These past two weeks I’ve been on a mission to finish up this piece that I’ve been working on since September. With so many other irons in the fire, I haven’t been reporting on its progress regularly, but I’m happy to say I am finally finished and feeling richer for the lessons learned along the way.

The first, and sadly unsuccessful, version of the chess king

To bring you up to speed: The two halves (the king and the queen) were worked separately since the whole piece is larger than the frame I use for stretching cloth while stitching. The king was completed at the end of October, and the queen in the beginning of December. I was not able to see and compare all parts of the piece while working, so it was a bit of an ugly surprise to discover that the king on the left (which had been stitched first and that I was quite satisfied with when completed) just didn’t hold up next to the queen on the right. In fact it seemed to almost disintegrate into its background. So many hours of work! What to do?

Tools of the trade, along with a big pile of removed stitches.

Lesson #1: Take a break. Time away from the studio during the holidays provided the necessary breathing room to figure out a solution to such a discouraging challenge. With fresh eyes, I could easily recognize the hard reality of what was needed to pull the figure out from its background. Note to self: a hazard of working so closely and in such fine detail is forgetting to get regular distance from the work to be sure it reads as correctly from afar as it does at close range. Always step back mid-process.

Picking out stitches is a painstaking and delicate process, but ultimately worth the time.

The way to fix it lay in two things:
Lesson #2: Contrast. My original intent was to keep the king’s side red – hoping that the threads I chose were dark enough to suggest the black pieces of a chess set. But unfortunately, the colors were so analogous to the background that it just became a muddle. However, even though this iteration didn’t work out in the long run, I made some unrelated but fruitful discoveries along the way that will carry forward into future work…i.e. a benefit of deliberate practice (keep reading).

The piece with all the stitches removed except for (look closely) that one red section on the middle-left of the figure. Leaving it in place seemed right.

And Lesson #3: Let go – or “murder your darlings” as advised by Arthur Quiller-Couch.* It seems a no-brainer now that undoing the original, and re-stitching the figure in blue, was the proper answer.

With this small bit done, I can see I’m on the right track.

In relation to these points, two things come to mind.
First, Austin Kleon wrote a post in 2015 on the relationship between “input” and “output” There are many ways that his theory can be stretched to serve whatever issues may currently challenge you in the studio, but I think the most cogent point is that we need to continually feed ourselves with input in order to strengthen our output. Answers lurk in unexpected places.

Blue king, finished

Its partner, the white queen

And secondly, with that fact in mind the other idea that has resonated for me as I’ve been working my way past this particularly sticky wicket comes from the book Talent is Overrated, one of my best picks from 2019.
In it, Geoff Colvin outlines the importance of “deliberate practice” as a necessary ingredient in the success of any professional standout. He discusses exactly what that means and how it is applicable before, after, and during the work itself. “Meta-cognition” is the fancy term he gives to the art of close self-observation while one works, identifying it as the path to pushing oneself forward. Discoveries are sometimes serendipitous, as written in Making it Work, but I think repetition through practice (as I have seen by completely reworking this chess king) remains the gold standard.

House Divided (Mitch & Nancy), ©2020 Elizabeth Fram, 18 x 24 inches, Stitched-resist dye and embroidery on silk. Granted, this is a working photo, but boy does it point out how important it is to hire a professional to capture the best image (shout-out to Paul Rogers Photography). Even so, you get the idea. A bit of back-story on the chess pieces: They are part of a wooden set I discovered a number of years ago that belonged to my grandfather. He died when I was very young, so I have limited memories of him. Lovely (to my eye), while a bit crudely made, I took a lot of photos at the time, finding the shapes and their shadows quite intriguing.

It isn’t enough to capture a likeness or create a pleasing image. We need to continually study, not just others’ work to try to figure out why they made the choices they did and how it added to their success, but it’s important to apply equal curiosity to our own thought processes and decisions along the way. Think of it as another route to learning the necessary lessons that ultimately elevate our individual output.

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Threads of Truth

If you will be in Chicago in the next weeks, consider a trip to the Zhou B Art Center to see Threads of Truth, curated by Sergio Gomez. My piece “Hell Freezes Over” will be among the work in the exhibition.

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Finally, three resources for your listening pleasure:

Margaret Sheridan and Louise Fletcher of the Art Juice podcast ask and discuss the important question How Do You Define Success?.

And, since most of us can’t get to Berkeley, CA very easily, check out Slow Fiber Studios’ podcasts recorded from their lecture and event series. Among other things, the topics covered include natural dyes and textile conservation by some of the world’s top experts.

*Check out Darlingside, who coined their name from Queller-Couch’s quote. For wonderful music to work by, filled lush melodies and superpower harmonies, give a listen.

“Design is a way out of confusion”
– Platon, photographer

This past week I finished the NETFLIX series Abstract: The Art of Design which delves into the minds and careers of eight top designers who practice within different branches of the field. Covering a myriad of ideas, each program highlights and demystifies a leader who has reached the pinnacle of her/his discipline, one step at a time. Listening as these artists/designers discuss in their own words the generation and evolution of their ideas makes the series especially inspiring. In fact, even the episodes that center on a discipline I wouldn’t ordinarily care much about (such as car design), had me hanging on every world.

In mulling over some of the takeaway lessons afterward, I was particularly moved by the sentiments of the photographer Platon. His portraits, of both the powerful and powerless alike, lean on simplicity, boldness, and clarity to convey the story and essence of each subject, rather than extraneous details or elaborate backdrops.

Growing up with extreme dyslexia, Platon found the world unmanageably complicated and had trouble coping with what, to him, was a cacophony of stimulation. Design became a means of making sense of that complexity. By capturing the core of a subject and condensing information to only what is necessary, he found a key to interpreting his surroundings. That inclination toward self-editing has, in turn, become the foundation of his artistic success while modeling an important lesson for any of us.

With practice, I am beginning to better understand the wisdom that what you omit via editing is just as important as what you let remain. It’s understandable that we tend to be protective of favorite passages as we work, but we have to fight that instinct. Being of a mind to vigilantly cull out the unnecessary, in deference to clarity and conciseness, is much more valuable for longterm growth and development. Admittedly, such self-control is much more challenging to accomplish in the moment while drawing with ink, than over numerous drafts while typing on the computer. But regardless of medium, the importance of editing is inarguably one of the best tools available.

It’s not so much what you say, it’s what you leave out that makes a piece soar.

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This short post by Clint Watson on Fine Art Views, makes the crucial point that judicious editing is another level of communication, showing your viewer not just what you are making, but more importantly, why you are going to the effort.

And on a lighter note: are you familiar with the band Darlingside? If not, check out this video, or you can find their music on Spotify. While chatting up the audience at a recent concert they mentioned that they get a lot of questions about their name. Explaining that they had a teacher who counseled the adage that you have to “kill your darlings” for successful writing, a name was born. Choosing to steer clear of the intonation of death inferred in “Darlingcide”, they opted for Darlingside as a more acceptable name. Either way, another nod to the multilayered benefits of editing.

Elizabeth Fram

Eye of the Needle

Tag Archives: Darlingside

Lessons Learned

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Be Careful How Much You Say

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