the books that inspired their creation.

Needlework: ‘Redemptive and Rebellious’

It’s been snowing off and on much of the week which has been great for productivity. Does anyone else notice that no other light quite compares to that which fills a space when it’s snowing outside? Colors appear crisp and true, reading more clearly than usual.

As you can see, this week I’ve been concentrating on marks and the visual texture of stitches to pull out the form of a cup and saucer from the open section of last week’s dyed piece. I am still working to find a way to marry my daily drawings with my textile work without compromising either. It’s been a bit of a balancing act to keep the image recognizable while simultaneously leaning toward an abstraction of the forms’ shapes and cast shadows. By sticking with one color of thread, I’m relying on the direction of the stitches, their weight, and the patterns they create to define both the space and the image. I quite like the way they work in tandem with the dyed ‘mokume’ pattern. Before I began, I wasn’t sure how successful a partnership it would be, but I am encouraged by the way things are developing.

I found two thought-provoking articles from Brain Pickings this week that I’d like to share. They seem particularly appropriate since I’ve been totally consumed with needlework. The first, Stitching the Stars, centers on the nineteenth century astronomer Maria Mitchell’s theory of the needle as an instrument of the mind and why she felt it gave women an advantage in the field of astronomy. In turn, Brain Pickings’ creator Maria Popova posits that the mental space afforded via the slow nature of needlework has been a cornerstone in the “long history of thinking-by-hand in the intellectual life of women”. Bravo! Stitching is an art that is typically sidelined as ‘women’s busy work’; how absolutely satisfying and encouraging it is to see an acknowledgement in print of one of the most cogent hidden strengths that many of us who are actively engaged with needle and thread know to be true.

The second article, which segues easily from the first, The Dinner Party: Artist Judy Chicago’s Iconic Symbolic Celebration of Women’s Heritage in Creative Culture, is so very pertinent considering the political climate we are facing. It is an all-important reminder that the message of Chicago’s unparalleled project is just as crucial today as it was in 1979.

Finally, I am quite honored to have been invited last month to join TAFA: The Textile and Fiber Art list. As “a business community of entrepreneurs rooted in textile and fiber art products and traditions”, it supports artists, retail and wholesale e-commerce, cooperatives, galleries, organizations, writers, publishers, and collectors. The TAFA icon in the upper right of this blog’s sidebar is a link to my profile page. But more importantly, explore all of TAFA’s website to learn more about it as an organization and to see work from its over 500 members representing 44 countries. I have no doubt you’ll find something remarkable.

And please stay tuned. I’ve got my fingers crossed that this piece will be finished next week.

Switching Gears

There’s no arguing that persistence is one of the jewels in our proverbial bag of tricks. But there are definitely times when there’s more to be gained from allowing yourself to switch gears, especially in the face of a wall that, for the moment, seems insurmountable.

I have been struggling with too many false starts on this piece over the past couple of weeks, spending as much time taking stitches out as I have putting them in. While I am loving the colors and the swoop of the pattern as it rises and falls through the layers, I am having a heck of a hard time taking it to the next level. So it’s going up on my wall where I can live with it, allowing time and distance to work their magic. Having put it aside, I’m on to something completely new to give my brain an airing out, making for a nice change this week.

Stitching guidelines marked on raw silk

Stitching, stitching, & more stitching

Just slightly pulling the threads begins to reveal a beautiful pattern.

Although this form of shibori is named “mokume”, meaning ‘wood grain’, it also reminds me of Ansel Adams’ photographs of sand dunes.

Soaking the fabric in water allows me to pull the threads all the tighter.

The first application of dye

A mixture of red, brown and eggplant. I have to be careful that the dye gets into all the nooks and crannies.

Since this type of dye only adheres to protein fibers (i.e. silk, wool, etc), it doesn’t affect the cotton thread, which is a cellulose fiber. This makes it much easier to find the tight knots and to snip them without nicking the fabric.

Removing all the threads reveals this incredible pattern. It still takes my breath away each time.

And now to get begin the next stage…

Embracing Transition

I love September. Some may think I’m crazy, but I gladly welcome the cooler and grayer days, earlier evenings, and the sudden sense of sharpness in the atmosphere. Among other things, it brings a renewed energy to the studio.

gardengold

No matter what the season, it’s always a treat to watch the colors change and evolve, but late August through November is special. Lower in the sky now, the sun casts everything in a richer light. The garden is beginning to wind down and in a month or so, after a couple of weekends of fall clean-up, I will be able to plant my garlic and call it a season, leaving more time to concentrate on stitching and drawing.

Detail 1

I am continuing to explore this idea of transition in my current piece (what you see here are detail images from it that are about 12 x 15 inches each). I am incorporating layers of silk organza that have been hand-stitched and then dyed to create lines and swoops of pattern. As the pieces are laid over one another, interesting variations in color and depth are appearing and the passage from one section to the next is becoming the meat of the piece.

Detail 2

I am at the point of starting to puzzle out how I am going to push this idea further — how to create an interaction between the dyed patterns and the embroidery that will be laid on top.

Stay tuned.

Small in Size, Big in Value

Every July I go to our neighboring town’s library book sale, and even though I try not to go overboard, you can be sure I never come away empty-handed. This year I hit a minor jackpot and found two valuable books on sketching. I had never heard of Dale Meyers before snagging her book The Sketchbook, but with a bit of web research I have since learned that she was a well-respected teacher at the Art Students League of New York and had a solid reputation for her watercolor work. As one reviewer says about the book, its “a little dated (but) still rich in knowledge and technique”.

This and the other little thumbnails below measure about 2″ square…they’re tiny, but they pack a lot of information.

In the third chapter, The Sketchbook as a Manual, she talks about the importance of value study and how helpful it can be, before beginning a larger finished piece, to create a quick and tiny 3-value diagram that distills the subject into the simplest of geometric shapes. By addressing not just the values, but also composition, one can solidify the basics of an image before committing too much time and paper to an idea that isn’t going to fly. There is also the added advantage that creating these little thumbnails regularly makes it easier to think in terms of value when working with color.

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I like that this approach adds another layer of discovery that is one step beyond the simple viewfinder (written about in this post) I use to organize an image. Undertaken purely as practice, not solely as a preliminary to bigger work, it’s a way to effectively keep the wheels greased and efficiently gobble random waiting-time, wherever and whenever.

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I have several softcover 3.5″ x 5.5″ Moleskine sketchbooks tucked into various pockets: in my purse, in my car, and even in the front of my life jacket for when kayaking. Yet they contain a lot of unfinished sketches because, due to the basic nature of trying to squeeze a quick drawing in between whatever else is going on while I’m out and about, I am invariably interrupted and need to move on before the drawing is complete. But, with Meyer’s speedy approach and 2 – 3 minutes at the most, I think just about any spare moment can become a learning opportunity.

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Giving Intuition its Due

There are rules of ‘making’ that have been drilled firmly within our brains, often leaving us consumed and creatively tongue-tied by their prescribed boundaries. Yet I think it’s healthy to keep in mind, in an effort to access the core of what we ultimately want to say through our work, that selectively disregarding the paths laid out and trodden by those who have gone before, or even those who walk alongside of us, can lead to wonderful discoveries.

In her “first person” essay in the Spring 2016 Surface Design Journal, Juliet Martin discusses the Japanese philosophy of SAORI, an ideology that “encourages freeform work — no patterns, no rules, (and perhaps most importantly) no mistakes”. Saori is a type of weaving devised by Misao Jo that ignores restrictions, giving voice to the expression of hidden personal creativity. Martin writes in greater depth about her experience with and exploration of Saori in her article Unmistakable: How I Understand Saori Weaving on the Surface Design blog. Applying this mindset has had a fascinating affect on the way Martin approaches her work. I encourage you to read her post regardless of your medium, as I believe its core ideas swing open a door to greater creative possibilities across all disciplines.

At it’s heart, Saori celebrates working intuitionally and allows for the “happy accidents” that often elevate a piece beyond what might have been initially planned. As a way of working, it lends permission to set aside rules and to relax into one’s process, letting the actual act of making guide the way toward fortuitous discoveries. And I have to wonder, couldn’t all our work benefit from a little more of that?

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If you are looking for a great art book to round out your August, check out McCloskey – Art and Illustrations of Robert McCloskey. Even if you didn’t grown up in Maine, I have to believe you are familiar with Blueberries for Sal, Make Way for Ducklings, One Morning in Maine, or one of McCloskey’s many other books. And if not – grab a young friend and check them out from the library! His work is so iconic to me that, when we brought our daughter to Boston at the beginning of her college search, I made sure to find time to search out Nancy Schön’s bronze sculpture of McCloskey’s beloved Mallard family in the Boston Public Garden.

What I didn’t realize is that in addition to his fabulous illustrations which speak so strongly of Maine, McCloskey was also a wonderful painter who travelled widely, living and painting in Rome (he won the Prix de Rome during World War II), Greece, Mexico, and on the island of St. Thomas. The text, written by his daughter Jane (the baby in One Morning in Maine) is personal, not scholarly, and gives a comprehensive overview of McCloskey’s career while simultaneously sharing page after page of paintings and sketches that expose a depth of work that won’t disappoint.

One Note Changes Everything

While I’ve been stitching this week, I’ve been listening to some of Jean-Michel Pilc’s Piano Masterclass on Youtube. Although geared toward pianists (which I am not), what he teaches is very fluid, applying to improvisation across the creative board. I have been picking up nuggets of info that are just as relevant to my work as they are to music.

His points have led me to realize how much I rely upon improvisation…surprisingly a lot. While most of the time I begin with an overall idea of where I want to direct a piece, there is no detailed outline to follow and the resulting freedom has become a big part of the process. In general, the work spirals outward in a relatively consistent trajectory: beginning with a thumbnail that becomes a dyed base of pattern and color on silk — created intentionally and to some degree by serendipity. The next step is arrangement (and often re-arrangement), positioning all the elements based on what happened in the dye-bath. And finally, definition and enhancement are added via the visual and tactile qualities of stitch.

The piece I’m working on now, first shown in this post, is no exception. I have been concentrating on and exploring ways to marry the dyed, patterned under-layer with the textural markings of stitching, color being the predominant cord that draws them both together.

Pilc says in this clip that “one note changes everything”, bringing a passage from flat to colorful. That statement rings so true; I am continually comparing and testing elements against each other, ever-vigilant in an effort to keep a sense of electricity present. That also means being willing to “erase”, retracing one’s steps and reworking when the spark isn’t there. It can be slow, but there are appreciable rewards in being at liberty to make discoveries dictated by the work itself, rather than bowing to the constraint of a pre-conceived idea.

In some respects, I would have said my stitched pieces are pretty tightly controlled, but when framed in this way, it’s heartening to acknowledge that to a large degree that’s really not the case.

Benefiting from Basics

I have been working with “local value” this week in an effort to improve the structural framework of my compositions, textile and otherwise. Practicing with watercolor and sticking to just one color has made it possible to knock out a handful of studies in a relatively short period of time.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that the successive flat layers of paint allow me to think abstractly in addition to building up forms within the image. An unexpected but gratifying side benefit of this aspect of the process is heightening my awareness of the interaction between the image and the surface – a characteristic I am continually working to emphasize.

It’s a good reminder that there’s a lot to be gained from stripping back to fundamentals.

Aside from working with values this week, I also finally finished overhauling my website. What a relief to check off that chore and to get away from so many hours tied to my laptop! The big decision was to move from iWeb to Weebly, an incredibly user-friendly platform with plenty of flexibility and a very low learning curve. Most importantly, my images are now tack-sharp. I’m not sure why it was, but the look of my pictures through iWeb always seemed to suggest my glasses needed cleaning when I knew the trouble wasn’t with the images themselves. After some concentrated web-searching I learned that it’s a problem a lot of people using iWeb have struggled to overcome. Since iWeb has long been on its way out anyway, it was a no-brainer to switch and I’m more than happy with my decision.

To take it one step farther, I have an awesome tip to offer you that I learned during the overhaul process. Check out Compressnow.com — it’s a free site that will reduce your images (max 9MB) by whatever percentage you want, compressing them quickly and easily with no noticeable degradation in quality. For example, I converted my mostly over-6MB images to a 500-300kb range.

Overall, a pretty productive week!

3 Pears

I have been waiting to share this piece until it was close to finished, figuring it might be more interesting to see its progression all at once, rather than bit by bit. This has required getting in the habit of taking a photo at the end of each work session but, in addition to not paying close attention to the quality of light for these shots, there were of course days when I forgot to take the picture. Apologies. Still, I think the following images will give you a general idea of how this piece has evolved.

As you may remember from this post, my goal is that the sketches I’ve been doing lately provide a jumping-off point for new work, rather than remaining an end-vision. But what is the point if the resulting work is just a direct translation of the drawing? My objective is to push the unique qualities of textiles and thread in such a way that they convey their own unique voice, leaving the viewer with a sense that they understand how continuing the idea in another medium propels the initial concept just that much further. Well, at least that’s my goal.

Pears-1

I began breaking up the image space by outlining areas with a washable marker. Afterward, I basted along those lines to give myself a permanent record, knowing the marker’s ink would disappear once moistened with a layer of paint.

Working on fabric is different from working on paper in that pigment will bleed into adjacent areas despite taking care not to cross any lines. But I discovered that painter’s tape can work just as well as it does on a wall to keep the textile paint from seeping into zones where I didn’t want it to go.

Once the background paint was set and the embroidery begun, I started to wonder if I could further break up the space by adding a layer of dyed silk organza over part of the piece. I like the general concept, but found that in this particular instance it faded the color behind it too much and somehow worked at cross-purposes against what I was trying to accomplish. I will have to figure out a way to investigate that idea in the future.

Areas of color were laid in with stitching to describe the pears, but my attempt to define their form simply through a change in stitch direction wasn’t as successful as I had wished. I began to layer stitches over stitches which, similar to crosshatching with pen and ink, created a more modeled effect.

What resulted was the happy discovery that the under-stitches, paired with different colored stitches on top, lend a depth of tone much the way an underpainting will affect the layers of paint above it.

The definition of the stems and the shadows beneath the pears begin to pull the image together. Meanwhile, I can also begin to see how the interaction between varying types of stitching starts to hit the sweet spot of finding a way to push textural effects beyond what I can achieve with a pen.

Working back and forth while trying to obscure the lines between image and framing, foreground and background, is where the color and pattern of the stitched marks begin to show the strength of their voice.

Ultimately, I had the nagging feeling that the vertical marks defining the surface the pears are sitting upon (see above), were too distracting — both visually and texturally. My critique group agreed.

I am much happier now that those stitches have been removed.

I am going to let this piece sit for a bit, just to see how it settles with me. It very well may be finished – or there may be a few minor tweaks left to make. Either way, I am definitely getting ready to move on with some good lessons under my belt.

Unexpected Gifts

The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas can be a bit of a scramble. However, two things brought me an extra measure of cheer this week, lifting me above my to-do lists.

First, this interview with Joy Spontak in the December issue of the Across Roads Center for the Arts newsletter (conducted and transcribed by my multi-talented friend, Adrianna Benson). The following quote from the interview resonated with the way I like to work too, and I love the notion that Joy consciously uses this approach outside her studio as well:

“One of the things I’ve learned about my own process is that it is a conversation between you and whatever (piece) you are doing. You do something to it, it suggests something to you, and you have to think about it to move on with the piece/process. Thinking about how you’ll work this process; feeling, changing, working it past how you originally intended it, because things change. I’ve tried to apply this process to my life.”

Her point coincides nicely with one of the books I’m reading now: Breaking the Rules of Watercolor by Shirley Trevena. Trevena stresses that she prefers to leave her options open while she paints. To paraphrase, she found that “by only half-painting objects or leaving white space” she could postpone decisions, often finding that she is rewarded by holding back. What she leaves out can end up becoming as interesting as the areas she has painted, in essence making the finished work greater than the sum of its parts.

The other completely unexpected treat this week is that my ‘Tres Chic’ amaryllis is blooming… again. When bringing my houseplants inside for the winter in early October, I discovered a bonus: two of my amaryllises had formed new flower buds while they were still out on the porch. They bloomed in mid-October so I figured they were finished. But now they are both going for a second showing, an unexpected and welcome gift during a dark and wet November week.

Do any of you know how these plants managed to get in their dormant time without an extended period of darkness? (I have 3 others that seem to be following a more normal schedule). I guess the cooler temps must have done the trick, but whatever the explanation, I’m grateful for the burst of color.

Elizabeth Fram

Eye of the Needle