I’m excited to unveil my latest major work, “Ginger”. It’s a response to my experiences visiting and living in India. I was inspired by the colors, the diverse culture, and the energy of this complex country that I love. It’s a place where chaos and order can both exist seemingly simultaneously in time and space.
The center image is a cyanotype print on silk of Hedychium coronarium, the ornamental white ginger, which is native to India and grown widely around the world. The piecework is done entirely in silks woven in Mysore state, and brought back on various trips taken by myself, my husband, and my daughter. It’s magnificent silk, mostly woven in the “shot” technique where the warp and weft are different colors. It shimmers and shines and the colors shift depending on your point of view. The intricate stitching I did serves to add a layer of dimension and further accentuate the color shifts.
I’ve done several posts on this one as a work-in-progress; you can read them here, here, and here. I started it almost a year ago, proving, as if I needed proof, that this art making thing is not always a linear progression. I’m glad I took the time, and gave the process the space it needed, for it to turn out just like this. Now to find a place to exhibit it, for it really needs to be seen in person! It's larg-ish, at 60" x 60".
If you are new here, I’ve got a series of travelogue posts about my recent travels in India, along with vintage photos from my sojourn in the 70’s, here. And thanks, as always, for reading and commenting.
I had the bittersweet pleasure of viewing all 82 Amish quilts in the Esprit Collection at the Lancaster Quilt and Textile Museum. I was taken by surprise when I walked into the main gallery and was uncharacteristically moved to tears by the visual and emotional impact of the display.
Due to economic challenges in this brutal economy, the museum is closing and the collection is going into storage. They are making the best of a bad situation and establishing an endowment for the preservation of the collection. You can read more, and contribute if you are inclined, on their website here. Several of these masterpieces have been deemed National Endowment for the Humanities National Treasures, and justifiably so. I am cautiously optimistic that at some point an appropriate new home will be found for them. They deserve to be in a venue where they can be accessible and admired by all.
This parting gift, this (hopefully temporary) last hurrah, displayed the quilts creatively and effectively, including a rotating set in the middle of the gallery. You can see my short video of the effect here:
These quilts speak to me on several levels. Their graphic appeal is undeniable.
The sophisticated handling of a limited color palette is superb. The colors of the cloth used for clothing, and subsequently the quilts, had to be approved by the church bishops.
But it’s the glimpse into the lives of the women who made them that truly resonates with me.
I was born and raised in a small rural community in central Pennsylvania, originally populated by German and Swiss immigrants who fled religious persecution in the late 1600 and early 1700’s. They established farms and small villages and proceeded for generations to live a life very similar to the one they left behind.
My people were not Anabaptists, but apart from that subtle distinction their lives were not very different from that of the Amish. Modern conveniences, when they came, were slow to change the traditional ways of doing things. Patriarchal family structure, agricultural and tradesmen economies, self reliance, clannishness and the adaptation of the German language -- speaking PA “Dutch”--were more than just cultural vestiges in the years of my childhood. I was imbued with a tremendously strong work ethic--industriousness has served my people, and myself, very well.
So I understand a bit of what life was like for the women who made these quilts. It can be a wonderful life, rich and full of nurturing relationships, with the work and the rewards shared by all. One of the guiding principles of this type of society is the emphasis on being “plain”, of conforming, of subverting the individual ego and its expression to the greater good of the community. It’s a tenet of religious faith as well as a cultural ethos, and the desire to conform to it is deep and meaningful for the devout. And despite the patriarchal structure, women are valued, cherished, and empowered in their sphere of influence within the home and especially in their role as mothers.
The other side of the coin is that it can be a very constrained life for those who yearn for a broader view of the world not sanctioned by the rules and practices of the closed group. The opportunities for self expression in this type of society are limited in the same way that the approved color palette is limited. Women can become great cooks and bakers--food is necessary for life. They can keep flower gardens, where all can enjoy the beauty of God’s creations in the natural world. And they can make quilts for the bed, a household necessity.
We all get on in life as best we can, given our innate talents and abilities and our starting point in our culture. The individual women who made these quilts may or may not have seen them as significant beyond their role as bed covers. To me the point is that they did the work, and they did it to the absolute best of their abilities, honing and refining their technical skills along the way. (The hand quilting on most of these works is minute and exactingly drafted and executed.) If I can be allowed to mix cultural references, it’s the application of the Buddhist principle of “Right Occupation” carried to a sublime expression.
It’s this expression of the ethos, even more than the color palette or the design work, that has been an influence and a touchstone in my own work. Spending a few hours admiring and drinking in these quilts was a powerful reminder for me of how important intention is in my studio practice.
Making Seminole patchwork strips to use in the Seasonal Palette piece proceeds methodically. After picking the fabrics, cutting strips, and sewing sets of strips together, the next step is to slice up the strips into short lengths. The cuts are made either at right angles or a 45 degree angle, depending on the type of patchwork desired. There’s dozens and dozens of ways to combine and assemble these, but over the years I’ve developed my favorite sets and can proceed with relative confidence as I assemble them. The short strips are pinned together precisely, two by two, with an offset that will create the pattern, and sewn together. These pairs are then offset, pinned and precisely stitched, and so on, as I build long strips.
The white fabrics you are seeing in these top two photos are the backs of the silk fabrics I’m using. I love working with silk, but some of them are lightweight, and all of them are slippery. One strategy is to fuse them to non-woven stabilizers, but I dislike using fusibles, partly because of concerns about their long term stability, but mostly because they give a flat visual effect to the silk. So I take the extra step of machine basting the strips of silk onto a cotton muslin beforehand. It’s fiddly and time consuming, but in the end, after the work has been quilted, the silk will ripple just a bit and have wonderful dimension and sheen, so it’s worthwhile for me.
Once the strips are sewn together, they are pressed and ready to combine with the cyanotype panels on the design wall as I work out the design. The edges will be trimmed and evened up as I go along.
I enjoy making and using Seminole patchwork and revisit the technique from time to time. The concept was originated by the Seminole Indians, who used it for stunningly graphic and wonderful garments, as they made the best of a bad situation. Here I’ve used it in White Mulberry: Tall Blue Lettuce: Margarita:
and Five Days Last Fall:
You can click on the links and read more about each of these quilts on my website.
On another note, my friend and fellow fiber artist Franki Kohler has done me the honor of including me in her post on the Leibster Blog awards. Thank you Franki, I really appreciate the recognition and your kind words. One of the best aspects of blogging is the sense of community it builds, and the friendships that develop between bloggers, and I have been very fortunate in that regard! As part of the deal I am to pass along the award to five of my favorite blogs--a challenging task, as my blog reader list is extensive and I am continually amazed and inspired by the artists I follow. While I work on that, you can always see many of my favorites by touring through one of the blog rolls featured in the right side bar.
I love picking out fabrics for a new project. It’s one of my favorite parts of the process--exciting and stimulating to the little grey cells. It involves choosing the color scheme, but since I am working with textiles, there are also the secondary factors of texture, fiber content, and patterning.
I think I have a different relationship with the fabrics in my stash than a lot of other quilters. With me it’s personal. I have a collection going back decades to dressmaking scraps from the clothes I wore as a child. I am not sentimental about them, but I relate to them in terms of their context in time and space. Other fabrics that I’ve purchased were all deliberate acquisitions, and I can remember the general time frame and location of where I obtained them. Same thing with fabric that has been generously gifted to me, or that I’ve purchased from other craftswomen--they are linked in my mind with the person and the circumstance. The fabric has meaning and history, some are heavy favorites that have been used in multiple projects, and all of that comes into play when I am auditioning them for something new. None of these factors will necessarily be evident to the viewer of the finished work, but it’s highly relevant to whatever it is that happens in my conscious and subconscious mind as I am working.
Given that context, I am genuinely puzzled by the popularity of fat quarter bundles ( a fat quarter is 18” x 22”) or jelly roll bundles (2.5” by 44” strips) on the market. I can’t imagine letting someone else pick out my fabrics for me, even granting that they are lovely and well coordinated assortments. If I like a textile and am going to include it in my repertoire, I need at least a yard, ideally more. And I need to be able to find it when I want it, so I am fairly well organized in that regard. I needed some publicity shots of me in my studio, so here in the background you can see some of the labeled bins I store things in. I sort by fabric content and then by color. I’m not afraid of disarray while I’m working, but when I’m done it all needs to be sorted out again. Part of the sorting is keeping swatches of everything used in a project. The swatches go into binders with notes and other relevant ephemera associated with each quilt. I’ve done this from the very start of my art practice, so when documentation was called for as part of the Seasonal Palette exhibit I was very much on board.
For this project I wanted mostly the clear, bright, somewhat saturated colors that signify mid to late summer to me. I’m using a few commercial fabrics, some silks I brought back from my trip to India and cottons I’ve hand painted and printed. (If you are new here, be sure to click on the “India” tab at the top to see recent and vintage India travelogue posts.) Here you see them cut into strips and sewn into sets preliminary to being cut up for Seminole patchwork. I’m quite pleased about the one on the right with the leaf prints.
I’m a huge fan of the plume poppy plant, and have used its leaves in numerous small projects and a huge art quilt. One of its attractions is its large leaves, but the scale of this project wouldn’t accommodate them. So I focused on the tiny leaves that sprout up in the intersections and tops of the stalks.
I picked dozens and dozens of the little leaves, and laid them out in a grid to make a heliographic print of them with green textile paint. You can see a similar print, with larger leaves, in process below:
I cut the printed fabric into strips and used it in the piecing. It’s very fiddly and time consuming work, like a lot of what I do, but well worth it for the story it tells in the cloth.
I’m very happy to share that two of my art quilts, Columbine and Plume Poppy, have been accepted for the AQS Quilt Show and Contest in Lancaster, PA, March 14-17, 2012. This is my hometown show, which makes it even more exciting. I’m really looking forward to seeing some of my friends and fellow art quilters when they come to town. It’s held in the Lancaster County Convention Center, which is part of the repurposed Watt & Shand building that’s been an obsession of mine for some time (see my series of ten art quilts about the building renovation here.)
Columbine is a newer work, and this will be its first outing to an exhibit. Plume Poppy is BIG - 81"h x 74"w - and really needs to be seen in person to appreciate the scale.
If you are planning on coming to Lancaster, there will be an unique opportunity to see ALL of the amazing Esprit collection quilts at the Lancaster Quilt and Textile Museum during the show week. More information is here.
I finished the quilting and removed the basting on “Ginger” this weekend. It looks radiant! The top is made entirely from Indian silks, with a cyanotype on silk for the center image, and it just glows:
The back is looking very cool as well, you can see all the patterning from my free-motion quilting:
For the uninitiated, free-motion quilting means using the sewing machine as a drawing tool, and the thread becomes the line. I disengage the feed dogs, the mechanism that normally moves fabric through the machine, and move the fabric with my hands. It’s a learned skill that becomes becomes honed with practice, a bit like riding a bike or any other activity that requires hand/eye coordination. The trick is to get the right speed and “flow” so the the design seems natural. I find it helps to look a bit ahead of where I’m at and to stay focused on where I’m going. This patterning, which I use a lot in my work, involves creating a box, sewing into it, then stitching back out. It’s very meditative, and I make it all up as I go along.
Next up is rinsing and drying the work, which will create even more texture and sheen, and then a binding to finish off the edges. I am working like a madwoman on multiple projects and deadlines right now, so I will fit this in where I can. I’m very happy with how it’s turned out thus far.
You can see the previous posts on this work here and here, or click on Ginger under updates in the right sidebar. Many thanks for reading and commenting!
Turkey Hill is a favorite local destination for a moderate hike, and one that affords great views. We ventured out recently on a mild January day, and were rewarded with panoramas like this:
The trail has recently been rerouted due to the construction of two windmills at the top of the rise. They supply electricity to the nearby Turkey Hill Dairy.
There’s new signage at the overlook, and I learned that the first surveyor of the area, Benjamin Latrobe, went on to work for President Jefferson as the architect of the U.S. Capitol building.
This is a lovely spot, but not a pristine one. In addition to the windmills, it’s also adjacent to the large (and well managed) Frey Farm Landfill, But no matter, the lookout is wonderful. I made a small art quilt about it years ago, View from Turkey Hill. And it's the site of my great pawpaw discovery of '09.
Headed back down the trail:
A portrait of the artist in her natural habitat:
Cool designs from a carved out step into fallen timber:
Four views of a fungus:
It’s a huge and spectacular clump of Chicken of the Woods growing on a stump. It’s unusual in my experience for having a lot of honeysuckle vine incorporated into it:
This variety of fungus can be quite bright and colorful when new, but this one has faded to beautiful, subtle hues:
The patterning is also superb:
A small art quilt from my past, showing Chicken of the Woods in its more common vertical orientation on the side of a living tree:
After our hike, we stopped a favorite local watering hole for a late lunch and a libation:
And from there strolled across the railroad tracks in Marietta for another view of the Susquehanna River from the shoreline. I never tire of the river.
One of the recurring themes in my work is the use of cyanotype to make prints on fabric. I never tire of the process. It is exciting and almost magical each and every time. It encompasses so many of my happy obsessions--plants, photography, fabric, and working outdoors, at the (hopefully tender) mercies of the elements. I could set up UV lights and expose the prints safely indoors, and I’m all for keeping my options open, but I think that would take some of the pleasure out of the experience. Of course the viewer can’t tell where and how I made the print, they simply see the result, but my joy in making it is an integral part of the process for me. Perhaps that’s why most of my work is so cheerful, however somber my intentions in beginning it might be.
Above is one of the prints I showed underway in my last Seasonal Palette post, a painted fern specimen. The lighter blue lines top and bottom are from the edges of the sheet of glass used to hold the fern in place, and they won’t be in the finished work in this instance. Below is a section of another print, a length of ornamental sweet potato vine. I pinned it in place for the exposure, and you can see lovely variations in shading along the edges of some leaves where they lifted a bit.
I made five prints for this work, and pinned them up on a design board to think about them for a bit. One of the criteria for this exhibit is that the work must be a specific size, 78” tall by 32” wide. I wanted the design to be engaging all along its length, so it took some rumination and experimentation with placement to work all that out. My usual working method is to start with the prints and add patchwork elements around them, working outward until the proportions and flow seem correct. At the end I square everything up and then measure it. It’s a nice advantage IMO to working with fiber and/or mixed media; the imagery can grow organically. For this piece, I needed to think more like a painter who starts with a specific size of canvas, where everything needs to contained and constrained proportionally within that space. I’ve had to think IN the box, as it were. Not necessarily a bad thing, just different.
