Neversink Mountain Preserve Hike

Once again we took advantage of the incredibly mild January weather to get outside and ramble about.  The Neversink Mountain Preserve is a large tract of land abutting the City of Reading, in Berks County, PA.  It has a wealth of well maintained and blazed trails--the first time I’ve seen blazes in bright orange and purple--over varied terrain.  In times past it was a summer resort destination for Philadelphians, and some of the structures from that era are still evident.  The Witch Hat Pavilion is a carefully crafted folly perched on an overlook.
The round portals were great subjects for my fisheye iPhone lens.

From the overlook, a cloudy day view of the city of Reading.

Nearby someone had left paper cranes suspended in a small evergreen.

As we walked away, I turned and caught an inverse reflection of the pavilion in a raindrop on a twig.

A hike along the ridge led to a descent into a pretty valley, where tan leaves still clinging to the beech trees lent a bit of variety to the monochromatic environs.

A trail along a gurgling creek led to the ruins of a former railroad trestle.

The soil was gravelly, wet and slippery, and the climb turned into a clamber.

It was a good spot for a victory pose.

It was a lovely view down into the valley from the ledge.

I hope you have the chance to get outside and explore the world around you.  Thanks as always for reading and commenting.

Seasonal Palette at The Texas Quilt Museum

I am thrilled and honored that The Organic Landscape, as part of the Seasonal Palette exhibit, is currently on display at the Texas Quilt Museum in La Grange, TX.  The exhibit runs until March 31st.  Because of space constraints, the full exhibit of 37 quilts needed to be edited down to a selection of 23.  I don’t envy the curators their task, as the works are all unique and amazing, but I am very grateful to have my work included. Vicki Mangum shared these photos from the installation; above is a general view, with The Organic Landscape on the right.  Below it is flanked by Fervor by Maya Chaimovich on the left, and Delicate Ambiguity by Judith Larzelere on the right.

Here’s another installation view, showing how gorgeous the works looks against that warm brick wall. 

For installation photos by photographer Gregory Case from the premier exhibit at the International Quilt Festival this past fall, including a video, and links for more information, go to the SAQA site. 

I also want to recommend the wonderful hardcover catalogue of the exhibition, with works by 37 artists celebrating the four seasons, including materials and techniques, and introductory essays by the juror, curator and sponsors. It includes special section of studio/inspiration photos.
It’s a bargain at only $20, with a 6 x 10-inch format and 103 pages. Here’s my work, shown held up before the decidedly wintery version of the landscape that inspired the work.
To track back my blog posts of the work in progress, click the Seasonal Palette tab at the top, or go here.
As always, thanks for reading and commenting.

Winter Rambles in York County

Despite the cold and wind and weak slanting sunshine, or perhaps to glory in it, we ventured out lately just across the Susquehanna River to explore some trails in York County, PA.  The treacherous dusting of snow and ice precluded clambering about on rocky overlooks as is our usual practice, but we found much to admire and appreciate on the tamer terrain.  These cattails were surrounded by a thin sheen of ice, and were captured perfectly by my trusty fisheye lens.

Above are some saplings, again surrounded by diaphanous ice, along a path in Rocky Ridge Park.  Below, a view of the trail that  beckoned.

Portions of the park were seasonally decorated and lit, to be toured at night for a fundraiser. I loved the surreal look of these gingerbread men cutouts:

Another day found us at the Heritage Rail Trail.  This well maintained trail borders a set of tracks that still sees occasional traffic.  A highlight for architectural aficionados is the Howard Tunnel, completed in 1840, and the oldest railroad tunnel in continuous use in the U.S.  It’s listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.  Here I am, all happy about discovering it:

The interior of the tunnel is a textural marvel, with the patina of old bricks and patches of repair:

A bit further along the trail is a footbridge that crosses the Codorus Creek. 

It’s been damaged by recent high water.

Discretion being the better part of valor, I didn’t attempt a crossing.

As much as I’m enjoying photographically exploring form and line, and the contrasts and textures of this mostly monochromatic world, I am starting to hunger for color.  I was glad to spot of bit of green in a patch of mulleins growing on a cliff face.

Mullein is a biennial, forming these big fuzzy rosettes of leaves in its first year from seed.  Next summer they will send up  seed stalks, as high as 6 feet, covered in small yellow flowers.

I hope that wherever find yourself in the world, and whatever the weather, you have a chance to go outside and explore. 
As always, thanks for reading and commenting.

Interview by Stella Belikiewicz

The lovely and talented Stella Belikiewicz has done me the honor of interviewing me for her blog.  She asked some intriguing questions, and I think you will enjoy the dialogue that ensued.  Read all about it here.

Silk Mill #3 - Work in Progress, Update 2

Having printed the imagery I needed, I turned my attention to the color palette.  I wanted to pull out the brick tones of the building, along with sky, earth, and vegetation hues.  This is one of my favorite parts of the process.  There are infinite possibilities at this point, and I enjoy the discipline of narrowing them down.  And many of my fabrics are like old friends, having been used in previous works.  It’s a pleasure to find the new combinations that will make this work unique.

I chose four sets of fabrics, and began slicing them into strips for piecing.  I dislike measuring things as a general principle, as I feel it puts an unnatural interface between myself and the work, so I wing it where ever possible.  I cut as many strips as I think I might need, in the random widths that will give a scale appropriate to the work, and more often than not it works out correctly in the end.  Of course, I have paid my dues, I spent years and years doing the math and the plotting out, so based on that experience I have a good idea of what I will need.

There are silks, commercial cottons, hand woven cottons, and fabrics I hand painted in these sets.   I like the variety of textures and tonality they provide when all mixed together.

The blue strips on the left are some extra screen prints that I cut up. I find that it helps integrate the prints and the patchwork.  The fabric next to it is an especially fine French cotton; I’m using up the last of it here, and I will miss it now that it is gone. 

All of these were  sewn into strip sets, sliced apart, and combined again to form the framework for the printed imagery.  I feel it is an especially appropriate setting to represent a building that was put together brick by brick. 

To track back this work in progress, and the other works in this Silk Mill Series, click the Silk Mill tab at the top or click here.

As always, thanks for reading and commenting, and stay turned for further developments.

New Work in Progress - In Dreams I Flew Over the River

There’s a thousand and one things I could and should be accomplishing right now.  So I started an unscheduled new project and am obsessively exploring new ground.

My lifelong fascination with the Susquehanna River has been escalating lately.  It’s been showing up in my dreams.  I wanted to explore the ideas of flow and undercurrents.  I wanted a procedural vacation from my usual well loved techniques and modes of expression.

I started with six panels of wool/rayon felt.  I began laying out wool roving and slivers of wool and silk fabrics to block out areas of color and pattern.   I worked with a machine needle felter to meld the layers.  The felter looks something like a sewing machine.  The working part is a cluster of felting needles, which are very slim and are tipped with small barbs, that move up and down to interlock the fibers passed underneath them.  It’s faster than hand felting, but still picky and laborious.  It’s fascinating work, because different fibers and fabrics react in different ways.  Some of the silks stay cohesive, and some practically dissolve into the background fabric, and it’s fun to play around with the effects.  The wool roving can be fluffed out into a thin layer, or concentrated in denser areas.  All these decisions were made on the fly.

Once I had the river and the island delineated, I added to the banks and the fields and the woods running alongside it.  I have been saving the threads that unravel when I pre-wash my silk fabrics, and some of them were perfect for the foam and windblown wavelets on top of the water. 

I joined the panels and added more felting along the joins.  At this point it's roughly 26" high by 42" wide.  Upon  consideration, I flipped the orientation of the piece.  The majority of the felting is done, and I’m starting to add other elements.  The brown lines are vintage lace, temporarily held in place with white-headed pins.  There will probably be layering and quilting, but I honestly don’t know where I am headed with this one yet.  It’s just what I needed.

Squirrel and Locust wins Best of Show

I’m still floating on air a week after receiving the news that my Squirrel and Locust was awarded Best in Show by juror Adriene Buffington at Art Quilts XVII: Integrating a Paradox, at the Chandler Center for the Arts.

It’s been a long and convoluted voyage, from being gifted with a few small mammal skulls to winning recognition for the resultant artwork.   Along the way I took my initial enthusiasm for the intricacies of the structures of the skulls and developed it into a concept, followed by a spreadsheet, followed by the quest to gather more skulls. (I have interesting friends, and you can buy pretty much anything on the internet.)

The concept was spun around my deep and abiding love for my environment here in the beautiful suburban wilds of Lancaster County, PA, coupled with my observations of and interactions with the small mammals that also live here.  To bring it to fruition involved macro photography, digital image editing, and cyanotype printing.  There was the gathering of botanical specimens and more printmaking.  There was rummaging through collected vintage embroideries for the perfect visual commentary.


There was a lot of rearranging things on the design wall, followed by staring and contemplation, followed by stitching.  Lots and lots of stitching.  And lots of and lots of sewing on tiny beads by hand.

All of the act  of creation was its own reward.   Sending the artwork out into the world and seeing it gain recognition and validation, knowing that others people see what I am saying and/or bring their own interpretation to the work, is incredibly wonderful, somewhat  humbling, and extremely motivating.   So, a pause to say thank you, to those involved with this show and to the fiber arts community at large, and then back to work.  I have some raccoon skull cyanotypes looking out at me from the design wall.  Rumor has it that there is also an apple tree involved.

New Work - The Organic Landscape

Now that the Seasonal Palette exhibit has debuted at the International Quilt Festival in Houston this past week, I am delighted to be able to share the images of The Organic Landscape here on my blog and on my website as part of my Garden series.

I truly enjoyed every part of the process of creating this art quilt, from design through construction, and I think my joy shines through in the finished work.

Seasonal Palette is an invitational SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) exhibit, where each artist was asked to produce work to a standard size, 78”h x 32”w, and  relating to one of the four seasons of the year.  I was asked to interpret summer, and I chose my palette of colors from the warm and rich tones of the landscape in the height of the season.  I have gardened organically at this property for decades, and am always working to become more closely attuned to the rhythms and fluctuations  in the life cycles of the plants, animals, and insects --the flora and fauna--of the bit of earth I have stewardship over.  It’s the visual artist’s variation of the writer’s dictum, “write what you know”.  My work stems from deep rather than casual observation.
I began by making cyanotype prints of some favorite and reliable plants; painted ferns, big root perennial geraniums, japanese anemones, plume poppies, and two varieties of ornamental sweet potato vines.  Most of these have figured in previous works, and are always welcome subjects for new interpretations of their forms and presence in the landscape.  I began by making cyanotype prints and heliographic prints of the leaves.  I also hand painted cottons in the colors I needed, and combined them with silks I brought back from India, as well as commercial fabrics, for Seminole piecework. You can track back the the work in progress here, or by clicking the Seasonal Palette tab at the top of the blog.

One of the requirements for the exhibit was the documentation of the creative process.  This is my normal studio practice, to keep samples and make notes as I go along, so I expanded on it to produce the material for a portfolio book which is being shown along with the quilt.  Early reports from Houston indicate that these portfolios were an terrific enhancement to the experience.  There is also a catalogue for the exhibit, available in the SAQA store.  I don’t have my copy yet but I can’t wait to see it! The entire exhibit is now online, it is absolutely fabulous, and I am once again deeply honored to be a part of it.  Most of the quilts are also available for purchase--the link to mine is here.

The exhibit will now travel to:
The International Quilt Festival - Cincinnati, April 11-12, 2013
The International Quilt Festival - Long Beach, August 2-4, 2013
The National Quilt Museum, Paducah, Kentucky, September 12 - December 2, 2013 with possible further venues to be announced.   If you saw the exhibit in Houston I would love to hear your reaction.

As always, thank you for reading and commenting.